Disclaimer: I don't own it, simple as that. And DessArtem is usually responsible for the brilliant ideas.

A/N: Okay, after much deliberation (all of five minutes) with Dess, I decided that the old version of this chapter just didn't work. I hadn't thought it through, and it turned out that the direction it was going the way I had written it wouldn't bring the fic anywhere it needs to go. So I decided to rewrite. And came up with more crap. Then did it again with the same result. Then I realized I just had to nix the cat and the car altogether, at least for this chapter. So I apologize to anybody who read this chapter the first time around and liked the cat. Don't worry – he'll appear later. I'm certain of that. So will the car. I have some plans for the car…

Chapter 11: Strayed

I should've expected something spectacular when Mello fell silent. He'd spent most of he day pestering me until I finally unearthed a book that he hadn't read. It took him about an hour to read it. Then he went back to pestering me until I finally retreated to a corner of the bedroom and he decided it wasn't worth it to follow me. That was the first sign that something was up.

I didn't worry about it until I realized that I hadn't heard anything from him for an hour and a half. I had a looming and, unfortunately, rational fear that he'd keeled over.

There was no sign of life when I walked into the living room. "Mello?"

Nothing.

Worried, I crossed the room and looked over the back of the couch. What I saw shocked me into momentary speechlessness.

Then I burst out laughing.

Mello jumped like a frightened cat. He apparently hadn't been expecting me to reappear. "What?" he demanded with the look of someone who is trying not to look as though they've just been caught doing something they shouldn't be.

For my part, I probably looked like an idiot who was trying to both smother laughter and form words at the same time and failing spectacularly at both. "Where'd you find that?" I finally managed to ask.

"Under the couch cushion." He shut the screen of the SP on whatever game he'd been playing. "Your living room is a wreck, you have all sorts of shit under there. How the hell do you sit on this couch and not notice?"

"Norwald's good at covering up the lumps. What game were you playing, anyway?"

He stared at me for a moment. "Norwald?"

I shrugged. "He needed a name. He seems like a Norwald, don't you think?"

"Matt, it is a couch. It is not a he. Furniture and appliances and whatever the hell else you've named are not alive. They are metal, and inanimate, and I am going to throw your fucking toaster out the window if you keep giving things genders and names!"

If I wasn't used to Mello, I might've actually considered that to be either a rant or a threat. "I'm never leaving you alone with Philbrook again," I informed him, moving his feet so I could sit down at the end of the couch. "I'm worried about what you might do with him."

As I was already at the end of the couch, there was nowhere to go to avoid the kick Mello landed on my ribs in retaliation. "Oh, chill, I was kidding."

Mello put his feet on my lap, flipped the SP open and didn't say anything.

"What are you playing?" I asked, for third time.

He smirked. "I'm playing Erase Matt's Game. That's the only videogame worth playing." He turned the SP off with satisfaction and tossed it on the coffee table.

"Oh, admit it, videogames aren't as boring as you thought they were," I needled, grinning.

Mello kicked me again. "It's more fun to piss you off."

"I had guessed that," I said dryly. Not that I really got pissed, but it must've been his goal in life to manage it someday.

"You make it sound like I never do anything else."

"No, you just have way too much fun doing it."

"Au contraire, I have just the right amount of fun doing it," he said, smiling wickedly.

"You know, that look always makes me wonder why I'm sitting so close to you."

He prodded me in the side with his foot. "Because you're too damn optimistic and keep thinking that pissing you off isn't as amusing as it was the last time you sat near me."

I rolled my eyes. He couldn't see that, of course, but he would know. "Or I know that you're bored and you complain less about it if I'm within kicking range."

Mello proved my point by thumping my leg with his foot, then fell silent, looking bored once again.

Come to think of it, I was bored too. "…I wonder what else is under the couch cushions," I mused.

"Nothing interesting. I checked."

There went that idea. "What about under the couch?"

"Do you not have any idea what's under your own furniture?"

I shrugged and moved his legs again so I could get off the couch and look underneath it. "You know, there's still a ton of junk down here, even though I moved a bunch of it a while ago."

"That's because your method of 'cleaning' is to kick everything under the couch. Why are you surprised it's a mess?"

"Hey, I see something I thought I'd lost!" I was about to begin a rescue mission when I realized that Mello's head had appeared upside down next to me. "Mello, what are you doing?"

He gave me a look that said 'duh' just as clearly upside down as right side up. "I'm looking under the couch. What does it look like I'm doing?"

I rolled my eyes again and stretched out on the floor so I was low enough to reach under the couch properly. I had just grabbed the laptop and was pulling it from the abyss for a joyous reunion…

And that was when Mello fell off the couch. And of course, Murphy's law dictated that he had to land right on top of me, and that I had to be startled enough by it to drop the laptop on my fingers and hit my head on the underside of the couch.

But then again, I wasn't the one who'd landed on a burned shoulder and was whimpering in pain, so perhaps I shouldn't have been complaining. "Mello? Are you okay?"

"…No," he mumbled.

Well, at least he was honest he was honest about it. That was more than I could say of him since I'd brought him home. "How badly did you hurt yourself?"

"I slammed my fucking shoulder into the floor, what the hell do you think?" The weight shifted off my legs, and I abandoned the laptop and scooted back out from under the couch. Mello was sitting on the floor, leaning on his good arm and looking like he was in utter agony.

I couldn't imagine why.

"Mello, I'm getting you some painkillers," I informed him. "And I don't care what you say, you are taking them."

I was glad that, for once, he didn't try to fight for his misplaced pride.