Matt is bored as all hell. Mello's been out all day, dealing with some guy who owes his boss money whatever whatever blah blah blah, he wants Mello to come home so they can hang out.

Like seriously, how long does it take to shoot a guy and search his place for cash?

Matt shivers, ugh he hates thinking about that aspect of Mello's job, their job. He doesn't really feel guilty anymore, like yeah if he thinks too hard he does, but mostly it just freaks him out, thinking about the way people look when the life drains from their bodies. The first time it happened he didn't feel much about it, Mello was the one who did it. Matt was just in the background searching the building. He probably should have at least considered turning tail and getting the fuck out of there. He didn't though, all he could think was he just really wanted to get out of that place because the smell of blood and gunpowder was sorta' making his throat feel weird.

Anyways, back to the present, Matt finished with the security checks earlier in the evening, he always waits to eat dinner with Mello and he's getting a bit hungry. The box lasagna he "cooked" up is probably getting cold so he sticks it in the still warm oven.

He notices that there's still some coffee on the counter from that morning and drinks the last bit from the pot. Gross, yeah, he hates coffee on a good day, cold and stale coffee while he's waiting up late for Mello to get home is even worse. He doesn't know why he did that.

He sits himself in the corner with a blanket and his DS and settles in for the foreseeable future. He's got this sick carrying case for it with Giratina on it that he made Mello pick out when they were at the store.

He boots up Trauma Center and starts playing where he left off. He kind of thought the game was over once he saved the professor but he was pleasantly surprised to find that there's more operations to be done. The music is way too loud for the silent apartment on boot, he mutes the system before carefully raising it to an acceptable level.

He plays for a solid hour or two, once he finishes with the main campaign he moves on to getting an S rank on all the operations. His eyelids are starting to droop a bit and he's picking up misses left and right. With a defeated sigh he switches to playing the Luigi poker minigame in Mario 64 DS.

Luigi is majorly kicking his ass and taking his livelihood when an insistent knocking starts at the apartment door just a little to Matt's left.

It spooks the shit out of him and he nearly throws his DS right up in the air. When he's sufficiently calm he sets down his stuff and gets himself in front of the door as quietly as possible. Mello never knocks, he has a key and he always tells Matt not to answer the door so Matt would say he's freaking out an appropriate amount.

He leans down until he's eye level with the peephole and shuts his right eye. When he sees what is waiting for him on the other side he eloquently stumbles out a "God hell fuck shit" He swings the apartment door open to see Mello standing there, holding his arm in a vice grip, muttering "don't use the Lord's name in vain" and greatly favoring his right leg. Or is that his left leg? Matt doesn't fucking know, why is he worrying about that. Point is, Mello's fucked up bad and he's bleeding a shitton and it's freaking Matt the hell out.

"Nice to see a familiar face Matt-io." Mello says dryly, but not without warmth. He only ever calls him that when Matt's acting like a total idiot. "Mind helping me out or are you just going to keep standing there gaping like a dead fish?"

"Yeah, yeah of course Mels, shit. Uh here, lean on my arm. Fuck, what happened?" Mello uses his free hand to grab Matt's bicep. Mello looks more annoyed about not being able to comfortably reach Matt's shoulder than he is about how profusely he is bleeding. Matt can't help but laugh (before being very quickly cut off by Mello squeezing his arm too tight and glaring at him with the force of a thousand angry, vengeful souls), when they were at Wammy's Mello had been taller, Matt had still been awkward and stringy but not quite as tall as Mello. A few months after Matt followed Mello to LA he had hit a major growth spurt, Mello was still bitchy about it presently. Even when bleeding all over their nice new doormat.

"Oh you know, that guy I was after tonight, whatever his name is, doesn't matter, decided it'd be real nice to ambush me, four to one. Ross figured I didn't need to know that they'd been tipped off to tonight's raid." Matt leads Mello to the bathroom and sits him down on the edge of the shower/bath combo.

"Fuck Ross." Matt says.

"Yeah fuck Ross." Mello grins genuinely through a seething sort of rage. His lips are all bloody so he looks a little deranged. Matt thinks Mello always looks a little deranged but that's not exactly the point. His smile is nice, the warm ones like this. Usually, Mello's smiles are all barred teeth, bloodlust and cold intimidation, which Matt is a fan of, really, he is. These smiles though? The warm, genuinely happy ones, that he only really shows Matt? They're his favorite.

No time for that though, he starts pulling at the zipper on Mello's stupid leather vest and almost just yanks it when it gets caught on the black fabric underneath. He bites his lip and calms down so he can focus and not make things worse, he gets the zipper unstuck and gingerly helps Mello out of his vest. While he's looking him over he notes a big gash on his bicep and some smaller scratches on his face, they don't look super clean cut though, like a knife would. While he tries to figure out what to do with the cotton shirt Mello's wearing he mutters "What'd they get you with Mels?"

He barely expects an answer so he starts rummaging around in Mello's cabinet for the scissors he keeps in his nail kit, he'll probably need to cut off the fabric in some places, it looks like the blood started drying around the fabric where Mello had been gripping his arm. "The only good hit any of them got in was the one on my arm, broken bottle, hurts like a bitch. There's probably some glass in there. Stupid asshole sent shards flying everywhere."

Matt returns with the tiny nail scissors and upon further inspection there are indeed small bits of glass sticking out of Mello's arm. It's really gross, Matt has to keep himself from looking away while he trims the fabric around the injury. "Um so this is probably going to hurt, like a lot. Sorry in advance-" Mello cuts off Matt's rambling with a sharp 'get on with it'

So Matt does, he pulls the fabric clean off and Mello lets out a series of fun curses such as "bitchass fucking shitdick" and the cut immediately starts bleeding.

"Uh, well, um we need to uh, get the glass out. And then um? Disinfect it, I think? It kind of looks like it needs stitches, I think I got stitches one time before Wammy's when I fell off the playground and tore up my arm. It kind of looks like that." Mello gives him a look so Matt turns himself back around and starts digging through the cabinet again. "You keep tweezers in here right? Um… In here?" Before Mello can answer Matt finds the tweezers in the same place he found the scissors. "Found it!" He sits down next to Mello and brings his head down so he's eye level with Mello's upper arm. He sighs deeply.

"You sure you can do this Matty?" Mello asks, but there's not much else they can really do. It's not like Mello can really clean up his own arm any better than Matt can do it.

"I did surgery in a game like an hour ago?" It's supposed to be a statement rather than a question, something to take away his nerves, but it comes out unsteady. Mello laughs though, just a little, enough to jostle his shoulders a bit. "Sit still! I am bringing something kind of sharp next to something very sharp embedded in your arm!" Mello laughs even more but he grips the edge of the tub tightly to stabilize himself.

Matt takes in a deep breath and decides to go for the smaller pieces first before going for the big shard in the middle. He reasons that the small ones should bleed less so it'll be best to start with them but honestly? He has no idea. He places his free hand on Mello's knee so he doesn't shake as much and goes for the first piece. Mello sucks in a sharp breath when Matt starts pulling but the tweezers are absolutely not made for this and don't grip the glass very well.

At some point Mello starts holding Matt's hand that's on his knee in a vice grip. Neither of them comment. Matt figures out how to get the piece out and he drops it in the tub for him to deal with later. There's three more, the first two come out fairly easily now that Matt's got a hang of it but the third one is bigger and kind of curved and the tweezers don't fit around it. "So uh, good news, there's only one piece left, bad news, it's too thick for the tweezers and I'm going to have to use my fingers so you're going to need to wait here while I wash my hands and try to find gloves."

Mello gives him another look, he's pretty sure this one says "well? Stop stalling and get on with it dipshit." but Matt chooses to interpret it as "thank you my wonderful and amazing partner and friend for performing medical treatment on me despite not even having standard first-aid certification."

Matt runs off to the kitchen where they keep the first aid kit, he also grabs a bottle of vodka (alcohol disinfects wounds right?) and one of his caffeine pills. Then he runs into their room to grab his sewing kit that he bought when he decided it would be much more economical to just fix their clothes than replace them. He returns to the bathroom to find Mello with his phone out, playing fucking brickbreaker with his good arm, what an idiot.

He washes his hands as thoroughly as he can then grabs gloves from the kit, he sits on the edge of the tub and leans down so he's close to the injury again. "Sorry this will probably hurt like hell, I'll try to pull it out straight." Mello mutters something about how all those hours playing video games better have given him steady hands but Matt isn't really listening, he's too busy freaking out about how to grab the glass properly.

"Just get on with it Matt, we don't exactly have all day." So he does, partly out of spite, he pulls it out in one smooth motion and feels no guilt (okay maybe a little) when Mello hisses between his teeth.

"I think I should stitch it up, it looks kind of deep." Mello practically snarls and kicks the sewing kit away from them.

"Absolutely no way you're putting a fucking needle in my skin, sorry Matty but I don't trust your surgical skills that much." Matt feels a sigh of relief bubble up in his chest even though he's being insulted. He really did not want to give Mello stitches, that sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. "Now give me that" he grabs for the bottle of vodka but Matt luckily has the height advantage and holds it out of reach.

"No way Mels, this right here?" He points dramatically at the clear bottle of cheap alcohol "Blood thinner. We do not need your blood any thinner." He unscrews the lid and puts his free hand on Mello's knee, hopefully in a comforting manor, this is probably going to hurt. A lot. "Um, sorry, I hope this doesn't hurt too bad." He just pours on a bit but it has Mello biting down on a scream.

Once he's done he tries to squeeze Mello's knee and whispers 'good job' which gets him a glare, which is totally uncalled for, Mello would still have glass in his arm if he didn't have Matt. He tells him as such, Mello responds telling him to 'shut the hell up'.

He digs through the first aid kit and grabs a bandage and gauze. He puts the gauze on then secures it with the bandage (although he isn't sure if he ties it right). Once he's done he makes Mello help him clean up, simply because of his terrible attitude, then they go out to the kitchen and eat cold lasagna.

"You know, all things considered, pretty good night." Mello looks more shocked than pisses at his words, which is how Matt knows he's doing something right in his attempts to mess with Mello.

"In what way was this a 'pretty good night'? I just bled all over our bathroom, I can't lift my arm higher than 90 degrees, you aren't letting me drink alcohol until I'm healed and now we're eating cold lasagna at fuck knows o-clock in the morning."

"I managed to get the glass out and you're still alive to eat cold lasagna, win in my books. You should take the day off tomorrow. Tell Ross that he can screw off if he tells you to work. We're watching bad horror movies alllll day Mels."

When he looks up from his dinner to look at Mello he sees him failing to hide a sweet smile.