A/N: Inspired by the song "Fairweather Friend" by Emilie Autumn. It's short, like just about everything I've been writing lately. *angst* I'll try to update something important soon. ("Try" being the operative word here.)

Warnings: Not many. Some cussing. Implied sexual stuff, nothing graphic. Pretty much what you'd expect from a fic rated "T"

Disclaimer: Blah. Don't own. Blah.

Sometimes, Matt wonders how he can stand it— knowing that there's him, and his vast array of fears and doubts and hesitations, and Mello, all in the same room. We're going to die tomorrow, he thinks, and I don't feel a thing.

It's weird. It shouldn't be, because that's the way it's always been, but it still is. Weird. Matt lights a cigarette and stares at it, watching the tiny glow of the smoldering paper and its smoke-tendril fingers, reaching up and prodding at the ceiling as if there's any possibility of escape.

Kinda like him.

Just because he needs something new, something to distract himself, Matt looks over at Mello, who's sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, just like Roger always told him not to do. He looks like he owns the couch, and the table, and all the world, and it's so achingly beautiful and silly and real that Matt wants to cry. He shakes himself mentally. Can't have that. He has to stay awake. Has to keep reading data and hacking fire walls, and staying awake. Dammit, he's tired.

Mello smiles at him, and it's a predator's smile, all teeth and truth and eyes lit up like glass. Matt thinks dumbly that he could lose himself in those eyes, those little pieces of broken-mirror stars. Hate me, they say. Tell me how much you hate me.

But that's the thing. Matt can't hate Mello, anymore than Mail can stop loving Mihael. They're together. Trapped in this never-ending cycle of computer-screens and chocolate runs and loud, late-night sex that gives the neighbors an excuse to pound on the wall and tell them to shut the fuck up for once in their lives. Mello usually responds by telling them to go to hell and kissing Matt even harder, as if he has some kind of point to prove. Matt doesn't mind. He never minds.

Matt doesn't think he's cared about anything real for a long time— only Mello, and Mello doesn't even count because there's no way he could possibly be real. He's like Matt's addiction, his drug-induced high, and if that's weird then too fucking bad. He's a Wammy kid; he's not supposed to be normal.

Mello stretches his arms lazily against the back of the couch and sighs, letting his eyes fall shut and his head roll back, all the while keeping that god-awfully beautiful smile on his face. "Turn off the computer, Matty," he whispers. "We're done for tonight."

Matt is going out, and he's going out with a bang, but he really always knew it was going to end that way anyway, so what's the point in trying to tell himself otherwise?

And as Mello pulls him down hard, into a kiss that still tastes like chocolate and cigarettes and regret, after all these years, and all these doubts, and Matt thinks that he kind of likes this better than the alternative.

Because Matt would die for Mello- he's going to die for Mello- and he knows that there's nothing he can do to stop himself. He tries to be rational, but rationality is for people like L, like Near, and Matt certainly doesn't fit that description.

He's better off as the side-kick, anyway. Because at least when the side-kick dies, everyone knows he did it for the hero.