Acceptance
Nobody ever wanted Mail.
He was skinny and weedy, with a shock of red hair and poor eyesight. Whenever they lined the orphans up and let people from outside come to survey them for adoption, Mail was the one that was always passed over, usually for a younger, cuter, slightly healthier looking boy or girl. He took to ignoring everybody during his time in line, and that suited everyone well enough.
Until L came along.
He had been standing in line as usual, eyes half-lidded, wishing that this ordeal would be over so that he could sneak out and walk to the library half a mile away, where they had better computers than the single old dinosaur that the orphanage had in their tiny library. He hadn't even paid any attention to the whispers that had begun to spread as L made his way slowly down the line, until the man was standing right in front of him.
"What about this one?" he asked the woman on duty, his voice devoid of emotion or accent. Mail didn't look up. The man couldn't be referring to him.
"Oh, he's got some issues, sir," the woman said. "He hardly speaks to anyone."
Mail looked up in time to see L give the woman a cold look. "What is his name, Miss Bates?"
"Mail Jeevas," Miss Bates responded. "Left on our doorstep when he was hardly six months old, the poor thing. We did try to look up the name, but--" she shrugged. "No one's ever come forward to claim him."
"Hmm…" L said his eyes emotionless. Even with Mail's blurry vision, he could see that the man was odd, with his rail-like body, wide eyes, and shock of unruly black hair. He looked to be in his teens, maybe twenties. Surely he's too young to be adopting. What is he here for?
"Mail?" L's voice jerked Mail out of his reverie as the older boy extended a hand awkwardly. "I'm Ryuzaki. I've come to see about adopting you."
Mail stared at the hand for a moment, then reached out and took it. The fingernails were bitten to the quick, and L flinched when their fingers touched, but Mail did not let go. He never wanted to let go, even though he didn't know this man—boy—whatever at all. L tried unsuccessfully to extricate his hand from Mail's grip, but Mail held on doggedly, unwilling to let the one person who had ever expressed any interest in him whatsoever go.
x-X-x
What happened after the adoption went through, Matt could never remember very clearly. Those days passed in a whirl of happiness, far too profound to be properly recorded. He did remember that L had gotten him his glasses, the day before he arrived at Wammy's House, and suddenly, with a 6.50 in each eye, Mail could see truly clearly for the first time in his life. He remembered Watari showing him about the facilities, remembered drifting between shelves in the enormous library, and remembered his delight at the computer bank that had only recently been put in. He remembered seeing L a few times more, in between his work on a local case, remembered his astonishment at hearing that the boy was just five years older than Mail himself. The idea that, in five years, Mail could have been solving cases of his own was mindboggling. He remembered being fed a decent meal, warm and enough to go around, while the orphaned genii around him chattered in every language from English to Japanese.
But most of all, Matt remembered the tall blonde boy with the devilish smile, who tugged him into a game of Truth or Dare when he would have gladly hid in the corner the whole time, remembered being introduced to everyone else in the circle before he finally got the blonde's name.
"I'm Mello," he said. "You're my new roommate."
"I'm Ma—Matt," Matt had said, almost using his old name.
Mello had given him another brilliant smile and said, "You'll get used to it. Everybody does in the end. And besides, you've got me. I'll have you up to scratch in no time.
"Now, Matt, Truth or Dare?"
A/N—Probably not as good as some of my work, as I wrote this to try and get out of the deep dark abyss of writer's block…anyway, please R& R!