Woah, this chapter contains the very first snippet of things getting physical between Matt and Mello, I hope that you can all handle that. Also if anyone's still reading this, please review I'd really like some feed back because it's been such a long time. Anyways, here is your Chapter 8:

Every Wammy's kid knows that they will never be exactly normal teenagers. They'll never have fights with parents or siblings or have to worry about getting bad grades and the stress of choosing a college, a university, a major, and a career. Their peer pressure equates to the competition to be the best in their speciality, the smartest and the most driven. But in other ways, Wammy's teenagers are exactly like any other on the planet.

Roger does not want to provide health class curriculum outside of biology, which pertains more to DNA and forensics as it is, but at some point you're going to have to talk to kids about the messiness of puberty and sex and what not regardless of whether their all geniuses and might already have way too much knowledge on the subject. And that's how Matt ends up back in his old classroom with all of his peers again, at the age of 14 two years after he's been freed to do his own thing, sitting next to Mello in their old seats and watching him smirk as Roger fumbles at the front of the room to draw labelled diagrams of genitalia on the whiteboard.

"That is the fucking saddest looking penis I have ever seen, I wonder what Roger is using as a reference." He mouths to Matt, who has to press his fingers over his mouth to resist breaking down into laughter, because surprisingly no one else is giggling. Everyone else is pretending to be much too mature for that, despite the uncomfortable looks on half of their faces.

Roger sternly tells them that although he doesn't approve of teenagers having sex at this age, he knows better than to assume that none of them will experiment and wants them to be prepared. Matt is dumbfounded by this assumption. Most students at Wammy's feel too jealous and threatened by each other's intelligence to make friends with anyone outside of a few smaller social circles based on mutual interest, let alone have sex with each other. He also thinks that, aside from the population of Wammy's teenagers who are probably asexual, that most of them think they are above sex completely and have better uses for their time. But Roger continues his flushed and rapid rant on how to properly use male and female condoms and fill out forms requesting birth control from the school nurse, and Mello is openly viciously grinning at his discomfort now as everyone else retreats further and further into their shells.

Matt is proven wrong about the interest in sex among his peers a few days later when all anyone can talk about at breakfast is how Blaire was caught sneaking into Linda's room last night and now boys are banned from being in the girl's side of the dorms. A lot of the boys start saying how Linda is an "easy" type of girl, and although Mello hates Blaire with a passion almost as strong as his hate for Near, he 'doesn't mind' Linda, as he's said to Matt. He doesn't mind her because she's shy and quiet and doesn't fucking stick her nose where it doesn't belong, and even let her sit on the library floor in front of them last month and sketch his portrait without complaint. Mello ends up getting up from his and Matt's table and storming to the one across to give one of the kids a bloody nose, and that's how he ends up with another strike on Roger's list and another shift washing dishes.

Mello's probably washed more plates this year than any other, it seems the older they get the easy it is it get the flames of his eyes to engulf his whole body and spark an outburst in its wake, one that Matt either tries to prevent and gets caught in the crossfire of punishment or completely misses because it happens so fast he doesn't see it coming. Like Mello his hands are rough with sores and calluses from spending too much time submerged in the soapy suds, matching scars for brothers in the same battle, allies surviving adolescence in Wammy's together where friendly faces are hard to come by.

Mello arrives late in their bedroom that night; Matt has already gone to bed, but he wakes up as he hears the dresser drawers being pulled open in the darkness.

"I threw a plate at fucking Near because he offered to help me. He was being a condescending little shit! And then Roger fucking made me wash all the tables and stack the benches to do the floors as well, the stone cold bastard! He's got it out to get me."

Matt should have known that other Wammy's teenagers were interested in sex because of his own interest, but he thought he was the only one. Maybe because he wasn't as ambitious and wasn't as focused on his studies as the rest, he found his mind wandering to other places. Places with Mello.

Mello's eyes burned his skin alive ever time he looked at them, and the flames of his best friend's skin at night only made it worse. It used to be a pleasant warm sensation to know that Mello was lying next to him at night but lately he found it kept him up, unfulfilled and relying on fantasies to fill up those needy places in his brain, the ones that imagined what it would be like to do more than just sleep next to Mello. To press his lips against that well defined colour bone, to press them to his mouth even. Matt found himself thinking about it all the time, totally fixated on it and he knew he would be until he did know what it actually felt like, but it would be impossible to predict how Mello would react if he knew. It could ruin everything if he has to voice his desires.

So Matt is lucky when it ends up that he doesn't have to.

"Hey, are you even listening to me? What are you fucking looking at?" Mello asks, standing there in the black basket ball shorts he saves to sleep in on the hot nights, nothing on his chest but his rosary glinting in the dark against his abdomen. Matt knows he should look away, but he can't help it. He's too tired and caught off guard by his actions being called out to hide. "You know I'm really gifted at reading people Matt, and I see the way you look at me so why don't you just fucking say it?"

"S-say what?"

"You know what! You know what, tell me you think I'm pretty fucking hot."

Mello is laughing now, the deep mocking laugh Matt's heard plenty of times before when he's making fun of Roger and Near. But there's something else there now, an underlining of hoarse strain, some sort of tension and Matt realizes that he means it. He really does want him to say it.

"Uh, yeah I guess you could say that. I think you're pretty fucking hot." Matt's smiling too now, relieved that Mello's not angry with him for catching him in the act of checking him out, smiling until Mello kneels down onto the mattress in front of him, and then over him, hands pressed into the pillow on either side of Matt's face. This is too real.

"Prove it to me then." Mello whispers, so quiet Matt has to lean upwards to hear what he's saying and then Mello's got him, roughly pressing his mouth to Matt's and tangling their legs together, tightly gripping Matt by his shoulders. Matt allows himself to reach up and get his hands caught in Mello's soft blond hair that's getting too long for him now, let's himself get lost in the burning pit forming in the center of his stomach, and lower and Mello's tongue that tastes like chocolate. It's his first kiss, and its feverish and clumsy but it's just right, exactly what he's been pining for, and pulls his lips away from Mello's to run them over the boy's jaws, skimming down the side of his throat and latching to suck on his collar bone. His heart jolts when he hears Mello's ragged breath hitch in his throat but the groan quickly dissolves into chuckling and he knows the moment is over.

"Alright, I see Matty. You're not so bad yourself."

It happens every night that week. Sometimes initiated by Matt, sometimes initiated by Mello, but always, and always the same way, short and sweet but burning both of them. It doesn't go past kissing but soon Matt has his top off as well and his legs and up hitched around Mello's waist, straining to be closer to him. They never talk about it, so Matt thinks it's impossible for anyone to ever find out and certainly impossible for the person who eventually does.

Mello's hands are all over him, digging into his shoulder blades one minute and then sweeping dangerously close to the waist band of his pajama pants the next, constantly on the move mapping out Matt's abdomen. But Matt's bladder has to ruin the moment, twinging and reminding him that he hasn't gone pee since dinner, and he reluctantly pulls himself out of Mello's clutches.

"I'll be right back."

"That better fucking be true or else."

When Matt creeps into the hallway it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the new darkness, but not long enough to realize that L is lurking in the middle of it, looking like he was poised to come knocking on their door.

"Ryuzaki wha-"

L holds a finger up to his lips and lithely reaches behind Matt to close his bedroom door behind him, motioning for Matt to follow him down the stairs to the front hall which Matt reluctantly does, despite his bladder and his mind protesting that Mello will truly kill him if he ever found out that L was in the building and Matt didn't let him know.

"You're probably wondering what I am doing here and why I was on my way to see Mello."

"Well yeah! It's the middle of the night!"

"I am well aware of that now, but I lost track of the time working on things in Roger's office and didn't quite realize until I saw your attire," he explained, gesturing to Matt's pajamas. "I am here because I need to give Mello and Near information on an important case I am taking up, a case that may unfortunately have an impact on their lives as well."

"Um okay. So why are you talking to me then?"

L looked listless. The bags under his eyes were darker than usual and his posture was worse than ever, his shoulders completely slumped. There was what looked to be small stains from colourful candy on his white shirt and a lollipop wrapper caught in his black locks.

"I decided that it would be best to wait to tell them about the case in the morning once I realized how late it was, but then I also decided that there is something I must take the opportunity to tell you when I have you away from Mello."

"And that is?"

L sighed and sunk down on to the floor in his usual owl like crouch, and Matt decided to sit with crossed legs in front of him to try and get on his level.

"It was a well thought out decision to place you and Mello in the same room. He has clearly grown and benefitted from having you as a friend, even though he still causes trouble I believe that he would cause much more if you weren't there to keep him grounded. I believed that he was perfectly capable, even required such a friendship despite all of Roger's protests, but this I didn't foresee."

L reaches out towards him and presses a cold hand to Matt's left shoulder, who flinches and doesn't realize what L is trying to say until he also looks down. There on his skin is the only evidence of what's changed between him and Mello, the large purple hickey with impressions of the boy's teeth.

"Oh Ryuzaki, Mello's not hurting me it's that's a..." He trailed off awkwardly.

"I know perfectly well what it is and know that he's not hurting you. Not physically anyways but Matt, you have to understand that by entering this sort of relationship with Mello you are setting yourself up for a lot of emotional pain."

"Ryuzaki that's... I don't understand."

"All young people fool around Matt, and I would not be so worried if I thought that was the only case here. But you and Mello have a very strong bond, a type of bond that can be formed in this place which I've seen before, amongst the first generation of Wammy's students."

"The first generation?!" Mat exclaimed.

"Yes. I've always had to have someone in line to be my successor but when Wammy's House was first founded with its first generation of students things did not go according to plan, because of the emotional vulnerability of the two students I chose to succeed me and my own weak judgment. Terrible things happened to both of them." L's face is for once readable under his usual poker mask, and Matt can see the heavy sadness weighing down his dark irises.

"What kind of terrible things?"

"I'm afraid the most I can tell you is that one of them committed suicide while the other became a serial killer."

"Whaaa... how come I've never heard about this before?"

"I told you when you were first invited to Wammy's that not everyone who had lived here had found it to their liking. It's a difficult subject for me to discuss and I do not want the details passed between the students because I don't want them to become warped. It's important to me that the memory of my first two successors is never disrespected."

"I understand that I guess, but why are you telling me all this now?

"Because the relationship that you're forming with Mello is the kind of relationship that those two students had and that... I also shared with them because of some grave mistakes on my part. The combination of the pressure placed on them as my successors and those relationships had a strong negative impact on who they were, I believe it is what pushed both of them over the edge. Matt, it has been a hypothesis of mine ever since that people like us and in our line of work are not meant to have such intimate relationships, and that they can often result in terrible outcomes for all parties involved."

Matt is stunned. This isn't the kind of conversation he had ever imagined having, especially not in whispers in a dark foyer. Unlike Mello although L was greatly intriguing to him, he didn't desire a close relationship with the detective. Quite honestly, deep in his heart there were a lot of things about L from their few brief encounters that didn't sit right with him, and this conversation was adding to that list.

He would never say it to Mello but L struck him as a very selfish person. Although he offered unhappy orphan's a clean slate at Wammy's it came with many not agreed to terms. There was the way he sought out abandoned child geniuses and prodigies and tested them so that they were confirmed to be up to his standards of intelligence, intelligent enough to become trained to become another him. After that he left out the most important information about the worse things that had gone wrong with students and Wammy's, things that had apparently gone wrong because of his own mistakes. And then he had them dumped into an environment for this training without him, because he was too busy working to give them any guidance, and no peers to turn to, only competitors because they had all been told that they must do their best to succeed him, and that meant no distractions from their studies, leading to an extremely lonely childhood.

And now Matt had formed the first solid friendship in his life with Mello in this academic emotional wasteland, and L was telling him that it was dangerous, that he couldn't have it because 'people like us'- and suddenly Matt didn't like being lumped into the same category as L- weren't meant to have them, that they should all be alone like him and put their careers above everything. Because those types of people would make the best L's, the most sufficient successors and what they themselves wanted was of no importance.

"I think that your completely wrong, Ryuzaki. I don't think that being with Mello is going to hurt me at all."

"You may not see it now while you and Mello are still in school, but soon with this case I'm taking up, being my 3 successors you, I'm about 90% certain that you Mello, and Near may be placed under a great deal of stress, the kind that could destroy the bond that's formed between you. I do not wish to doubt you Matt because you are a very strong young man, but it is reasonable to assume that you could not handle that, that it could cause you to do things you could regret."

"I will not kill myself if Mello leaves me. And he's not going to leave me." Matt can feel warmth bubbling in his chest, threatening to rise up into his throat.

"Matt, love can make us do things we would never imagine we could, no matter how well we think we know ourselves. That's why I think it would be easier for you if-"

"If what?! If I left Mello now?! Well sorry, no matter what you think is best I'm not going to listen to you because being with Mello is the best thing in my life; he's the only thing that makes me truly happy. And I'm not going to let you scare me into letting go of that just because you think we're going to be torn apart by the competition to become your successor or whatever, okay?! Because I don't really give a shit about all that. I just care about Mello. So consider this my official resignation 3rd successor, as your successor of any ranking, I don't want to be you! I just want to be with Mello."

L meets all of this with complete stone faced silence. He slowly rises up from his crouch and stands with hunched shoulders, biting the tip of his thumb. Matt remains where he is on the floor, panting from his rant.

"I understand. I will make the necessary altercations to The List and other documents to have that arranged. Please forgive me for upsetting you, it was not my intention. I regret no longer having you as one my successors, but I understand that you wish to choose your own path. Mello is lucky to have someone as loyal as you by his side."

L begins to turn back to the direction of Roger's office but Matt grabs a fistful of his white shirt, the only one he seems to own in his hand.

"Wait. I want to know... tell me why you did this to Mello. Why did you place him second, you must have known what that would do to him, you know that he's just as god as Near and he wants this more than Near! He wants it more than anything." He may want it more than me.

"The decision took a great deal of thought. But in the end no matter how driven Mello is, Near is the right choice for the job. He never loses his composure, just works diligently. He is more like me, and because of that I am able to keep my distance where as with Mello, I care too much about his well being. No matter what being placed as second does to him, it can't be worse than what would happen if he succeeded me prematurely. He may think he wants it more than anything, but he is not ready to make all the sacrifices it requires."

L fixes Matt with his piercing owl like gaze and Matt knows exactly what he means. He is not ready to sacrifice what he has with me. And Matt hoped that he never would be. He selfishly hoped that no matter what succeeding L would always just be out of Mello's reach, knew it was the only way for them to continue to stay together, forever. And he wanted that so badly, he couldn't comprehend what would happen if something stopped it. And very truly badly, he wanted to watch L be proven wrong. See Ryuzaki, I'm not indifferent at all.