Author's Note: Mello is a silly boy.

That will be all. XD

III. Addiction

Mello trudged back up the stairs, panting a little now.

Panting was like pants, and pants was like no pants, and no pants conjured up a very specific image.

Shit.

Speaking of pants, Matt was still wearing a close-fitting specimen of them and nothing more when Mello reentered the apartment, the gritty dinginess of which was now permanently ameliorated with damp memories of—

There would be no thinking about that. Ever. Again.

A glass lined with flecks of orange juice pulp lurked in the sink, and Matt had shoved a new bag into the cracked plastic trashcan. Mello loitered in the kitchen, attempting to avoid getting a second eyeful of Matt bent over the bed to strip it—another loaded word—of its chocolate-stained sheets, because a single eyeful was sufficient to convey how low Matt's unbelted pants were riding, how smooth and tempting were the contours of his back, and how goddamn fuckable he looked with his hair in his face.

And another eyeful would make Mello want another still. And another after that. Pretty soon, he'd never stop looking.

Enjoyable as that would be, it would almost certainly prove extremely awkward.

Mello stuck his head in the freezer. There were bags of frozen corn in there. And maybe some sanity.

"Hey…" came a voice from the bedroom.

Shit.

Mello shut the fridge and obeyed the summons. In attempting not to notice that Matt was hitching up his jeans with his left hand, he looked at Goggle Boy's right.

From half-curled fingers dangled a black- and red-beaded rosary.

Shit didn't even begin to cover it.

"Hmm," Mello said, voice tauter than a tightrope. "I was wondering where that was. Guess I dropped it while we were playing whatever video game that was last night."

Matt fingered the cross, running a thumb up and down its length. Mello's blood was pounding in his ears.

"I don't remember that," Matt reported idly.

It took a great deal of willpower not to sigh in relief. "Eh, you won; I lost; the usual. Nothing too exciting. And you were already really drunk, so I guess maybe it was kind of impressive as far as that goes."

"I do remember," Matt remarked, still admiring the crucifix cradled guilelessly in his fingers, "your hair getting tangled in it when I tried to take it off."

There was an excruciating pause.

"What?" Mello managed weakly, trying to laugh. "Why would you—?"

Matt looked at him, suddenly weary—weary and something else.

"Don't fuck with me, Mello," he said. "If you don't want it to happen again, it won't, all right? That's fine. I don't give a shit. End of story. Forget it."

He pitched the rosary at its rightful owner, who fumbled to catch it, and then returned to bunching the sheets, slightly more vigorously than was strictly necessary.

Mello swallowed. The round wooden beads dug into his palm, pushed there by his clenched fingers. It was like they were trying to tell him something.

Like not to be a fucking idiot, maybe.

There was just one thing that the smarmy, insinuating rosary beads had not considered, and that was that Mihael Keehl was a fucking idiot sometimes. Fairly frequently, in fact, when it came to shit like this.

He turned around and retreated to the kitchen, walking on feet he couldn't feel.

His empty hand opened the cupboard, and he scanned the second shelf from the top. There was one bar of chocolate left, a small one. He retrieved it, peeled the wrapper back, and broke off a bite.

The first few squares stuck in his throat, but the rest went down easier.

He took the stairs down to the ground floor again, but this time he didn't stop at the garage that housed the dumpsters—nor did he stop at the street, nor did he stop at the first intersection, or the second.

He did pause at the first convenience store he encountered, in the interest of purchasing a veritable shitload of chocolate.

"You're an addict." There was a hint of a giggle in Matt's laugh.

"Am not. I just friggin' love chocolate, s'all."

"You're frigging in love with chocolate."

"That's 'cause it tastes amazing, dipshit."

"Lots of things taste amazing, and you're not addicted to them."

Mello licked upwards along Matt's breastbone, slowly and meticulously. Matt writhed, laughing helplessly. Ticklish, of course.

"I'm addicted to you," Mello announced.

Mello considered taking the elevator when he returned, given that he was now loaded down with paper bags full of bottles of booze, but he kind of liked the stairs, if only for their knack for postponing the inevitable.