So, it looks like I might not get to the Christmas scene before Christmas as I will be deprived of Wifi for the next week :( Ah, well, Merry Christmas anyways.
In writing Inferno, Mello decided, Dante had missed the tenth layer of hell: hospitals.
There was something about being totally helpless, in terrible pain, and chained up to a continent of cacophonic machines that did not sit well on psyche.
That, and the food would have sent Oliver Twist to the hills whimpering in fright.
Well, at least there was the morphine. It helped, a little, with the terrible pain bit, though the doctors had said it would take several more hours to fully kick in.
Which was a bitch, but which couldn't, Mello supposed, be helped.
Sinking back into his pillows and finding no one except Matt to glare at, Mello allowed himself a rare sigh.
"Feeling okay?" Matt asked, pausing his game and glancing at Mello with concerned eyes.
"Fine," Mello said, staring at the ceiling, not even deigning to meet the inquiry with a glare.
Matt didn't look convinced, but he went back to his game. Mello bit back the impulse to remark on how Matt would be the only person to bring a Nintendo DS to a vigilante mission, but really, the terrible pain bit made it hard to care about anything except sleep.
A few hours later, the pain in his leg slightly dulled, the nurses came in, and Mello was forced to choke down a few bites of a woefully chocolate-less meal before being left in blissful peace and a silence once broken by the beeping of the machines and Matt's game.
In the silence, Matt's phone rang.
Flipping it open, Matt scanned the screen briefly, grimaced, then shut the device and sighed.
"Hannah," he said to Mello's inquiring stare, smiling at Mello over his DS. "She's worried. Asking what I'm doing, why I wasn't at school, where I am."
"Did you tell her?"
"No."
"Thankfully." God knows what the girl would do if she knew that Mello had managed to land himself in the hospital.
(Again, his subconscious helpfully supplied. Mello made a note to put "subconscious" on the list of things he needed to shoot.)
Matt nodded, then returned to his DS. Tetris, by the sound of it.
"You know," Mello said, finally, when the silence had passed comfortable and entered awkward, "you could go get something to eat, if you wanted to -"
"What, and watch you burn down the whole place when I get back?"
Mello opened his mouth to retort, but Matt held a hand up.
"I'm not angry, Mels, 'kay? Before you say anything else. I think I've kind of gotten used to it, this whole leaving for two seconds and turning to find you unable to walk or some other shit. Should have expected it, I guess, rooming with you for twelve years and seeing what you still managed then. Besides," Matt added, turning to his Tetris again, "the food here is shit."
"You could at least get me a chocolate bar, then."
"I thought you didn't eat milk?"
"You have a car, asshole."
"Mmh. Gas is pretty expensive, Mels, and you know what Hannah would say about greenhouse gases."
Mello glares at that, and is more than just a little relieved when Matt laughs.
"Asshole."
"Can't be feed your sad habit now, can I, you hopeless addict?"
"Says pack-a-day boy."
"Hey, not smoking now, am I?"
"That's because the head nurse chewed you out for trying."
"She didn't have to go on for an hour."
Mello rolled his eyes, but decided not to comment.
"A magazine, then? A newspaper? Trashy romance novel? No offense meant, but you haven't been the most interesting company of late."
"Mostly because you've been sleeping the last eight hours, Mello. And probably need another eight more."
"Oh, God," Mello moaned, leaning back and covering his face with his eyes, "she's rubbing off on you, isn't she?"
"Go to sleep, Mello."
Mello glared at him.
But he did, nonetheless.
Matt leaves before Mello wakes - while I was asleep, most likely, and all the better for it. Mello couldn't remember the last time either one of them had had a decent meal.
Hospital food, Mello thought as he glared at his canned peaches and off-white milk, didn't count.
Hopefully Matt brought back some chocolate.
Glaring at his food and the world in general - but not with much venom, it had to be admitted - Mello flicked on the television.
He'd rarely allowed himself television at Wammy's - anything besides the news would have been a distraction, something that kept him behind - but Mello supposed that, all things considered, it was time for a bit of celebration. For now, at least.
Besides, there was always the matter of what had happened to Sully.
It would be front page news, after all.
And it was - only with something added to it.
Mello watched, and, slowly, his eyes narrowed.
Matt comes in with hamburgers and chocolate shakes -
And finds Mello, the absolute idiot, standing up, pacing, the monitor above his head a litany of crazy noise.
"Mels-!"
Mello whirled around.
"He's gone," he hissed, "he was fucking locked up and strapped in and now he's gone, Matt - they let him fucking kill himself -"
"Who?" Matt asked, blinking away confusion before comprehension dawned. "Oh - you mean Sully, don't you?"
"They let him get away!" Mello exploded, turning and slamming his fist into the wall. "They - let - him - get away!"
"Listen, Mels, it's going to be okay - Sully's not going to kill anymore people -"
"That's not the point!" Mello screamed. "Sully was never more than a tool - I couldn't give a rat's ass about his death if it weren't for the fucking fact that they let Zodiac get away!"
"Mello -"
The door slammed opened.
"What," the nurse in the doorway asked, eyes raking over Mello's murderous expression and the monitors and the slightly guilty look on Matt's face, "is going on?"
"Nothing," Matt says, smiling at her. "My friend just got a little worked up. That's all."
The nurse raised her eyebrows, glanced slowly at the dent Mello had made in the plaster wall and the blood slowly dripped off his fist.
"I see," she said delicately.
"He's right," Mello said stiffly, sitting down again. "I just lost my temper. For a moment."
"Ah." The nurse was silent for a while, eyes glancing from Mello to Matt, but - meeting nothing but sullenness and desperate cheerfulness - decided to say nothing.
Sighing, she crossed the room and expertly took a small bottle of alcohol and a roll of tape from her pocket. Mello flinched slightly as she dabbed the alcohol on, but was silent as she wrapped his hand in gauzy tape.
"There," the nurse said, expertly twisting the tape a little, "that's that. Now," she said, staring straight at Mello, "there will be no more of this moving about and losing temper nonsense, now, will there?"
Mello was silent, so Matt answered for him.
"No," he said, shooting what he hoped was a warning glare at his friend, "no, there won't."
"We're leaving," Mello announced when the nurse had left.
"Oh, really?" Matt asked, not looking up from his DS. "When you can barely walk?"
"I can walk," Mello said, and - slowly, slightly unsteadily - stood up again.
Matt was not impressed.
He wasn't even surprised, not really, when Mello began to pull the IVs from his arm and unplugging the monitor from its cables.
"Pulling a Sully on us now, are we?"
"I'm going to sign out, asshole."
"And how're you going to get back to my flat, hm? Walking?"
"You're driving me back."
And that, Matt decided, was the last straw.
"Mello," Matt began, lowering his DS and beginning on what he hoped to be a major slapping-some-goddamn-sense-into-you lecture -
But Mello, of course, cut him off.
"The police will be investigating soon," he said curtly. "They'll know about the ambulance, and they'll want to know about whoever it was that shot Sully. There'll be questions and testimonies and a fuckload of publicity we don't want."
"And?"
"And," Mello explained, slowly beginning to pace the room again, "they'll find out. About the Knights. About our hacking into every security system in Oxford. And," he said, briefly flashing Matt a cold, humorless smile, "even if he would deign to help, I doubt the new L will be much help, then."
The stark truth of that statementcertainly cut off Matt's coming harangue.
"Besides," Mello added, almost as an afterthought, "Sully didn't hit anything important - just muscle. Come to think of it, it actually was just a flesh wound."
"Mello -"
"Shit, Matt," Mello said, glaring at his best friend, "I can walk. We're leaving."
"Mello, don't be -"
"Can and will be. Now shut up and find your car, or I am walking back to your flat."