You know, it's wonderful essay-writing reviewers like you guys that keep bringing me back to this fic. I know the temptation to just read and move on, so I really appreciate your kindness and encouragement. I'd really like to thank all my lovely, patient reviewers who constantly inspire me to work on this fic: phantomwillow, merichuel, Ryanfan14, DeppleICk, broken handed, Jedi Master Bag, UchidaKarasu, random logic person, anon, just-a-web-artist, KDanuve, Happiness's Deceit, Rainbowbubble, mehhdroopyL, me malum, none-4-a-name, superfan8 (x3), Moka-girl (x2), The Original Gamer, Keltzy, SeraphimXII, Helaynia (x7), Tallulah Grammar Songstress! I really did not expect to break 100 reviews last chapter; you guys honestly blow me away!

Also, this chapter would not be nearly so grammatically correct without the help my amazing betas: phantomwillow and UchidaKarasu!

(Edit Note 4/7/11: Since I keep forgetting to put this elsewhere and to clear up the confusion, Motivation started a little over a year before Death Note canon starts. This means that the Death Note has not fallen yet, and will not fall for another year or so. Consequently Light is still an 'innocent'.)

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I apologize. This was supposed to go out on Monday, but my computer was attacked by nefarious creatures called viruses and I had to deliver my precious computer into the shady arms of the ITS organization and hope for a miracle. Luckily for everyone, a miracle was indeed delivered and so I now present to you the most recent installment of Motivation!

Chapter 9

The tension between Matt and Yagami rose to rather frightening heights as the remaining hours of the school day flew by. The class of 209C practically vibrated with the intensity of their silent debate.

Matt was writing so quickly his left hand had cramped and he'd needed to switch to his right. He barely spared the move a thought. Yagami was intelligent enough to infer a great deal from Matt's ambidexterity, but the redhead was far too focused on winning this debate to care.

Long gone were their (mostly) peaceable treatises on various topics; this was a true debate and Matt wasn't going to back down.

The moment the last bell of the day rang, Matt dropped his pen and simply told Yagami what he had to say to the other's most recent jab. Amidst the hustle and bustle that always seemed to accompany the end of the school day, no one heard the redhead speak. No one but Yagami, of course.

Yagami's expression didn't change, even though Matt was breaking his careful precedent of not speaking without provocation. The change in behavior could easily be considered a victory in Yagami's favor. The small part of Matt that fully recognized the slippery that he was currently barreling down appreciated the teen's discretion. The rest of Matt was far too interested in finding ways to rip Yagami's intelligent argument to shreds to care.

The two spoke quietly in the back of the classroom until they noticed that they were alone. Despite himself, Matt was disappointed that their discussion would be cut short so quickly.

Yagami felt the same, apparently. Matt could see it in the teen's minute frown.

Whose victory was this? What was the score?

Matt silently cursed himself for losing track.

"Come on," Yagami said across the long stretch of thoughtful silence had passed between them, picking up his bag and slinging it over one shoulder, the frown banished like a bad memory.

Matt considered refusing, but before he could form the words, he was already following Yagami out the door.

That was how they ended up sitting in a booth at a little café a few blocks from the high school. Yagami had purchased himself some kind of bento-boxy thing. Matt, realizing that he had no money, had tried to decline food.

Yagami's reaction had been truly perplexing.

"You're kidding," the teen had hissed, somewhat angrily. "You never eat lunch and considering how late you show up to class, you probably sleep in and don't eat breakfast either. You're way too skinny. Of course you're eating something."

Matt had bristled at the implications in Yagami's words, but calmed as he recalled that thanks to Wammy's he could probably incapacitate Light Yagami in less than a minute regardless of his size or apparent weakness. "I'm broke," he had said once he got his emotions back under control.

The teen had shrugged off the excuse, and Matt knew that those calculating brown eyes had not missed a single nuance of the redhead's uncontrolled reaction. "You can pay me back later," the teen had said firmly.

Yagami refused to be dissuaded and Matt couldn't be bothered to waste the effort he would need to expend in order to argue properly. Instead, he simply ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. Light just smiled.

The most expensive thing on the menu ended up being a rather large bento box with saba and hamachisashimi, curried rice and a small salad, accompanied by a steaming bowl of miso soup, all of which turned out to be surprisingly good, regardless of Matt's attempts to make the food taste like ash. Now that he was actually eating, he finally remembered that he was in fact hungry and had been so most of the day.

Yagami watched Matt devour his meal, a smug smile playing about the corners of his lips. "You should take better care of yourself," he noted lightly as he began his own meal, albeit in a more leisurely manner.

The unspoken caveat to his admonishment had been 'or someone will notice'. Matt resisted the urge to snort into his miso soup and did not bother responding; Yagami really was rather predictable in his concerns. The teen cared less about Matt's wellbeing and more about other people's concerns for Matt's wellbeing. What twisted logic, he thought, and took a gulped down a spoonful of soup.

The teen sighed expansively at Matt's apathy. "Fine," he said, grudgingly acknowledging that Matt had no desire to discuss his eating habits. "You never did answer my question, though."

The redhead quirked an eyebrow at the question, but otherwise was far more concerned with engineering the most efficient route to get his saba from his plate into his mouth.

"Would you get caught?"

Matt choked down a rather large mouthful of food before glancing up at Light through tinted lenses. "The real question," he said, unable to keep the blatant challenge out of his voice, "Is whether you would get caught, Yagami-kun."

Yagami smirked as though he was happy to have his question turned back on him. Desperate as the teen apparently was for conversation…perhaps he was. Matt just did not understand this guy.

"It's not a matter of whether or not I'd get caught, Greene-kun," the teen said mildly, carefully balancing his chopsticks across the corner of his bento box. He waited for a second, as though hoping Matt would comment, but when the redhead didn't, he simply continued, "The point, as I told you earlier today, is that even if I did get caught, it wouldn't make a difference."

That was far too ridiculous a statement to be allowed to stand. "Bullshit. Getting caught is getting caught," Matt blurted out around the rather large piece of sashimi in his mouth.

Light's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Thanks for the view. I could do without the sight of pre-digested puréed fish."

Matt rolled his eyes and swallowed pointedly. "Anything for you Yagami-kun," he said, spontaneously pitching his voice higher in imitation of the teen's doting fangirls, while keeping his face perfectly blank.

Yagami's perfect mask slipped for a moment and he snorted derisively. "They really do sound like that, don't they?"

"The bane of my existence," Matt said seriously before curiosity won out. "But you were saying?"

The teen smiled, his façade once more firmly in place. "It's as I explained before: if you're sufficiently aware of your surroundings and plan accordingly, the question of whether or not you'd be caught becomes moot."

"How exactly does planning remove all those lovely consequences you were telling me about earlier?" the redhead asked bemusedly. "Because from where I'm standing, it sounds like you're claiming omniscience."

"You don't need to be omniscient to do math, Greene-kun," Yagami explained with infuriating patience.

"Gambling. Really?" Matt muttered incredulously as he realized what the teen actually meant by 'doing math'. "What would your teachers say?"

"Life is a gamble," the teen said, his eyes bright with conviction and his bento box long forgotten, barely touched. "Everything involves some sort of risk. There are safe bets and there are stupid bets as anyone who's tried to take a shortcut through a dark alley in Tokyo could tell you. You can't avoid all the pitfalls in the world. There are too many of them to even bother trying."

"So what," Matt said bemusedly, "you close your eyes, roll the dice and hope for the best?" Yagami would make a horrible hacker, thinking like that. Perhaps the teen wasn't as clever as Matt had thought.

"Hardly," Light retorted easily, not at all deterred by Matt's attitude. "Outcomes in life are not determined purely by chance and it's possible to take advantage of that. The trick is to be well informed. You see, Greene-kun, if you're smart and if you are amply aware of your surroundings, of the people and laws that define your world, you can anticipate both the dangers and the rewards of any action you take. Once you've got that down to a science, you'll never be surprised, no matter what, be it good or bad, happens. And then you can plan accordingly."

"You'd really risk everything on the off-chance things will work out exactly the way you planned?" Matt asked.

Yagami sighed. "You're not listening, Greene-kun," he said sharply.

"Planning doesn't negate the risks," the redhead said mulishly between bites of curried rice and sashimi. Just because Yagami had completely forgotten his meal didn't mean Matt had to follow suit. He'd never admit it, but it was the best thing he'd eaten in days.

"There's no such thing as a perfect plan," the teen agreed. "Every plan has a significant margin of error that you can never forget, no matter how well thought-out your plan is. However, it is possible to greatly reduce the risk in any course of action," he continued, with surprising enthusiasm. "It's just a matter of calculating risk and reward until you've formed a plan of action that maximizes the potential rewards and reduces the risks to acceptable losses.

"Take our little excursion to roof as a case in point," he went on, warming up to his argument. "As you noted, there are consequences for breaking the rules in order to spend time on the roof. However, the benefits, such as a private place to talk and the chance to eat lunch outside, far outweigh the minor costs we would have had to pay in the unlikely event that we were caught. And even if we were found out, we would have already monopolized on the rewards of the experience while only paying a price roughly equivalent to a slap on the wrist that wouldn't be recorded in either of our records."

"That's a lot of thought wasted on a rather low-risk scenario," Matt noted mildly.

Yagami rolled his eyes. "The example itself is immaterial," he said. "I was just proving a point. My logic can be applied to any situation. With a little research and analysis I can craft a plan to achieve any end."

The redhead smirked. "Fair enough," he said. "But you're contradicting yourself."

"Where?" Light demanded, looking bizarrely pleased at the accusation.

"'Any end' as you say, implies that the end itself doesn't matter. If you wanted it, you could make it happen, even if it was illegal," Matt said.

"I didn't say that," Yagami said, but there was no hostility in his voice.

Matt snorted. "Like that means anything. We both know what you meant."

The blunt response startled a grin out of the teen. "Do we?" he bantered, and then went on, "That's not a contradiction, though."

"Mmm," Matt agreed, "but this is: for all your talk earlier today, you care as little for the social contract as I do."

"You say that like the social contract is a religion to be believed in rather than a reality to be factored into your plans," Yagami said. "I told you before – you can't escape the social contract. The key, Greene-kun is to find its loopholes."

"What, and exploit them mercilessly?" the redhead asked.

"Of course," Yagami said blithely.

It occurred to Matt in that moment that, with an attitude like that, if Light Yagami ever went dark side, the entire world would be summarily fucked.

He supposed that thought should have made him nervous, but it only drove home the fact that Light Yagami was one of the most interesting people Matt had ever met.

"Planning world domination, are we?" Matt asked.

This startled a laugh out of the teen. "World domination?" Yagami asked. "Nothing so trite. Besides, I would never resort to the lowly means necessary to achieve that particular end. I'm going to be a police detective like my father."

Before he could stop himself, Matt's face twisted in disgust at that word 'detective'. "Why?" he found himself demanding.

A little surprised by Matt's vehemence, Yagami frowned minutely before smoothing his expression back into his pleasant mask. "I want to make a difference in the world," the teen said. "So many innocent people suffer everyday and I think I can do good work."

Matt stared long and hard at the teen's inscrutable face as he spoke. The redhead took note of the tiny, perhaps subconscious quirk of the lips that had preceded that little speech and somehow escaped Yagami's rigid control. And then there were the words themselves…they rang false.

His companion was not lying, though, not exactly. Wammy's House had trained Matt in the art of lie detection. He'd had little interest in staring at endlessly looping videos learning to spot the tiny clues that sometimes revealed a liar for what they were, but he'd done it. He'd even scored third in the entire school.

Still, Yagami wasn't lying. He was…regurgitating. It was as though the teen was repeating a line he'd heard so often he'd begun to think it true, at least superficially.

Perhaps…perhaps, the odd thought occurred to him, Yagami just didn't know what he actually wanted, which was strange. It seemed unnatural to Matt that this confident, brilliant wunderkind should not have his entire life planned out at the age of sixteen.

I'm worse than Wammy's, Matt thought to himself, worse than L. Just because every child at Wammy's either wants to be L or already knows their specialty before they hit puberty doesn't mean I should assume to limit anyone else. Why should Yagami have his life railroaded into place like the plot of a bad RPG? A guy like that, he could do anything.

"You know," Matt said aloud, "just because your dad's a cop doesn't mean you're obligated to follow in his footsteps."

Yagami stiffened. "I'm not – "

"Sure," the redhead drawled. "Whatever. But I just don't see the appeal. Cops aren't all that powerful. Their jobs are pretty awful, honestly. Low pay, ugly uniforms, bad hours… though you'd know that, I guess." Yagami flinched and tried to interrupt. Matt ignored him and plowed on, unsure of his own motives, but convinced that Yagami needed to hear this. "They don't even make that much of a difference. Most crimes never get reported, most criminals never get caught, and the ones that do all start to look the same after a while. Really, unless you get, I suppose 'lucky' is too crass, but lucky all the same, police work is boring."

The teen recoiled at the word 'boring'. Interesting.

"It isn't – "

"But it is. Police work would bore you…and you know it."

Yagami deflated somewhat. "Everything is boring," he said, eyes drifting away from Matt to gaze out the window onto the crowded street. The brown eyes were suddenly dull, the way they had been that first day (how long ago was it now? Not a month, yet, right?), filled with the same lonely emptiness that Matt had been avoiding in the mirror for as long as he could remember.

Matt had almost forgotten that look, almost, but not quite. He had grown accustomed to the spark that had been burning steadily in those coffee colored eyes.

He wanted that look back.

"Poor baby," Matt taunted purposefully. "Shall I play you a sad song on my tiny violin?"

The teen blinked slowly in surprise, as though he'd been very far away and had forgotten Matt was there. "Violin?" Yagami muttered quietly, looking honestly baffled. "You…you actually…do you even play?" he finished abortively.

Matt wondered what the other had been trying to say, but decided he didn't care. He was satisfied that he'd managed to pull Light back from wherever he'd drifted. Besides, it was amusing to watch the teen flounder in the face of teasing. Apparently no one made a habit of mocking 'Raito-kun' to his face.

"Nope," the redhead said. "Never had the drive for it." Much to Wammy's disappointment he'd filled all his extracurricular time slots with computer classes, and while they'd wanted to force well-roundedness onto him (and others), their own rulebook had been against them. After a very memorable showdown with Roger, in which Mello and Matt had put their law and debate lessons to practice, the teachers tried to make music mandatory for everyone. That had lasted until Mello broke several hundred thousand pounds worth of priceless musical instruments. For once, Matt hadn't bothered to stop him and Wammy's dropped the charade.

"I used to play," Yagami said. "Years ago. Piano, violin, cello, flute and oboe."

"All that? Were you any good?" Matt asked, impressed despite himself.

Yagami shrugged. "I won some awards, but nothing spectacular. It couldn't have gone anywhere."

"I find that hard to believe." Honestly, the redhead wondered, who won a handful of awards and then decided to give up?

"I was good; technically I was perfect, could play any piece my teachers put in front of me, but…" The teen looked regretful as he said with a bitter half-smile, "But there was something missing. My music was empty. Expert after expert listened, complimented me and said I'd go nowhere. I moved on to things more deserving of my talents."

That explained a few things, but failed to explain why Yagami was telling Matt such an obviously painful memory. Yagami did not seem the type to reveal actual weaknesses to others, to anyone, really. And yet he was sitting there, freely showing one of his flaws to Matt of all people. What was this guy playing at?

The redhead's eyes narrowed ever so slightly behind the tinted lenses of his goggles. Yagami seemed sincere, so the story was probably true…Perhaps Yagami was trying to draw him out? Gain Matt's trust by exposing a weakness in hopes that the younger boy would divulge his own secrets? Possible. But was the overarching goal? Yagami thought in terms of the big picture, so what was he trying to do, allowing himself to be lead off topic so easily?

"I'm not a big music person," Matt said finally, carefully sidestepping any need to comment on Yagami's play. "So I wouldn't know anything about that. I am partial to a bit of game music. It adds to the experience."

Yagami looked momentarily startled by the abrupt change in direction, but recovered admirably. "You're a gamer then?" he asked, the bitterness fading noticeably as he spoke.

"Obviously," Matt said. "You?"

"Not really. I don't have the time for it," Yagami explained.

Matt snorted, "Bullshit. You're busy with what, exactly? Homework? Don't make me laugh. Stalking? I'd believe that, except I'm not sure what poor unfortunate soul was saddled with you before I showed up."

"I am not stalking you," Yagami said bemusedly.

"Not the point," the redhead said, not bothering to argue the validity of his stalking accusation. Games were much more important than discussions of Yagami's questionable social practices.

"And what is that, exactly?"

"How can you not have time for games?" Matt asked in the same way Mello asked how people could live without eating their weight in chocolate on a weekly basis.

Yagami chucked and peripherally Matt noted that the dullness had finally vanished from the teen's eyes. "I never really saw the appeal," Light said. "Besides I prefer games that have higher stakes."

"What, like whether or not you'll get punished for breaking the rules?"

"Well, that," the teen said, "and other things…I sometimes help my dad with cases."

"That's sometimes," Matt said. "What else?"

Yagami hesitated. Brown eyes swept around the café, taking stock of their surroundings before settling back on Matt. "And…I occasionally engage in, ah, recreational economics."

"Recreational economics?" Matt echoed. "Which means what, exactly? Have you been selling commodities on the weekends?" He chuckled at the mental image of Yagami on a trading floor, being pushed around by his fellow competitors as he waved his hands around in the confusing garble of orders to buy and sell. Perfect Yagami would be horribly out of place.

"Not quite," Yagami said and quirked an eyebrow at the redhead's laughter. "I'm not exactly trader material."

"You've considered it?" Matt said in surprise.

The teen sighed. "I've considered doing most things," he said, "but we were talking about games."

"We were," Matt agreed noncommittally, making it clear that he wasn't about to let the teen wander off topic, even as he resisted the urge to ask Yagami about what exactly the teen had been considering.

"I…" Yagami was hesitating again and Matt wondered why. He didn't get much time to muse about the teen's behavior, though, as quite suddenly a look of pure determination flashed across Yagami's Asian features. Interesting.

"I play the stock market," Yagami said.

Matt's hands tensed imperceptibly in surprise. He didn't bother stating that Yagami was too young to be investing. Considering their previous conversation, it would be a waste of breath. And considering that it wasn't that unusual for a sixteen year old to be interested in stocks, the secretive behavior was most likely a holdover from a time when his interests might have gotten him in trouble. The question was…"How long?" he asked, unbearably curious.

The teen smirked. "Almost seven years."

Impressive. Yagami had been illegally investing in the stock market since he was ten years old. Matt wondered how a young Yagami had managed it. "And how did you sketch out your risk-reward analysis on that one?"

Light rolled his eyes. "I invest under a false name. It was easy enough to set up. My parents have no idea where two thirds of my allowance goes," he said, both avoiding and half answering the question at once.

"Obviously," Matt said. "What else would you have done at ten?" He sighed and said, "Only someone like you could possibly find what amounts to high stakes gambling more interesting than killing zombies."

"Someone like me? What are you implying, Greene-kun?" Yagami asked seriously, but his brown eyes were burning brightly. He was…being playful?

The redhead sat up a little straighter, unsure of how to respond. "Nothing in particular, Yagami-kun. You're so paranoid," he said snarkily, "It can't be healthy."

"It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you," Yagami quipped.

Matt couldn't stop the grin that stretched across his face. "You – "

His clever reply was cut short by the cheerful ringing of a cell phone. Yagami answered his cell with his usual flourish, the slight wrinkle of his forehead the only sign that the teen was annoyed at the interruption. Matt looked away and listened as his companion smoothly explained to his mother that he'd gone to a friend's house to work on a project and how he'd definitely be home for dinner. Matt wondered at the fact that Yagami's first instinct in any situation was to lie. Surely his mother wouldn't care that he'd been slacking off? Wasn't Light one of the top students in their school?

As Yagami hung up it, Matt happened to glance out the window. The sun was just falling over the edge of the horizon, the last of the golden light beginning to bleed out of the sky. Matt felt his heart skip a beat – just how long had he and Yagami been talking? A quick glance at the clock on the wall behind the cash register revealed that he and Yagami had been at the café for almost four and a half hours.

With a sinking stomach Matt remembered the ever growing pile of increasingly difficult homework waiting for him back at the apartment. His hands began to shake as he realized just how screwed he was. There was no way he was going to be able to finish it.

Shit.

He jerked to his feet and bolted from the café, barely remembering to leave a rushed "I need to go" behind him. In his rush, he failed to realize that he'd slipped out of his rough American accent and back into his more natural British accent.

He didn't notice the slip, but Yagami did.

Matt trudged into class halfway through first period the next day, his hair wild and greasy, wearing the same non-regulation clothing he'd worn the day before and an irritable expression on his pale, freckled face.

The redhead barely noticed the annoyance on his teacher's face, the whispers of his 'classmates' or the concerned look on Yagami's face as he made his way to the back of the room.

He sank into his seat and stared dully at the blackboard.

He had failed. Miserably.

The boy resisted the urge to scream and shout and throw his chair across the room in frustration.

He had fallen asleep in the middle of doing his homework.

He had fallen asleep, like some pathetic child. And he'd woken up at six in the morning with several hours of work still to go and not nearly enough time to finish it.

Somehow he managed to scrape together a finished assignment.

But that only made his failure more spectacular.

The work was complete, but it wasn't perfect. His score would be off and the worst part was that he didn't even know how far he'd strayed from the acceptable score margins. He wasn't even entirely certain he hadn't simply failed completely. No, that was a lie, even though it was preferable to the truth. He knew he hadn't scored too low.

Damn it.

He had panicked. Groggy and disoriented, he hadn't anticipated the new class L had added to his course load and had rushed. That was his mistake. He hadn't taken the time to plan out his assignment and he would suffer for it. This wasn't some tiny slip that might be passed over as natural variation. This was a glaring error. A statistical impossibility based on his previous scores.

Fuck.

L had been waiting for an opening and Matt had stupidly given it to him.

He cursed his useless, disobedient body and his traitorous mind. Especially his mind. If he hadn't been so bored, he would not have given into the lure of intelligent conversation and spent the afternoon with Yagami he wouldn't be in this position, jeopardizing his relationship with the most important person in his world.

Matt was a horrible friend.

After everything Mello had done for him, after everything they'd been through together, it only took a few weeks apart for Matt to betray him. How could he have let his cautious acquaintanceship with that Japanese asshole trump his devotion to his best friend?

The redhead's hands balled into fists at his sides, short, jagged nails digging into his palms.

He relished the pain. He deserved it.

When the teachers called on him, he refused to respond. He stared blankly at their frustrated faces and wished he could go hide in a dark place with a game and forget that he was alive. He blocked out Yagami's carefully worded explanations that Matt was ill and not himself. He didn't want Yagami's help. He didn't need it and if he could, he'd give it back. They weren't friends. They weren't anything and Matt found that he hated the interfering asshole almost as much as he hated himself.

Matt ignored the ever increasing pile of notes from Yagami. He didn't even bother to read them. He realized now that it had been a mistake to associate with the teen. Well, Matt knew he was stupid, but he could learn from his mistakes.

He was done. If he could still salvage his position at Wammy's, he would and in order to do that he would remove the distraction that had lead him astray from his awareness.

He would shut Yagami out.

That plan worked perfectly up until the lunch break when Yagami grabbed hold of Matt's wrist and physically dragged the younger boy out of the room and up to the roof.

"What the hell is wrong with you today?" Yagami demanded as he slammed the door to the roof shut behind him. "I thought you were over this!"

"Over this?" Matt found himself snarling back, even though he knew he should be silent. He vainly reached for the protective coat of apathy that had shielded him for so long, but he couldn't reach it. And his mouth just kept talking. "What, is not liking Perfect Raito-kun a sickness? Do I need a prescription, Doc?"

Yagami looked as though he'd been slapped. "What! No, I just – "

"You just what? Why don't mind your own business, fucktard?"

The teen's eyes narrowed. "No."

"I…what?" the redhead hadn't expected such blatant resistance. He'd expected Yagami to leave the way anyone else would have when he blew up at them. People had shown interest in Matt before, but it was always an ephemeral curiosity that vanished whenever the redhead forgot himself and opened his mouth. Matt was good at driving people away; he barely even had to try.

So Yagami's behavior didn't make sense. At all.

The teen glared at him. "I'm not going anywhere, Greene-kun." Yagami shrugged his bag off his shoulder, pulled a bento box out and held it out to Matt.

"What?" Matt faltered in confusion, feeling like a broken record and not knowing what to do about it.

"Did I break you?" Yagami asked snidely. He shoved the bento into Matt's hands. "Eat this. Then we're going to go back to class, and you're going to grow up and get over yourself."

Matt instinctively flinched back from Yagami's ire, his hands gripping the bento far too tightly.

For the first time, Matt realized how much bigger Yagami was than him. The teen was four years older than him and towered above Matt in height. He hadn't noticed because they spent so much time seated around each other. The realization was disturbing. He had thought he and Yagami were equals. A mistake. He was nobody's equal, abysmally inferior, he knew that. How had he forgotten?

Yagami had stopped talking for the moment, but Matt's mind easily filled the silence with curses and insults spewed from a familiar but half forgotten face looming far above him. He could almost feel the spittle on his face and smell the alcohol-tinted breath.

If he could he would sink into the earth and die…

A hand on his shoulder startled Matt out of his memories. The boy cringed and almost dropped the bento, but Yagami caught it and handed it back, no longer looking quite so angry.

"If meeting after class is such a problem you should have said something," Yagami said quietly.

Matt blinked and looked away from the intensity of those brown eyes, unsure of what to say. He wanted to be rid of Yagami once and for all. He did. But it was clear now that he didn't have a choice in the matter.

He said nothing.

"Eat," Yagami ordered.

Matt ate, silently and mechanically, barely tasting the admittedly delicious meal even though he wasn't hungry because following orders is familiar and easy He was a well-trained dog, if nothing else.

"Good," Yagami said when Matt finished.

Matt felt lost under the stern brown gaze, but he thought he understood now what was expected of him. They weren't equals. They weren't friends. They never had been. He didn't understand why some tiny part of him seemed to be disappointed. This made things simpler, didn't it?

And when they returned to class, Matt answered Yagami's notes because he didn't know what else to do.

Before anyone panics, I would like to remind you that while Matt is a genius, he is still a twelve year-old child with severe self-esteem problems and a history of abusive relationships. Is he overreacting? Yes, yes he is. That's kind of the point.

Besides that, I hope everyone enjoyed the second substantial conversation of this fic and that everyone is still properly in character.

Anyway, please tell me what you think; constructive criticism is always appreciated and hearing from you guys always makes my day and reminds me why I write!

Until next time,

-blackash