Escape With Ease

Chapter Ten

By Andruindel

lilililili

For the first time since Ease had come to Wammy's house, she was ignoring her friends. It was as though things had reverted back to the way they had been at the beginning, with Ease spending most of her time sitting on the bench out in the grounds, sometimes with a book, other times just sitting and staring into space, and with Mello and Matt sending the occasional look in her direction but otherwise not going out of their way to interact with her. Ease was ignoring them—avoiding them, even. Not through anger. No, she was avoiding them out of shame. Every time she saw Mello, she remembered how angry he had made her, and how she had reacted to that anger in a way she never should have. She remembered the look on his face after she had pushed him to the floor, and she doubted if either of the boys would ever want anything to do with her again. Part of her knew that she should have gone after Mello right away to apologize, but another part of her was too afraid to approach him now. The fear of being rejected and suddenly finding herself absolutely friendless again kept her back.

She spent a lot of lonely days in class, sitting apart from all the others and hiding behind her text books. Most of her evenings were spent even more alone, tucked away in a corner of the library with her homework. She only saw Mello and Matt in class and occasionally at a distance while she sat on her bench and read, but she never spoke to them, and they never approached her. She couldn't even bring herself to look them in the eye.

One night, as she sat alone on the floor in a corner of the library, with books piled in a semi-circle around her, she heard the door open. This wasn't odd in and of itself. The older children were frequent visitors to the library, as the books it held were invaluable to their homework and studying needs. Something about the situation this time made Ease look up, instantly alert. Her instincts had proven true—for some inexplicable reason, Mello and Matt had just entered the library.

Ease instantly ducked behind her towering pile of books—she had almost a cliche amount of books piled around her, proof of the amount of work she had put into the project she was currently working on and the time she had spent in the library that night. Swearing quietly under her breath, she hunched as far down as she could, holding a book up to make it look as though she was just studying intensely. She couldn't say exactly why she so desperately wanted to avoid being seen by the two boys, but the fact remained that she did still desperately want to avoid being seen by them. If they saw her, there was a possibility—however slight—that they would come over to talk to her.

Whether by luck, good fortune, or sheer blindness on the boys' part, she went unnoticed, and the boys made their way down an aisle of books opposite her corner. Overcome by curiosity, Ease carefully popped her head up over the wall of books and listened.

"Why are we here?" Mello almost whined. He hated books, and he hated the library, and Ease was willing to bet if he knew she was there, he would have hated her too.

Matt's response was so quiet Ease couldn't make it out. She strained to hear, brushing the stack of books in her attempts to lean as far as possible.

Of course Mello's words were easy to hear in the hushed atmosphere. He made little effort to keep his voice down. "I don't want to work on this now, we've got all weekend to do it! Besides, we might run into Ease here. You know how crazy she is about books." He mumbled the last part so disgustedly that Ease almost couldn't hear him. "She's probably already almost done with this stupid project."

He wasn't wrong, but of course he couldn't know that. Ease was certainly very thankful for the time she had spent accumulating the pile of books and how useful it had turned out to be. If she had spent any less time in the library, or decided to use the least amount of sources possible, she may not have had enough books to hide behind.

When Matt replied, Ease strained forward again to hear him.

"You're going to have to talk to her sooner or later, you know." He said in a fairly neutral tone. Ease's heart jumped—maybe Matt didn't hate her after all!

A few moments of wordless grumbling followed from Mello. Ease thought she was done eavesdropping after nearly ten minutes of silence. She leaned back into the wall, letting her book drop into her lap and sighing. When Mello suddenly spoke again, she perked up.

"What if she hates me now?"

Her jaw dropped.

Mello was worried that she might hate him? The absurdity almost made her choke, but she managed to stifle the noise of disbelief that nearly burst out of her mouth before she alerted either of the boys to her presence. She sat for a long moment, rocking back and forth with her hand pressed against her mouth, biting down on her knuckle in an agony of indecision. Should she go over to them? What would she say if she did? "I don't hate you, Mello, and by the way I'm sorry for pushing you, it'd be great if you could forgive me and we could be friends again." The words sounded too... simple. Too easy. Mello wouldn't accept such a cavalier apology.

Would he?

She was still sitting in the midst of her mountain of books, rocking and biting her knuckle and trying to decide what to do, when Mello and Matt suddenly turned the corner to peruse the other side of the shelf of books they had been looking at. As they appeared around the corner, Ease froze, they froze, and for a moment none of them knew how to react to the others' sudden presence. They hadn't spoken in weeks. What could someone do in a situation like that?

Ease reacted with the first thing that came to mind.

She bolted.

Books flew in all directions as she scrambled past the wall of them and dashed toward the library door. She thought she heard a shout behind her, but she wasn't pausing to find out. Like a scared animal, she made for the first sign of cover, barreling out of the library and down the hall to the first empty classroom she found. She hit the door at a run, shouldering it open and slamming it closed behind her. Heart beating, eyes wide, suddenly realizing that there was no real reason for her to have run, she dove behind the teacher's desk to hide, in case Matt and Mello came after her. If she was going to act completely irrationally, she may as well go the whole nine yards.

As she crouched under the desk, her heart-rate slowly faded back to its regular pace, and she managed to catch her breath. Shame fell over her again at that point—shame for the way she had acted, shame for what she had done to get herself into this situation in the first place, shame that she couldn't just go up to Mello and apologize to him. She was fourteen years old (practically an adult!) and she was still too immature and afraid to just own up to her mistakes and apologize. Feeling absolutely, completely crummy, she crawled back out from under the desk, brushed herself off, and crept back toward the door. Mello and Matt probably hadn't come after her. She hadn't heard any footsteps at any rate.

Thinking she was safe, she opened up the door and stepped into the corridor.

"Ease."

She jumped about a foot in the air, spinning around in the same movement and striking some sort of defensive pose, her arms extended in front of her, fists lightly clenched in anticipation of throwing a punch. Seeing that it was Matt, leaning very casually against the wall beside the door as though this was the most natural place in the world for him to be, did very little to ease her tension. She slowly lowered her fists, wondering if she ought to run again, but deciding against it. Matt had initiated contact—did that mean the weeks of solitude were coming to an end?

"Matt. You scared me." She said unnecessarily.

He ignored her, pushing away from the wall and stepping in her direction. She shied away from his touch, but did not try to stop him from putting his hands on both her shoulders. He had grown some over the years, so he had to bend down a bit to look her in the eye. She hadn't noticed until just now, but he was more than a foot taller than her—she hadn't grown much since her arrival at Wammy's house at all. Hunching her shoulders, she tried to avoid his eyes, but he just looked at her until she had to look up at him.

He looked tired. More tired than usual, that is. His eyes lacked their usual spark, and his mouth was set in a line that, while not severe, was not quite friendly. Ease was fully expecting him to lecture her. To yell at her. Hell, he could have hit her and she would have deserved it. Instead, he looked solemnly down at her for a moment before tilting his head down a bit. Before Ease knew it, he had kissed her. His lips were as soft as she remembered them, and the faint lingering taste of tobacco showed that he had smoked recently. The smell was so familiar—so Matt—that she instantly melted into the contact. Her fingers tangled in the front of his vest, and she kissed him back with all the fervor of the inexperienced.

When they broke apart, Ease looked shyly up into Matt's face. The strict set of his mouth had been replaced by a tiny smile. He leaned his forehead against hers, resting his hand on her neck comfortably. "I've missed you so much." He whispered.

Ease's heart was doing back flips out of sheer joy. She looked up at Matt, speechless with the sudden turn of events. All this time she had thought Matt was ignoring her because he was mad at her, like Mello was. She was so glad to hear that he had missed her too.

After a moment of just enjoying the others' close proximity, Matt spoke again. "You and Mello need to resolve this stupid rift." Ease had been expecting him to bring it up. "I don't like it when you two fight, cuz then I get stuck in the middle, and I hate choosing between the two of you. It's been hell staying away from you, and... knowing you were avoiding me just made it even worse."

That horrible, familiar sense of shame came back as Matt spoke, and Ease hung her head. The last few weeks had been hard on everyone—she could see that now. How long would she and Mello have gone, each thinking the other hated them, if Matt hadn't finally decided to step in and do something about it? She would have slunk away in shame if Matt hadn't tipped her chin up, catching her attention again.

"Please, just talk to Mello."

Ease took a deep breath. "I will. First thing tomorrow."

Smiling, Matt ducked down to kiss her again. "That's my girl." He murmured as he pulled away, mussing her hair a bit.

They were just going in to kiss again when someone stepped out of the library. Jumping apart, they looked down the corridor guiltily. They weren't supposed to be kissing in the corridors. They weren't technically supposed to be kissing at all. Exchanging guilty smiles, they shuffled awkwardly for a few moments, not sure what to do.

"I'd better go find Mello."

"Yeah, and I'd better go put all those books away." Ease sighed at the prospect.

Grinning, Matt brushed the back of one gloved hand across her cheek. "You'll talk to Mello?"

"I'll talk to Mello."

lilililili

A/N: Hey guys! I'm back, though for how long is uncertain... I know this chapter is a bit short, but I'm getting back into the swing of things. I hope that I'll be able to continue updating even as school starts up again for me, but we'll see. Thanks for reading, don't forget to review, and hey, since you're here:

Check out Citrine Nebulae's Death Note fan fiction "Anathema"