A/N: So, this A/N is written slightly more formally, because I feel a formal apology is in order.
I apologize whole-heartedly for being so absent as of late. I haven't really been doing much online lately at all. I wanna thank everyone who wished me a happy new year and I wish you all the same. I love you guys for your good wishes, even when I'm a horribly irresponsible person who always seems to flake out. XD
I want to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter. Thank you to: Fullmetal-tora, Melissa aka Demon Hiei's Girl, Living in a fantasy, Striped-Tabby aka Sandaa aka prokira aka M2, MRS-Jeevas, and stuffedfox. I am so eternally grateful to all of you for sticking by me even when I'm always running out and ripping my hair out over the stupidest things (even though you probably don't know I do that). I really do appreciate you all.
Yes, a rather shorter one-shot from me this time. This one is inspired by the song No Children by The Mountain Goats. I first heard it when watching the New Year's Moral Orel marathon and was just struck by the lyrics. You should definitely download it if you get a chance, as its rather good. I suppose this is my payback for that fluffy bit I wrote for Mello's b-day. I've always been a sucker for the whole "true love" thing with MxM, so I wanted to do something bleaker and more pessimistic.
So, best wishes to everyone and start your year off right with this little piece of desolate contemplation. lol Happy new year!
May your year be filled with lots of love and happy reading,
Catmoongirl
PS - Before all the teachers and English majors etc. jump down my throat again, "unloveable" is a non-standard alternative spelling of "unlovable". It's spelled that way for a reason.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I don't even have a job. Death Note belongs to Ohba and Obata.
Chapter 4 - Hand in Unloveable Hand
Matt had an idea why Mello was so fixated by one of Linda's steel sculptures in her gallery.
Mello was twisted, just like the steel, jutting out in morbid and awkward angles, yet flowing together perfectly and seamlessly, potent and graceful.
He enjoyed the concerned looks, the uncomfortable tension, the chill that seeped in when the two of them had entered, neither touching nor looking at one another. Matt with dark circles under his eyes, Mello with a famished and sickly look to him.
And Matt could see the resemblance in Mello's wry grin when, to Linda's worried words (which began as "Belinda and Niko went to a couples therapy, you know" to something along the lines of "You two seemed quite happy, but to be honest, I never thought you two were really very compatible") the redhead responded with a noncommittal shrug.
In an other scenario, one that wasn't so bleak and suffocating, Mello would have even giggled as Linda simply trailed after him as Matt sauntered back to his "lover's" side to stare aimlessly at the rather ugly sculpture before them.
Because Linda was the only one who still tried, the only so-called friend who remained in a sea of nameless idiots.
And neither had any desire to let her be a constant reminder of how far they had fallen from the ideal.
"The two of you used to be so close-" she pressed, leaning in to whisper to them as the other members of their class gave them cold looks, muttering darkly to one another.
"What do you think about this one?" Matt asked the leather-clad blond beside him.
"Seems like it represents the distress of a barren and bossy woman. Rather pretentious, really."
"Or maybe the inevitability loveless and lonely existence."
And yes, that was the last straw for poor Linda, who almost couldn't hold back her tears as she stormed away from them, only barely resisting the urge to shriek an expletive-filled vow of how she would never speak to them again.
So they left and drove back home, a long drive into a cold night, with Matt breaking his promise to not smoke in the car and Mello breaking his about not "always brooding and bitching all the damn time".
The ashes flicked out the window, Mello curled up against the door, head resting on the window.
The car's headlights illuminated a sign on the side of the highway that read:
Last exit on life.
But it was really just a rest stop. And Mello nearly began to cry because it felt like pleasant nostalgia. It brought back memories of a dingy bathroom with leaky taps and disgusting urinals and broken porcelain, and the sounds of grunting and groaning and thumping, of leather boots kicking at the tile floor, of the clinking of loose belt buckles, of fabric being fisted and wrinkled and ripped, of eyes fluttering shut and lips pressing together and beads of sweat slipping across flushed skin.
They could have pulled over, stopped for a bit, split the bill and called it even. Or maybe it would have been more explosive, with Matt regretting that he ever kissed him, or that he ever fell in love with that hideous scar, with Mello finally admitting just how dumb he thought the gamer was, how his only worth in life had been as a diversion, how he wished he could burn their shit-hole of an apartment in LA down because it was the first place they had made love.
I hope you die.
So they didn't pull over, because it was much easier to just keep believing that this was what life was like for people who lived beyond the age of 20.
Both of them could barely place where the day ended and began. It was perpetually dark. Days that failed to change from one to another simply ran together until Matt didn't even sleep anymore because he still felt fucking cold under layers and layers of blankets.
It's always darkest before the dawn.
Marching towards death had once been the darkest day of their lives. And yet here they were, alive and somewhat well, and it was growing darker still.
The idea of cutting himself shaving and bleeding to death didn't seem so bad right now, perhaps because he was too cowardly to just put that blade to his wrist and do it quickly. Or perhaps because life lived in slow misery should simply end the same way too.
I hope we both die.
Yes, Matt wished they would both just drop dead, because he knew one would suffer without the other. A month ago, he would have entertained the notion of going to some sort of therapy.
Now, he couldn't quell the urge to put a bullet through Mello's skull.
But his eyes were just too damn blue.
Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
He was stuck in an endless loop of only slightly comforting familiarity, the reluctant touch of a relationship that had crumbled weakly under a flimsy foundation of the thought that they wouldn't make it to see another sunrise.
Half-drunk every day or simply too insane to even focus and Matt hoped he'd never get sober. It seemed like a never-ending staring contest, across the living room, waiting for one of them to blink. Someone had to say "when", someone had to put them out of their misery...
Someone had to be their salvation.
Matt knew all too well that there would be no salvaging.
So he blinked, he gave.
He just got up one day, stood up and walked straight through the front door. He didn't need any of his things, Mello could burn them all. He wanted a new life, to drive far far away.
He wanted to wear those stupid vintage band tees like all the rest of the jobless fuckers out there, wanted to just sit around and get high like a normal person, wanted to make friends who just came over because he always had plenty of booze and Mello couldn't have one good thing to say about him because he was a lazy son of a bitch.
Then maybe he'd meet a pretty girl who would help turn him around, and he'd get some dead end job at a grocery store or a fast food joint and he would slave away for weeks on end at minimum wage just so he could buy her a damn diamond ring and propose to her. And they'd get married and have lots of kids and send them all to school and cry at their graduation and when they ended up just like their father-
"Wait, Matt, please!"
-but Mello didn't have enough sense to stay the hell out of his way.
"Matt, please, don't do this," he pleaded, stepping in front of the redhead, hands firm on his shoulders. "We...we can talk about this." And Matt's brown eyes refused to meet his, refused to even consider buying the lie that was in them. "Please, Matt...Mail, don't go."
Matt was falling to pieces on the inside and Mello was in shambles. Matt had a future, had unlimited potential that he had never tapped into, that he may never have a chance to recognize. Mello had run dry, stuck just beneath first with a limited set of useful skills.
Kira was gone, but the choke-hold he had on their lives was not. They had fallen into stagnation, nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. And the love the had once had fell to pieces as their existence and identities did the same.
And Mello was supposed to be the stronger one, but here he was, crying to keep Matt with him.
"I'm drowning, Mail!" he shrieked. "I can't do this without you!" So he thought he'd drag Matt down with him, and when he threw himself forward to press a desperate kiss, cold and prickly and unfamiliar, onto the redhead's lips, the weights were already around their ankles, hands clutched lovelessly together because there was nothing else to hold on to.
Dragging him to the bedroom, stripping off clothes in some sort of faux frenzy that was more about emotional scarring than actual love-making, Matt figured that, since it was something that had once been based on something beautiful and loving, he could just keep lying to himself that it really wasn't so bad.