God's Dice
Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.
Chapter 14: Could Reality Be So Disenchanting?
Why?
That was certainly the question of the century… Or rather, in the very least it was definitely becoming the puzzlement of the last twenty-four hours.
In the blink of an eye the consensus between Mello and myself was that we were no longer going to ask those sorts of questions about the qualities of life which we had no control over. However, that hardly made it any easier to suppress the bad habit.
The night between us became a blur of amalgamated feelings and unspoken words to statements it seemed neither Mello nor I knew whether we wanted the other to hear; it was as though despite the connection and the unspoken promises we were both still hesitant and emotionally frightened by the other person. Though at the same time we both harbored our own share of heavy thoughts that'd been weighing us down, bending shoulders and breaking spines till, despite our reservations neither of us could take it any longer and we both finally snapped. It was in that moment that for the first time we allowed ourselves to freely show the other person that we were worried, that we harbored fears and regret and pain. Everything flowed between our channel, the same weight now coming to be disbursed between the two of us instead of just on one or the other.
Somewhere within that timeframe it was agreed in an unspoken manner that Mello wasn't going to leave my room that night and we moved to my bed. In a way it felt as though we were repeating the night he'd been here while intoxicated. The instance seemed to measure a change by which we could plot the ways in which we had changed since then. I laid on my side on my mattress facing him for a long time, trying to discern just what might happen the next morning when people were thrown into the delicate mess of our creation.
The light of dawn poured into my room, illuminating the comfortable sense of stillness as the rays from the emerging sun shone over Mello's sleeping face; his every feature relaxed for once. Somewhere in the back of my consciousness I could feel the tranquility of his dreams; feel the sense of simplicity which kept him at ease within his slumber.
As best I could, given the circumstance, I tried to keep my inner musing to myself so as not to disturb him before it was necessary. But the situation between us had become so interesting now. I didn't want to over-think everything, as Mello had advised, but at the same time I couldn't stop myself from wondering about the dramatic shift in our dynamic.
'It's obvious that something happened between Mello and Matt to cause this sort of change to happen all at once. But what was it' I pondered to myself, trying to keep that volatile word 'why' out of my thoughts. 'How could someone like Mello move from complete animosity towards me only twelve hours ago to this?'
I looked down at our relaxed forms, both of us laying facing each other in my bed, my fingers locked within his hair while his hand had eventually come to rest at my hip, a fraction of my shirt's material having been pushed up far enough for his warm fingers to rest upon my skin, as though even unconsciously Mello knew he needed that form of electric connection between us that was only ever achieved through physical contact in order to keep him grounded within himself.
'What exactly did you do?' I continued to wonder, more and more feeling myself becoming unable to curb the investigative desire to find my answers among the evidence so readily placed before me. When would I be given another opportunity such as this? I couldn't be sure, and for that reason I allowed myself to take advantage of the situation. Just this once, I told myself.
Ever so carefully, before allowing myself the opportunity to consider my actions, I carefully moved my hand from the blonde locks of hair down to Mello's face, my fingers coming to rest upon his cheek as my eyes closed.
The heightened sense of connection from having more contact between us was all I needed in order to be granted access into Mello's thoughts; finding nothing held back or hidden from me within his sleeping state. I passed through the fine mist that were his thoughts, memories and momentarily stagnant emotions to find the abandoned corner of his mind where it felt as though a weight was being placed upon my heart the further I moved. This was his mind's area where his guilt was stored.
As he was now I couldn't see into his memories as I had in a way done before. However, echoing through my head I could hear him talking to himself about what made his heart feel so heavy. "Everything was fine. I didn't need you because I had Matt. He'd always been there for me; even when I didn't deserve it. Even when all I wanted was to be alone he was there…"
Each word that crossed through my mind was another stone being placed upon his heart, though the muscle was already buckling beneath the weight. "He makes me happy. I wanted that to be enough… I wanted to believe him when he said that none of it mattered; that enough people just inevitably don't end up with their soul mates. No, I definitely did believe him. But then there's you. You're always there when I don't want you to be, saying things that make me want to murder you in a house full of trained detectives! You never let me have even the slightest moment to think!"
His thoughts were rushed, but after a brief pause they began to calm in tone again, "Matt's the better option. Matt makes sense. But I can't fight biology. I can't fight God. There's nothing that happens when Matt takes my hand, or when he kisses me. It's just… empty."
For the briefest of seconds I contemplated pulling out of his head and out of this recollection to just be satisfied with what I'd already gotten. But of course I'm much too selfish for that to ever be justifiable, so I continued to listen.
"And then I realized that Matt only seemed to work for me because he knows how to play the game. I mean… so do you, but it's different with him. Matt knows how to play the game so as to not create any sort of conflict, and to say and do what I want when he knows that's what I ultimately want, as opposed to you. Near, you play the game better than anyone ever could, and yet you still always decide to just push me further and further until I finally snap. I hate it so much. You are the bane of my existence. But that feeling is still there when you touch me. I don't know how to explain it… but even though Matt might be the better choice, I couldn't help wondering whether he was what I want, but you're what I need."
There was an emotion tied up within his words that I couldn't quite untangle from within it all, something between curiosity and hope. That discernment was enough for me to know I was treading too far into Mello's thoughts. I pulled myself back out of his mind.
Again my eyes slipped open, though this time they were met with not only the diffuse morning rays of light, but the blue orbs of Mello's eyes staring back at me; freezing me within my guilt. "Why don't you ever just ask for the things you want to know?" He asked; his voice quiet as though someone would overhear him. "Why do you always have to do things your way?"
So early into the new change between us and already Mello insisted upon breaking the established rules. How very typical of him…
"How come you insist upon never being forthcoming with how situations really are for you?"
Mello lay still, watching me for a long moment, while his thoughts pondered away momentarily before he finally responded, "Good question, why don't you ever just say things the way they are for you?"
"You've made it quite apparent that I tend to say too much as it is."
"That's not what I mean. Yeah, you say too much, but you never actually say the things that really matter." He was silent for another long few seconds, "Why didn't you ever say that you were lonely?"
I stopped all reading of Mello's shifting features that I'd been working on as steel reinforced walls shot up around me till I couldn't possibly feel anymore separated from the blonde laying in front of me. But even through his carefully worded inquiry I could hear past it to the real question he was curious to know, which was: how could it be that he never knew that I was lonely?
"I'm not lonely, Mello."
"You are, you just don't know any different than that."
If there was any validity to Mello's words then I had to contemplate what the point could be in trying to know any different? While the idea may seem favorable at the present moment, the position of L hardly allowed for little else in life but work so I had to wonder why working towards anything else was justifiable.
"You've answered your own question." I stated with a brief exhale. "One doesn't desire nor misses the things they don't know or have never had."
His look narrowed on me and from the simple action alone I could tell he wasn't satisfied with my answer, but given the circumstances so long as he insisted on remaining quiet then I would insist upon retaking control over the situation that I'd put us both into.
'What do you expect to happen from this point?' I asked through the connection, my stare breaking with his. I wasn't quite sure what sort of answers I expected out of him, yet the question had still tumbled from my mouth.
He sighed, closing his eyes again. "Don't ask things like that. I told you yesterday that this isn't anything. It just…" He trailed off, the buzz of turmoil within his thoughts declaring that despite it all he couldn't seem to find the right words.
"It just is." I finally finished for him. Not that that answer really helped clarify anything. Perhaps this state of limbo was just that, a midway bardo state between one phase of us and another. But what exactly lay on the other side was concealed by the thick fog of the uncertain future. Somehow it seemed I'd just have to find a way to try reconciling the things I couldn't preemptively control or distinguish for myself.
Mello released a heavy sigh from beside me, his blue eyes sliding open with an un-amused expression as he watched me for another moment before pushing himself up from where he'd been laying; our physical connection finally breaking. The sudden separation began to feel like an ocean of space compared to the ease of what had just been; as though the breakage separated both of us onto our own isolated islands to fend for ourselves.
"That's it, I'm going back to my room." He stated, sliding off the bed to stand. "I'll never get any more sleep with your head buzzing the way it is."
"Speak for yourself." I muttered, sitting up while my eyes stayed trailed on his frame to watch all the subtle emotions he released off, which I was beginning to think he didn't know he was showing from beneath his seemingly hard exterior.
"Whatever." He grumbled, stretching a bit. I could hear the thoughts trailing through his own mind, the endless questions he was trying to harbor away from me, the whys and the whats that he didn't want to give air to. Perhaps he instead just wanted to work through it on his own. That made sense, and I couldn't say I blamed him.
Though, given his general history with uncertainty I felt compelled to be wary about trusting the notion. However, it was the small fire I could feel in his center which ultimately kept me silent. It was hardly larger than that of a candle's flame, but it was undeniably there; the burning sense of confidence that I knew only required the striking of a match for Mello to be able to burn down every shadow of his own ambivalence.
"Look," He broke through my musings, turning to look back at me, "do you trust me or not?"
"I suppose I'm learning to." I told him, the air between us continued to be thick with all the words that neither of us could say, let alone even allow ourselves to comfortably lay our thoughts on to work through one way or another. "Your history of hesitation in your decisions leaves little for me to make a basis of judgment from."
He shook his head, his body turning slightly back to face me; his eyes lay thick with the words stewing within his mind till it seemed to turn the blue hues darker than I normally knew them to be. "You're going to screw this up." He muttered more to himself.
"Why are you asking me this?"
"No reason." He continued to mutter, though barely hidden within his thoughts I could hear his motives swirling together with everything else. In Mello's mind, if we didn't trust one another then who else was there out there that we could place such trust on? Obviously it wasn't something that he expected to be able to change overnight, but it was certainly something that he put a lot of weight on. How curious it was to discover just how much significance Mello placed onto the sense of partnerships.
"Class starts in a few hours," He said suddenly, breaking my train of thought, "You might want to use some of that time to actually sleep since you've been up all night." I could hear the brewing sense of annoyance in his every word.
"I'm not tired, though I appreciate your concern." My words were a dig at his sudden display of seemingly genuine concern for someone other than himself. I knew I shouldn't goad him at a moment like this, and I cursed myself for it immediately after the words slipped from my lips. But, again, old habits certainly seemed to be the worst to try and change.
"You may not be, but I am!" He exclaimed, eyes narrowing and arms crossing as his annoyance was transformed into a muted sense of frustration. "I sleep most of the night while you stay up prying into my brain and yet I'm the one who feels your exhaustion. Typical."
I reached up to twirl a lock of my own hair, the short strands of white now seeming to lack a certain something that the gold tendrils had held to them, making the entire act all the less rewarding for me. "I'll attempt to sleep." If partnership was what Mello wanted now then why should I fight back as he had done to me previously? Even if he might've deserved such a response from me, ultimately the just thing to do was the offer mercy where it was due instead of attempting to extrapolate a right from my own wrong.
"Do whatever you want, I don't care." He turned further away from me to make his way to the closed wooden door to leave, but stopped before even taking a single step; something keeping him rooted within his spot.
After yet another second his body turned back once more to face me as he grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me in to kiss him. Despite the dramatic shift we'd made and despite the very fact that he'd done this before, the action still somehow felt strange coming from him. Kissing one's self purported rival… it wasn't somewhere I thought I'd be. But, I suppose that being said I also never thought I'd be marked with said rival's name, either. Though, there was also the small part of me that looked beyond the strangeness of the action to another curious thought I had, which was whether or not there might ever come a time when Mello would reach the point where he would do such a thing without grabbing me so forcefully first.
Mello pulled away from me, his eyes meeting mine across the short distance between our faces. "This doesn't leave here."
"You said that already."
His look narrowed on me, but he finally let go, the swirling of his mind leaving me with the overall impression upon my own being of what exactly was plaguing him. Worry. Despite his flame of confidence and all of his assurance behind him he was still worried about it all. What did he honestly feel he had to worry about, exactly?
I watched him walk to the door silently, his hand pausing on the doorknob only momentarily as though contemplating whether or not to give rise to any of the hidden words neither of us could particularly fathom at the moment. Ultimately he seemed to decide against it, finally passing through the door, the dissipation of his candle's flame from my general vicinity transforming the room back into my frigid prison once more.
My own shadows began to creep their way back in the further away that the blonde moved from my room; bringing with them the facts I still didn't feel properly equipped to handle. What exactly could Mello have to be worried about? The world, perhaps. The opinions of others. The uncertainty of his own future, let alone any sort of future that involved both of us together.
The betrayal by his own partner that he didn't yet know was imminent…
Sure, I was coming to learn to trust Mello more as he proved not to turn on me as he had in the past, but at the same time I had distinctively chosen not to repeat the question back to him. I didn't want to know whether or not he actually trusted me, or to what extent that any trust went.
For once I'd rather be left within the darkness of my own ignorance than pursue the painful knowledge of discovering just how far my selfish decisions would inevitably cause Mello to fall.
A/N: I know, I know. I know what you're probably thinking: 'Soul, what the hell was that? That was a whole lot of nothing! Nothing even happened in this!' Again, yes, I know. I've been struggling with how to get from this point through the rest of the story, so since I'm rather stuck and stressed about grad school I wanted to spend this week focusing on something a bit easier, which is what this is. So I apologize if it's not up to standard, or what you were expecting. I'll try to make next chapter better than this. I thank everyone for their wonderful reviews last chapter and hope that you will be kind enough to leave your thoughts and opinions.
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-Forbiddensoul562