A/N: I'm back, I think. While this chapter may be nothing special, I suppose it's better than nothing. If I later decide that that is not the case, I'll delete it and fix it. For now, this is where it stands. Also, to the people who offered to beta for me before I disappeared, thank you and I'm sorry for almost definitely not getting back to you on that xD;; We shall see if I can get around to writing consistently enough that it would make any sense for me to even have a beta...
The next few hours watched me, tauntingly slowly as they passed, stare motionlessly and expressionlessly at the old-fashioned television. There was an asshole in my room in desperate need of medical attention which I would be somewhat capable and only slightly less than willing to offer, were my patient not, of course, an asshole. As that was the premise of the predicament, it seemed that there wasn't much for me to do just yet. Of course, my self respect was far too high to even allow the thought of just letting him die pass through my head. No, I had to fix him so that I could break him later and savor it.I waited until the sun set, just another hour or so later, and went to retrieve my lock-picking kit from the bathroom drawer where it was stashed comfortably in it's right place between the toothpaste and the deodorant. When I opened the door, Mello was asleep on my bed, in one of my shirts, just as I'd anticipated. The fact that he hadn't so much as twitched at the squeak of the rusty hinges spoke wonders of his condition. He was unconscious, and that was good. Still, though, I reached into my underwear drawer and retrieved two of the many bottles I had stashed within for emergency situations. The syringes were in a leather pouch under the bed and after a moment of blind fumbling through dust bunnies, I was ready to begin this makeshift surgery.
Unfortunately, though, Mello once again proved to be a bit tougher than expected. His one good eye lolled painfully open to give me a putrid look.
"It's a sedative," I explained as I slowly drew some of the clear liquid through the long, thin needle. I had no idea what I was doing, really, but it didn't show. My brief stint with heroin had done nothing for me as far as medical knowledge of needles was concerned. Mello's look didn't waver for a second.
"If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now. Or I would wait until you were in better condition so that I could do it later, with dignity. You've been unconscious for hours."
Mello's tired, blood-speckled eyelid slowly fell to rest. I took the liberty of injecting him with a small dose of the sedative, to be safe, followed by a small amount of morphine. I was no sadist, despite everything, and though I wasn't exactly sure how this cocktail of chemicals would affect my patient, I couldn't really bring myself to care much.
Patient. Patient. I had to think of him that way to stop myself from holding a pillow over the melted, sticky face of my former best friend. Patient, I reminded myself, and the pus and skin fragments would probably leave another ugly stain atop the Pollock painting that already decorated my formerly gray and blue striped sheets.
After fetching all of my necessary supplies-mostly from the kitchen cupboards where, it seemed, everything in my residence went to die-and allowing the medication a few minutes to take effect, I set myself to work. Scissors made quick work of the shirt Mello had helped himself to borrowing and ruining, but the charred leather was another story entirely. It needed to be soaked in lukewarm water, along with the rest of Mello's body, in order to undo all the work that Mello's circulatory system had begun to attempt, what with the drying out and the scabbing wounds shut, still full of dirt and shrapnel.
With minimal discomfort but maximum irritation, I was able to get Mello into my scummy bathtub and run some warm water over him. After another long minute of letting him sit, the leather came off easily, like the skin of a slightly improperly cooked fish and the water turned the murky, familiar brown of blood and soot and rot. Some indistinguishable time later, Mello's body was as repaired as one could expect it to be. The wounds were dressed with gauze, medical tape, and long strips of bandage tied over more Neosporin than any one person should logically have in their possession without reasonable cause. The wound on his face, however, was a completely different story. I had nearly forgotten all about it when I stood up to go find some rest on my saggy, lumpy couch, but a flicker of movement brought my attention right back.
I took a sip of the coffee I'd prepared in the midst of a cigarette break a while back. It was no longer warm and almost completely tasteless, but even the feeling of that cold, bitter liquid sliding down my esophagus was miles better than making eye contact with this broken, bandaged figure lying stiffly on my bed.
Somehow, Mello was awake. I had no way of knowing how long that had been the case and, if not for my scathing hatred of this man, I might have felt a pinprick of guilt. I personally had no experience with being awake during amateur surgery, but I just couldn't imagine it being entirely pleasant.
Mercifully, I reached for the morphine and the dirty needle lying beside it.
"No." The voice was dry as Death Valley and cracked more than once during the one simple utterance.
"I didn't peg you for a masochist," I replied as smoothly as I could manage around the disgusting taste the coffee left in my mouth.
"No sedative," Mello clarified, somehow managing to sound like an extremely off-put fish out of water.
"Fine." I poked Mello in the cheek with the syringe and injected the morphine straight into the area I was about to be working on. It wasn't the best idea I'd ever had, clearly, but it would take effect much more quickly that way and it was surely only a matter of minutes before the wound dried out completely again. The worst that could happen, I figured, was perhaps some loss of vision in the eye. Who cared, anyway? He had another.
I was not gentle with this wound. The wash cloth I used to clean out the burn was rough and slightly caked with whatever liquid it had last come in contact with. There was some hair in the way, but I simply couldn't be bothered to move it out of the way before pulling out shards of everything with tweezers and slathering half of Mello's face and neck with the Neosporin I'd spent nearly $150 acquiring a while back during a drunken stint with a part-time hooker who had managed to fall down the stairs and still make a profit off me not twenty minutes later. There were no fitting bandages left, so the wound was left to the open air.
Mello was still glaring defiantly at the ceiling, silent, when I dragged myself to bed in the excruciatingly early morning sunlight.
I suppose now would be as good a time as any to explain myself.
Now, there were many-nay, innumerable people in the world that wanted to see Mihael Keehl dead and, if not buried, then strung up like a hog by his toenails and set afire with blowtorches whilst short men in politically incorrect Native American attire danced around the corpse and whooped like banshees. I suppose, as far as motivation goes, I ranked rather low on the list. His laundry list was miles long and written in blood and urine.
There were so many hits taken out on him that I could probably get paid more money for putting a bullet in his head and taking pictures of the splattered brain matter than the average person touches in an entire lifetime. Of course, being a man of simple desires and nimble fingers, I didn't need the money.
I had no desire to kill him out of some misguided idea of euthanasia; I knew that if he was in any sort of pain, he caused it himself and wanted it there, as he enjoyed the suffering of any living creature, not excluding himself. He wasn't in any situations that death would be the most logical way out of. I did not want to kill Mello because I cared about him.
It was not revenge, either. He'd done nothing to harm me, or anyone I'd ever cared about-which was an admittedly short list, but probably could afford to lose a name or two anyway. As much as we'd argued and yelled and slapped and fought over the years, he'd never hurt me in any way that I hadn't already hurt him first. The only person I was ever angry about him harming was the childhood friend I'd affectionately called "Mellsy" for a while, until I'd realized it didn't bother him, and I was far beyond over that by now.
To be honest with you, I haven't the vaguest inkling of an idea why I wanted to kill him. The thought occurred to me one day when I was sitting on the pavement outside of Wammy's in the middle of the night some few weeks after Mello left and I was never able to let go of it since. Anti-climactic, yes, but the barest of truths. I was going to kill him, and I didn't care enough about him anymore to even wonder why I was doing it. This was how far we had fallen, and I embraced it for lack of a better thing to do.
Mello was beginning to question his sanity.
What kind of idiot, he wondered, would blow up a building whilst still inside it? And even more so, how could that idiot even begin to justify trusting someone as daft as Matt to clean up afterwards? He was in pain, and replaying every excruciating moment that was his life over the past few years. His logic was slipping. Near, despite his deplorable holier-than-thou attitude, would not have ever let any of this happen. If nothing else, his unshakable sense of logic would have almost certainly led him to a different person to rely on than Matt. Matt, who'd slept more during their basic medical training than Mello did that entire year. Matt, who had the most unsanitary hotel room Mello had yet to come in contact with. Matt, who'd been his best friend once, a long time ago in a place quite far away. Matt, who insisted upon pushing himself to the forefront of Mello's mind at every available and inconvenient moment that ever passed.
At least, he thought, he'd managed to rid himself of the insufferable horrors that were Rod Ross, Caboose, and the rest of the gang.
He sighed and imagined he could see his distaste as a tangible thing, curling up and stretching like a domestic cat, peering down at him from the ceiling.
Matt came in to get clothes after a shower some time later, muttering under his breath about all of the inconveniences he was being put through, and Mello pretended to be asleep until he actually was. For all his confidence and cockiness, he wasn't ready to face the world just yet.