hai gaiz

Title: Regret
Fandom: Death Note
Author: WallofIllusion
Characters: Halle x Mello
Warnings: Implications of sex. (That's what it's rated for.)

Before long they had forgotten who started what and were pulling each other towards the bed, abandoning articles of clothing as they went. Halle hesitated only once, when she came to Mello's rosary. Her eyes went from it to his face, questioning. In answer, he removed it himself and put it aside. This, Halle did not question. The temporary disregarding of ethics was no unusual concept for either of them.

Later, afterwards, Halle had almost drifted off to sleep when she felt Mello get out of bed.

"What?" she asked him. He had wrapped his coat around himself, stiffly, his shoulders hunched, and was watching the city lights through her filmy curtain. He didn't answer.

"What, Mello?" Halle sat up. He looked like he already regretted their passion, which made Halle's heart clench in indignation and shame. But she wished he would say something. She pulled a blanket around herself against the November chill and approached him.

"Halle," he said.

The warning in his voice made her stop. "What?" she said again, now impatient.

In a voice that tried too hard to be careless, he asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes." She didn't have to think to answer that. She'd known from the first time she saw him, despite her fear, that he was an ally: prickly, but not a threat. But he knew that, so why this question now?

"You shouldn't." He turned towards her, shoulders no longer hunched, eyes cold and impassive. "I don't have morals, Halle; I have an ordered list of priorities. You aren't high on it. You will never be high on it."

Halle drew close to him and touched his hair, coy. "No?"

"No," he answered, undistracted, almost distant. Halle could no longer tell whether his dark eyes were unfathomably deep or simply depthless. She stepped away, and she, too, turned her gaze out the window.

"Mello?"

"Yeah?"

"I trust you."

Mello shook his head slightly. "I'll betray you, Halle."

"I don't think you will."

They looked at each other. A painful smile twitched at Mello's lips: mocking again, but pitying and apologetic too. "Your funeral."

Okay, NOW this fic is over.
Though Melancholy (in "Notes") could conceivably be set the morning after.