Disclaimer: Death Note isn't mine, Matt and Mello aren't mine, and the idea for this chapter is definitely not mine.

A/N: Okay, this chapter can be blamed entirely on DessArtem. She started it. She is the queen of awkwardness. So yeah, this chapter started out as her child – I just have custody of it for some odd reason.

Chapter 7: Borders

It took me about an hour to get to the explosion site. By the looks of it, the police still hadn't been there – why would they bother? The building was almost leveled, and anyone who'd been in there was undoubtedly dead by now.

What was left of the computers was fairly close to where I'd found Mello – it took me an age to dig through the wreckage to find anything that even resembled something that might've once been some part of a computer. It was going to be more dumb luck than equipment or smarts that factored into whether I could actually pull anything off the drives.

After I'd found what I could, I climbed back into the car and made the hour-long drive back to the apartment, listening to static-y music on the radio. I tried singing along, but half the time I couldn't tell what song was playing, which complicated matters a bit. I really needed to fix the antenna.

When I got back into the apartment and dumped the stuff onto the floor by the couch, Mello was fast asleep. I did my best not to wake him up as I dug around under the couch for my equipment. Not that it would do much good – there was only one drive that was fully intact. But at least it was something.

Despite my best attempts, my rooting around under the couch roused Mello. There was a moment of silence. Then, "Did you get the stuff I told you to?"

"Yes," I said, not removing my face from the space under the couch. "Do you need some more painkillers?"

"Yes," he said, sounding a bit annoyed. Probably a side effect of being in pain.

"I'll get some." I got out from under the couch and stood up, only hitting my head once. Then I went out into the kitchen and got the pills and a glass of water and brought them back out.

Mello was sitting up by then. He took the water and the medicine without a word, then set the glass on the coffee table and laid back down, still not saying anything. I guess when you were hurt talking wasn't high on your priority list.

I spent another minute digging around under the couch and pulled out a tangle of wires. "Yeah!" I said loudly, cracking the back of my head on the underside of the couch yet again as I sat up.

Mello gave me a look, and I held up the wires for him to see. "Stuff," I explained sagely. He rolled his eyes at me. I ignored it and started setting up the stuff to pull the files onto my laptop.

"Is that computer secure?"

"No, Mello, I hack high-powered government agencies with your basic home computer."

"I never know with you."

There was silence as I watched the files copy. While I waited, I picked up the least damaged of the other drives and started poking at it. There was a chance I could make it work again.

"Go make dinner," Mello said after a bit.

I set down the drive I was holding and headed out into the kitchen to find some food. I opened the lazy Susan and went to grab a can of soup, but Mello must've known.

"If you try to feed me any more of that shit I will shoot you!"

I decided to keep that in mind. I might've actually worried if I hadn't confiscated his gun, but as it was I wasn't too concerned.

But it was always better to humor Mello. Just in case.

Reheated pizza it would have to be.

Mello, amazingly, didn't look all too impatient when I returned to the living room with the leftover pizza. He seemed almost…mellow. Mellow Mello was almost unheard-of.

It had to be the drugs.

Whatever the drugs had done to him, though, they certainly hadn't affected his appetite, because he immediately started scarfing down the pizza I gave him. He didn't even question where I'd gotten the pizza.

"Don't worry, I checked, there's no mold." I nudged his feet off the couch and sat down. Mello just put his feet on my lap, and I decided not to tell him that having someone's feet in your lap could really begin to put you off your food. Well, it would put someone other than me off their food – I was desensitized to almost every sort of disgusting thing the world could throw at me.

"I think my taste buds are dead, I'm actually eating this," Mello said. "It's all your shitty food."

I rolled my eyes. "Or maybe it's the smoke inhalation," I suggested. "That's probably not good for you."

Mello eyed the ashtray on the table. "Smoke inhalation is more likely. That explains why you don't realize how shitty your food is."

I opened my mouth to say something, but changed my mind and took a bite of my pizza instead. It wasn't worth the argument. "Do I make a good couch cushion?" I asked after I'd swallowed.

He considered that for a moment. "You're a footrest, not a couch cushion." He took another bite of pizza.

A few moments later, I found myself with a pizza-eating blond in my lap. "Now you're a couch cushion."

…He was definitely high on painkillers. Oh, joy.

Honestly, the situation bordered on awkward.

Mello snarled at his slice of pizza, which was connected to his mouth by several cheese strings. He seemed to be having a bit of a struggle, so I snapped the cheese for him with one hand.

That in and of itself was fine, but then he leaned forward and licked the rest of the cheese off my fingers.

The situation was definitely threatening to sneak past the border patrol of Awkward.

"Comfy?" I asked when he made no move to return to the other end of the couch.

He crumpled up his paper plate and tossed it in the direction of the trash can. "This couch has even less padding than you do."

I took that as a yes.

"Where's the remote?"

"Um…" I felt around under the edge of the couch cushion. "Right here." I pulled it out and handed it to him.

He turned the TV on and began channel-surfing so fast my eyes weren't able to follow. Then he turned it off again and tossed the remote to the other end of the couch. "Nothing good on," he decided.

"There's never anything good on." How he'd been able to tell was a mystery to me, since I hadn't even been able to tell that there had been anything on at all.

"You used to be optimistic."

I shrugged. "That was before I met Philbrook and Ben."

He looked at me. "Who the fuck are Philbrook and Ben?" I could hear the underlying question: Do I have to worry about them knowing you?

"Philbrook is my toaster. Ben is the coffeemaker. Don't get too close and they're completely harmless."

"…You named your toaster?" From the expression on the visible half of his face, he clearly wasn't so out-of-it that he didn't think I'd lost my already-slipping grip on sanity.

Fortunately, I'd had a bit of a chat with Philbrook several months ago about the same exact thing, so I had an explanation to offer. "Well, I always feel stupid about yelling at appliances, since I know they can't understand me, so I gave them names so they don't seem so inanimate."

Apparently he didn't follow my logic. "You felt stupid bitching at the toaster, so you named the thing?"

"Yeah."

There was a moment of silence, then Mello stood up unsteadily. "You need sleep."

I stood up as well. I was hardly about to argue with that statement. "I'll go to sleep in a bit, I just have to – "

"No. You are sleeping, now, and I am making sure of it." Mello grabbed my arm and half dragged me towards the bedroom, although there was more leaning on his part than actually dragging, since his legs still weren't particularly steady.

"Okay, once you're in bed I'll go sleep on – "

I was unable to finish my thought, as it's difficult to speak when one is completely winded from being tackled onto a bed.

"You are going to sleep right here," Mello said decisively, looking down at me, "and you are not getting up. Got it?"

"I got it. Can you get off? You're crushing my chest." Him laying on top of me while he wasn't high might, in certain circumstances, be perfectly alright, but as it was, if he fell asleep where he was, he'd wake up after the painkillers were out of his system, freak out, and probably strangle me. Didn't really sound like a good way to start my morning.

"If I get off, you'll get up."

Well, that was trust if I ever saw it. "No I won't."

"Too bad." He put his head down on my shoulder.

"…Okay then." I crossed my fingers that I wouldn't wake up dead. Not that you could wake up dead, but…

After a few moments, Mello lifted his head again. "Your jeans are digging into my legs," he informed me. I was about to remind him that he wouldn't have to worry about that if he wasn't using me as a mattress when he rolled off me.

Then he started undoing my belt.

"Mello, what the hell?" This was beyond Border Patrol's jurisdiction – this was a full-scale march on the capital city.

"Blushing, Matt?" he asked, tugging my pants off.

"Well yeah, this is a little awkward!"

He grinned and tossed my jeans into a corner. "I know, isn't it?" he said gleefully. He slid his hands up under my shirt. "Revenge is sweet."

This situation had not only invaded the capital, it was running for the presidency. I decided to put a stop to it. "So this is your idea of revenge?" I asked, sitting up so we were almost nose-to-nose – as if that helped matters – and pulling my shirt off.

"Yes." He pushed me back down and put his head on my shoulder again. "Now go to sleep."

"As if I have a choice," I muttered. Thankfully, he wasn't awake enough to hear that. Since it didn't seem like I'd be getting up any time soon, I pulled my goggles off, hung them on the bedpost, and closed my eyes.

On the downside, Mello was probably going to shoot me when he woke up.

On the upside, well, at least he was warm.