26. Laissez-faire
Mello can't see from where he's sitting what this guy is playing, but it's annoying as hell. There's crashing and the roar of hundreds of tiny yelling voices and explosions and other sound effects, all on top of a booming symphonic march that skips like a scratched CD.
The invasion of his study space is intolerable. No one is ever in the game room on Thursday evenings. They're all in the library, studying—which is exactly why Mello is here, doing the same. He doesn't tolerate any sort of distraction while he's reading old case files. He can't focus with any sort of distraction.
And this is more than just sort of a distraction.
Another crash rattles the speakers and Mello's eyes narrow almost to slits. The new guy doesn't even notice. He's completely fixated on his game, slumped back into the couch and his mouth hanging slightly open, hardly blinking. He could very well be dead if it weren't for the spastic movement of his hands over the wireless touchscreen balanced on his knees. Obviously he's new. They've been coming in so fast, as many as one or two a month, that Mello has stopped bothering to keep track. Not only does he not recognize him, but he hasn't fled the heat of Mello's glare yet.
"Do you mind?" he finally says, loading as much poison as he can (which is probably enough to drop a horse) into his words.
"Huh?" New guy startles. "Uh, nah. Go ahead," he mumbles distractedly, not seeming to be aware of or care about what it is precisely that he's replying to.
Being ignored is not something Mello responds to very well.
With a slam, Mello snaps the heavy book of case files shut. "Hopefully some time in ESL will clarify the finer points of English nuance that seem to be lost on you," he snarls. "I mind."
"Oh. This bothering you?" Without breaking eye contact with the game, he feels around on the couch with one hand, finds the remote half-stuck between the cushions, and turns down the volume. "Why're you studying in here? Isn't there a library or something?"
"People know not to break my concentration when I'm in here," Mello says pointedly. It always helps to throw his reputation around a little. This kid seems older than most of the new kids, closer to his own age, so may be more difficult to intimidate; but time and the stories others tell about him always get them eventually.
"Huh." He doesn't seem impressed or intimidated. He still has the exact same expression as he did before Mello even spoke up, one of slack-jawed concentration. "You must be one of the Twins. You the White or the Black?"
"WHAT did you say?"
Now he's livid, and before he is quite conscious of giving the directive to his feet to stand and cross the room he's looming over the insolent stranger, fists trembling and ears burning hot.
The kid slumps over sideways so he can see the giant TV screen, which Mello is blocking. "The Black, then. Mello. So you're not actually black. You just wear black. I wondered about that."
"Near and I are NOT twins! Or associated in any way!" he bites out.
"Yeah, I know. Some kid said that."
"Who was it?" Mello demands furiously. He hasn't heard the nickname 'Twin' in ages. It brings up painful—no, not painful, he contradicts himself, aggravating—memories of his earlier childhood, when he and Near were actually friendly, before the brat turned into a stuck-up, sneering...well, brat. It seems almost inconceivable now. The name had been branded on them by Even, who said they looked different but sounded the same, whatever that meant. She always creeped him out as a child, in the few months before she was scrubbed. Mello was aware that some of the Crusties might call him and Near the Twins, but he's never heard any of the younger kids using the term. Not in a couple years at least. He didn't think it was still used —why the hell has anyone kept it up? The very thought of the other House students thinking of them as a set incenses him.
Oblivious to the rapid-fire slideshow of rage and offense flickering over Mello's face, the new kid makes the infinitesimal one-shouldered shrug he proffers seem like a Herculean effort. "Uh, I dunno? Some runt? Is there a difference between them?"
Fair enough. Mello often gets the lower-case letters mixed up. Almost all of them seem to be about the same age, Near's age or a year younger, and none of them have shown any likelihood of contesting them for the title. It's the first time he's heard someone else say so, though, and it surprises him when he almost laughs.
Mello can't remember the last time he laughed out loud.
"And who the hell are you?" he snaps instead.
"Matt, I guess." Like an inverted pendulum, 'Matt I guess' lurches upright again and slumps down to the other side. "Look, blocking my line of sight does add a certain level of challenge, but if you really want to make this game harder we could try the multiplayer." He makes a vague gesture with one hand. "Give you something to really get mad about. This thing is buggier than a swamp."
"I'm too busy for games," Mello sneers automatically, but he suddenly feels hollow as he says it, and he realizes with a surge of self-condemning guilt that he'd really rather take a break than pick the book back up.
"Studying, huh?"
"Got a problem with that?"
"Whatev. Suit yourself," Matt says.
He seems no less engaged in his game, but Mello think he sounds a bit disappointed. It's…surprising. None of the other students would ever think to ask him to join them for anything. Not that he wants to. He's not well liked and he doesn't try to be. Mello has better things to do. He doesn't need friends. He's gotten along just fine without friends ever since he and Near became rivals, and he's never missed being friends with that brat, no, not one tiny bit.
…Perhaps a tiny bit. Not Near, mind you. Just…having someone to talk to about both classwork and things that aren't classwork.
"What the hell is this stupid game, anyway?" he says, turning on his heel to glare at the screen.
"Demo 3.8."
It looks like a demo. An army of red stick figures swarm and stumble over a grid landscape, attacking a wall guarded by blue stick figures. The view freezes and stutters momentarily as Matt zooms out to show that it's not just a wall, but a many-tiered sprawling fortress, with several different bands of red figures using different tactics: from catapults to digging to a group that seems to be trying to start a landslide on the hill the fortress is built against. Parts of the grid flicker every so often, and every once in a while entire platoons simply disappear.
"Where did you get this piece of crap?" Mello asks, arching his brows disdainfully as Matt herds a few stick figures who have apparently forgotten their orders back toward the fortress.
"Whatshername. Older chick. Always looks like she's being put on the spot. Harmony or something."
"Concord?"
"Sure? I guess she and the guy with the huge nose wrote it a few years back. Pretty flexible gameplay. Really buggy. Makes it more interesting though. For some reason if you can get enough guys running straight at a block of wall with a window in it, that part of the wall just goes poof. Kinda cool. See, watch this."
It takes a moment for him to round up enough troops (the individual stick figures seem to be pretty stupid, wandering off when they're not being supervised) but sure enough, once the column starts running they pass right through the fortress wall.
"Haha, this is the funny part."
Mello watches, bemused, as Matt's soldiers start pushing the blue soldiers that swarm to meet them into the square that used to be wall. Suddenly the wall snaps back into existence, leaving the enemy figures trapped, little stick legs waving from the solid structure as though they're still running. Matt chuckles madly.
It is pretty funny.
Matt is tolerable, Mello decides. He's going to scrub out within months with that lackadaisical attitude, of course, but the blonde gets the impression he wouldn't care much. That's intriguing. He's certainly no threat, but he's not a whiny little wuss like most of the kids around here either.
And he'd almost forgotten what it was like to not be fighting. Not to be constantly defending himself, or striking first to head off a potential attack. He doesn't have this kid cowed, like he does all the others he has no reason to be afraid of—it's more like competing is just more effort than the other boy is willing to expend.
"Fine then," Mello says exasperatedly, as though Matt has been nagging him all this time. "Where's the other keypad?"