I'm in the basement, you're in the sky.

One day, three hours, forty-seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds.

Detox was ruined.

There wasn't much expecting it to not be, given the implications of yesterday, but Matt found himself feeling slightly guilty about it anyways. Completely and honestly, he didn't know why he felt guilty. It was as though he really owed anything to Mello, especially not after yesterday. Especially. If anything, Mello owed something to him—not that he would ever say that out loud.

Comfortably and artificially confident, Matt inhaled off the last of his cigarette before grinding it out on the rusty railing of the concrete balcony. Reaching into the pocket of his vest, he pulled out a slightly crumpled box and retrieved another. He put it to his lips and lit it, flicking the ashes off the end.

The door behind him slid open.

"Matt."

In what Matt would like to call a 'strategic choice', he didn't respond. Didn't turn around.

"Matt," Mello repeated again, his voice sterner this time in his impatience.

"Do you realize how fast you can get good coke in this city?"

Matt could literally hear the other's teeth grinding together in irritation. He took sick pleasure out of it, knowing at least that he still had some semblance of control. Maybe not so much control over Mello, definitely not control over Mello, but he could at least dictate some of what was going on, something that he was a part of.

"I don't know, Matt," the blonde replied testily. "I've never had to try."

The smoker snorted, again tapping ashes from the end of his cigarette. "Oh, right, hot-shot mafia boss." He stared intently at the white filter between his gloved fingers before bringing it to his lips and inhaling slowly through it. "I forget these things." A plume of smoke curled over their heads.

"You're going to die early," Mello stated flatly in reference to the packaged cancer in Matt's pocket.

"Not earlier than you'd make me."

There was truth in silence, and silence in truth.

"Matt."

"You were a real asshole yesterday, I hope you know."

"Yeah, I know." Mello moved to stand beside the redhead on the balcony. Below them, the L.A. street was teeming with the menial activity of rats and their equivalents, neither of which merited more than just a passing glance. "It's the truth, though."

"What?"

"We're sick."

"I think we've known that."

The elder pursed his lips together momentarily, his gaze strict as he stared down beneath them at the crawling street below. "Too long, actually."

Matt scoffed, a short, bitter smile slowly rising to turn the corner of his lips. He nodded in agreement, his small motion barely noticeable. "So you'd kiss me just for that?"

"No," Mello responded flatly, turning to glance at the other, but looking away again and back down to the street. "Sexual tension, remember?"

Matt wasn't sure if this was a joke or not, but he smiled anyways. It seemed that these days, anything was worth smiling at. "Yeah, I remember." He took a drag off of his cigarette, letting the breath out slowly though a tiny crack between his lips as though it were sweet air he thought that he'd never taste again. "How long have we been friends, Mello?"

"About eleven years. Why?"

Matt shrugged. "Just wondering, I guess." The truth was, he wasn't 'just wondering'. Wammy's kids never 'just wondered' about anything. He knew it, and Mello knew it, and he didn't waste any more time in pretending that they didn't. "Do you ever wanna?"

"Have sex?"

"Yeah."

"Sure." Mello shrugged. It wasn't an offer. It was just the blatant truth. "We've known each other too long and done too much random shit together. We've never done anything crazy, but I mean hell Matt, it's us."

Snorting, Matt took another drag off his cigarette. "Do you really think we're sick?"

"Sure. In more ways than just that, though."

Matt looked up and considered Mello for a moment. His friend was leaning against the railing in a nonchalant kind of fashion, staring off at the city line with a sort of dead gaze that betrayed the fact that he wasn't at all interested in what he was looking at. Matt stubbed out his cigarette again on the railing and flicked it down to the cracked concrete below them. "Let's go inside," he said, turning without waiting for Mello to follow, taking for granted that he would, and walking back to his bedroom. Upon reaching his destination, he threw himself onto the dirty bed still smelling of sweat and tears. He kicked the sheets and blankets off, an easily achievable feat given that they were already haphazardly strewn around anyways. Stretching out on the bare mattress, he had just barely closed his eyes when he heard Mello shut the door as he walked in. "Should I be worried?"

"That I shut the door? No."

He gave a hollow laugh. "Wanna c'mere?"

"Not particularly."

Mello did it anyways.

Matt rolled over onto his side and tentatively put an arm around Mello's upper chest, half-expecting to get pistol whipped again, but the blow never came. Instead, Mello placidly laid there, seeming almost to contemplate the warmth of another body so close to his. Silence befell them a little while longer before Matt shifted, moving up to the bare skin around Mello's neck, moving to the break between smooth skin and burned flesh on his collar bone. His lips gently rest there for a moment, doing nothing more than just that. Being still.

Stillness.

"Matt, why do you put up with me?"

There was more silence.

"You're my friend, I guess."

Mello snorted. "That's an ass of a reason."

Matt smiled bemusedly against the blonde's collarbones, feeling him shift slightly in response to the bare movement on his skin. "Yeah, I guess it is. But it's the truth. I guess."

"You guess?"

"I guess. I put up with you because you're you." Matt rather experimentally inched his lips up Mello's neck, barely pressing a kiss against the pale jugular before him. Mello seemed to pay him no mind.

"And who would I be if I weren't?"

Left to his own devices, Matt moved his hands down both of Mello's sides, resting at the hardly exposed skin of his hips. "Not you."

"Obviously."

More silence.

Then, "What about you?"

At this point, Mello turned his attention to Matt, only now just seeming to notice the fact that the redhead had his hands on him. He took a moment to assess this new development in their position before answering, systematically looking from the other's goggled eyes to his lips, his face, his casually angled body, his comfortably relaxed arms and the hands so idly placed on his hips. This was nothing. Matt, as always, was being a joker—but a joker in a different sense somehow. Now. Somehow changed. "Why do I put up with you?"

"Yeah."

"Because…" Mello stopped to gather his words, realizing then that he hadn't any. He didn't quite understand why he put up with the other either. Why he could look over Matt without feeling disgusted by their proximity; why he could tolerate Matt's hands where anyone else's would have been sawed off; why he could stand watching Matt whine in his sleep, listening to Matt ask him why his mother wasn't a princess and why his father wasn't an astronaut. Or a knight. Or a hero.

"Because you're my friend," Mello answered with a tone of finality. There wasn't much else that he could say; and he knew it by the self-satisfied smirk on the red-head's face that just said 'I told you so' in silent syllables. At this point, Mello was hardly surprised when Matt leaned forward to close the mere inches between them, the chasm separating them, the valley that held their pasts so intertwined. He was hardly surprised when he felt the audacity of Matt's tongue against his lips, the taste of fake cinnamon mingling with nicotine in his mouth. He wasn't even surprised when he found himself pressing back, his fingers against his friend's ribcage, his fingertips curling against the fabric of that familiar striped shirt.

They weren't lovers.

They were never lovers, they wouldn't ever be lovers, and they couldn't ever be lovers.

This world was far too malicious for anyone to ever love. Perhaps in a land far from their own, perhaps in a dream of perfect reality, someone could love someone and together they'd live in someone's perfect suburban home, but that just didn't seem like real life for Mello and Matt. Not for them, not in the gamer's dirty L.A. apartment, not on their naked mattress, not in their dingy room that still smelled of failure.

And yet somehow, Mello didn't mind when he felt the other's careful fingers slip gingerly past the bandages on his healing wounds. Only lovers stayed locked at the mouth, only lovers fiddled with each other's clothes, only lovers found themselves escaping into the darkness, the comfort of uninhibited actions; but they weren't that.

Not lovers.

Not them.

What seemed like hours later but couldn't have been, Matt found Mello breathing against his neck, a gloved hand low on his chest, just in the hollow between his ribcage. The sun had either disappeared behind a cloud or they were so lost in the comfort that light didn't matter anymore. Mello's bandaged hand was softly resting by his neck, fingertips balanced on his collar bone, his thumb feeling the structure of the bones running up his throat. The blonde's knees were on either side of his hips, his weight holding Matt against the stripped mattress of the old bed. Silence.

The room was warmer than it had been, hotter, tenser, tighter, smaller. Matt had forgotten, maybe never really known, how good skin to skin contact felt. They were racing across electric fields, now, more improper than decent. Matt didn't remember when or how that'd happened, but somehow in their descent into this deep, velvety abyss of comfort, that was where they were. Silence. Unveiled silence.

Mello's body, bared and so close to his made him weak with the concept. Friends had never been this close, but lovers had never been so far apart. He didn't know what that made them, but with Mello's fingers on his throat, Mello's hand on his chest, delicately handling him when he could so easily crush his windpipe and shatter his ribs, somehow, the thought was exhilarating. In some sick, twisted, nearly macabre fashion, Matt found the paradox so inviting.

"Matt."

So the silence was broken.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing?"

"I… I don't know." Matt looked down, down at Mello's hands placed so gingerly on his body. He couldn't help but to think how bizarre it was to consider Mello being soft and ginger and even compassionate somewhere down there, but he pushed those words out of his mind because they weren't the Mello he knew. Mello was brash, harsh, cold, exciting; full of life Matt had never known. Now, they were learning something new again. Matt felt so wrong. So wrong. So excited to be incorrect. "I don't know," he laughed nervously. Nervously, his fingers fluttering down to Mello, fluttering down to his hips to touch. "But don't stop. Fuck it, there's no reason to stop."

"No reason?"

"No."

Mello swallowed. He had never been the uncertain one. Matt had always been the uncertain one. Matt had always been the one to be two steps behind. Mello, while he was used to being in the lead, found that he had no idea what to do with his hands. He had never been in a position where he wouldn't just be able to reach down and close his fingers around the throat of the person beneath him, crush all life out of him—but that wasn't what he was going to do to Matt. That wasn't at all what he was going to do to Matt. In some strange fashion, Matt was too much his friend. Too much his almost lover.

He reached down and pressed his lips tight against Matt's—tight, so tight, so hard that it hurt—tight, so hard that it almost bruised. And he didn't care. He didn't care that he'd bear the marks of the other. Didn't care that this was just his friend, supposedly. Didn't care that Matt was some crack whore, that they were on some dirty apartment bed, didn't care how close they were and didn't care how their hands ran up and down teach other's bodies, exploring things that they should have known for so long yet known so little. And there, there on the naked, naked mattress of the L.A. bed they learned. They remembered.

And the fire burned.

AN: What the hell is this? They get action again? Real action this time (sort of)? Goodnesscake. would you look at me. Well. This chapter was written fairly quickly (two weeks is incredibly fast for my dismal six pages). I actually got stuck and had to read it out loud and record it. I actually first spontaneously spoke the scene from after Matt says 'Yeah?' towards the end. xD And then I tweaked it and there you are. If you can't figure out what just happened, then... you won't be able to figure out a lot of my writing. annnyway. Let me know what you guys think. (: Thank you for being patient with me and reviewing and all. I really do appreciate it.