Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note, which is probably good, because me and Mello would have many more issues if that were the case.

A/N: Okay, this is another chapter that took at least three rewrites, but I got it under control faster. I talked to MRS-Jeevas over on MangaBullet and she suggested I let Mello do what he wanted to do for a while, and it helped immensely. So a big thank-you to MRS-Jeevas. And to DessArtem, who's been faithfully beta-ing this stuff so that I have my proper Mello and semicolons. Love them both.

Chapter 12: Agents of Chaos

I had expected that once Mello was medicated, I would be less worried about him. Indeed, he didn't seem to be in extreme pain anymore, which was good. He wasn't even complaining, which was almost a relief.

It would've been more of a relief, though, if he hadn't been staring so fixedly at the ceiling. He hadn't made a sound since I'd given him the painkillers. If there had been anything remotely interesting about my ceiling I wouldn't have been quite as concerned, but this ceiling was made of the same boring tile as the ceiling in the bedroom and I was sure he was sick to death of staring at it.

"Matt…?"

"Yeah?"

"What did you do to your ceiling?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Because there's…something…wrong with it."

I looked up at the ceiling. It looked perfectly normal to me. "Mello, there's nothing wrong with the ceiling."

Mello frowned. "…Are you sure?"

"Positive. Are you feeling okay?" I wasn't entirely sure why I was asking, since it was clear something was wrong.

He considered the question for a moment. "I'm a bit dizzy," he finally decided, not taking his eyes off the ceiling.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "That's weird; this didn't happen last time. It's on the warning label on the painkillers, but…"

I stopped.

I looked at Mello.

He looked at me.

There was a long, long silence.

"You've already taken painkillers today, haven't you."

He glared at me. "Of course I haven't!" As if that wasn't one of the biggest whoppers I'd ever heard. "Why would I do that?"

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe because you were in mind-numbing pain? Seems pretty logical to me. Next time you're having an intelligent moment, tell me, because we clearly can't both be logical at the same time without you overdosing and seeing pretty pictures in my ceiling."

"It's not my fault," he informed me. "I never expect you to be logical."

If he hadn't been high, I might've actually been insulted. "Any other supremely logical things you've done today that I should know about?" There was no response, which was as good as a yes. "Out with it."

Mello's only response to that was to turn the other way and cross his arms over his chest in a gesture somewhere between defiance and sulking. It was probably meant to be one or the other, but it was beyond me to tell which.

Sighing, I got up and headed to the kitchen to get something to eat. I was pretty sure there was some sandwich meat in the fridge. However, I'd barely set foot in the kitchen when something that resembled a small, black missile went hurtling past my feet, nearly tripping me. "Holy shit!" I looked in the direction that the thing had gone. "Mello, did you see that?"

There was no response from the living room. He was sulking, then.

"Mello, quit sulking! Did you see that thing?"

"What thing?"

I went back into the living room, keeping my eyes peeled. "That black thing that just came shooting out here, didn't you see it?"

"Nope."

Not only could he see things on the ceiling, he couldn't see things on the floor. Lovely. "Where the hell did it go, then?" I muttered, dropping to my knees to look under the couch. At first I didn't see anything, but then I heard the sound of something skittering on the floor and a brief blur that looked like something leaving the space under the couch.

"I saw it," Mello informed me as I stood up.

"Really? I'm not surprised. Is it what I think it is?"

"What do you think it is?"

I was about to answer when something black, furry-looking, and, by the looks of it, whiskered, appeared around the bedroom doorway.

"That's a cat," Mello said. As soon as he spoke, the cat vanished again.

I rolled my eyes. "Thank you, Captain Obvious." He smacked me in the side, but I ignored it. "Come on, we've got to go catch it and get it out of here. How'd it get in, anyway?"

There was no response from Mello.

I decided I didn't want to delve into what he had or hadn't done that might've let the cat in. "I'll go see if I can find where the thing went," I said, heading into the bedroom.

I couldn't see hide nor hair of the little beast. It had to be in there; I'd seen it right in the doorway. I looked under the bed. No cat. Under the dresser? No cat.

Dammit, I did not need a cat loose! I already had one agent of chaos in the apartment; I didn't need another!

"The closet door's open a crack," Mello suggested helpfully from the doorway.

"I was just getting to that." I went over to the closet and opened the door properly. No cat. "It's not in here."

"Did you check the bed?"

"No, Mello, I checked everywhere else and neglected the most obvious place in the room."

"I never know with you." I heard him walk up behind me. "Your closet's a mess," he informed me. "You really need to clean."

I turned around to give him the most exasperated look I could come up with. "Really? I guess it's not my top priority right now." I kicked a box behind me in frustration.

And that was when a little furry bullet shot between my feet, collided with Mello, and roared off.

We both jumped, startled. "Where the hell–" I started, but I was cut off by Mello, who had lost his balance. He tried to catch himself, but ended up overbalancing me as well. We both landed in the closet, which joined in the falling fun by dropping several boxes on top of Mello.

"Ow," I mumbled, attempting to sit up to get away from an edge of a box that was digging into the small of my back. But no dice – I couldn't get my hands underneath me because of all the boxes, and even if I could have, Mello was sprawled on top of me. "Mello? Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he mumbled, not moving.

He may not have cared about getting up, but that box was really digging into my back. "Can you get up?"

He pushed himself up off me a bit, looked behind him, and then looked down at me. "Fuck. There's a box on my legs. What do you keep in this closet, Matt, bricks?"

"I don't know; I don't remember what's in every box in the closet." He didn't seem to either notice or care that his face was about an inch and a half away from mine. I was attempting to do the same thing, but failed miserably. He also didn't seem to care that his hair was in my face.

If I was going to name the one positive thing about that particular situation, it would be that his hair smelled really, really good.

On the negative side: I was going to kill that cat.

If we ever managed to get out of the closet, anyway.