Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, don't own it.

A/N: Okay, I'm so, so sorry that this took so dang long. There were so many ways this chapter could've gone and I had to choose, though I ended up just stalling and going off on some weird tangents… Anyway, hope you enjoy the randomness. I can't believe I spent this many words on this topic…

Chapter 8: Mocha

When I woke up the next morning, I was curled up like a cat under the comforter. My first thought was, Damn I'm cold, which spent about five seconds bouncing around in my head before being replaced by What the hell? then almost instantly settling on I'm not dead!

Judging by the fact that I was rather chilled, two things were probably true. One, Mello had gotten up at the crack of dawn; and two, the damned heater was malfunctioning. Again.

I yawned and pulled my goggles on, then rolled out of bed and got dressed. Not surprisingly, clothes helped quite a bit with the temperature problem. I still smacked Sally on my way to the kitchen, though; her lying little needle was trying to tell me it was a balmy eighty-seven degrees in my spottily heated apartment. No way was I buying that one.

After the first part of my now-usual morning routine – going outside and smoking a few cigarettes, which I used to do inside but decided not to now due to the presence of a blond with some slight smoke inhalation issues – I found that Mello had made coffee when he'd gotten up and had kindly left some for me. He'd also somehow found a way to make the coffeemaker work the first time around without shorting out the power.

I had to ask him how to do that, because it was a secret I sure as hell hadn't managed to figure out yet.

I never saw the disaster looming.

One minute, I was innocently pouring myself a cup of coffee. The next minute, I took a sip, which I then spat into the sink. It was quickly followed by the rest of the coffee in my mug.

"Mello, what the hell did you do to this coffee?" I yelled.

"Nothing," he shot back from the next room. "It's your own damn fault you've killed your taste buds with all the fucking canned soup!"

I went into the doorway so I could talk without shouting, still carrying the empty mug. "I know what coffee tastes like, and that was not coffee."

"Of course it was." He didn't take his attention away from what he was doing on the laptop – it looked like he'd found my link to Near's system.

"If that was coffee, what the fuck did you put in it?"

He turned his head and looked at me over the back of the couch with a half-faced expression that told me I was clearly missing the obvious. "Chocolate."

I stared at him for a second, then sighed and went back into the kitchen to make a new pot of coffee. One that wasn't ninety percent dark chocolate. Honestly, who the hell would put that much chocolate in coffee? And then drank it? Poisoning someone with it, yeah, I could see that – it was vile enough – but voluntarily drinking it?

Wait. I was talking about Mello. I had seen him add incredible amounts of chocolate to every other food and drink in existence. Why was I surprised?

It took me about fifteen minutes, several colorful names, a few good thumps, and a bunch of paper towels to get Ben to cooperate with me enough to make some more coffee. I poured myself some and went out into the living room to sit on the couch next to Mello, who was reading through the files with what looked like complete and total focus. "Mello," I said, able to communicate with more intelligent words and at a more sane volume now that I wasn't tasting Mello's latest attempt at homicide, "in the future, you really should leave mocha to the professionals."

"You've never appreciated chocolate," Mello said, not looking up from the computer. "That's not my problem."

I took a sip of my non-chocolate coffee and decided that it wasn't worth arguing about. I just had to keep him away from the coffeemaker in the future.

* * *

About half an hour later, I had just settled into my game (Pokemon Yellow – I'd found it under the kitchen table and decided to go back to the basics) when the slam of a laptop lid made me jump. I closed my DS and glanced over at Mello.

He was fixing me with an intense icy stare which was mildly unnerving. "We need to talk."

"Okay." I agreed that there were a lot of things we had to talk about, but I wasn't sure glaring at me like he was trying to burn a hole through my head was strictly necessary for conversation, especially since that look made me want to take a step or two back and look at the floor. Of course, as I was sitting down and looking at the floor anyway, I did neither of those things.

"There's something wrong with the drugs you've been giving me."

Of all the crazy, stupid things I could've thought of to talk about, I had to admit, that possibility hadn't crossed my mind. "Are they not working?"

"No, they've been fucking with my head! What have you been giving me?"

"I can't remember exactly what it is now, it's got a ridiculously long name, but it's heavy duty painkillers. And before you asked, no, I didn't just look for something with a crazy long name, I did my homework."

Mello closed his mouth, since that had apparently been what he'd been about to sass me about. "Where did you get it?" he asked instead.

"The pharmacy. I highly doubt they add hallucinogens to their painkillers or something. That would be even more illegal than hacking them to get the painkillers."

If that disproved his theory, he wasn't planning to admit it. "Show me."

I sighed. "Fine." I got up, retrieved the bottle from the kitchen, and tossed it to him. "Satisfied?"

He frowned at the bottle, then threw it back to me. "I'm not taking them anymore," he informed me.

The bottle very nearly hit me on the head. "Why?"

"I told you, I was as high as a fucking kite last night. That is not happening again."

Okay, I knew Mello had his pride, but this was just insane. "Mello, that's going to hurt. A lot."

"I'm not a wimp like you," he snapped. "I can take it."

If it were anyone else, I would probably say that they could do whatever the hell they wanted. However, this was Mello. He was going to be miserable and in pain. And if he was miserable and in pain, that meant I would have to be miserable and in pain as well.

Oh, boy.