#73 Cows

"Hey, I need your opinion."

Mello's head rose from the depths of his desk, head-deep as he was in the Kira case.

There was his damn cohort, sitting there playing on his stupid d.s. on their cracked leather sofa, rescued from an Ikea dumpster and patched up with tape.

Mello growled in his throat, wondering how he, a fine, cultured young man who had dined in the world's finest restaurants with some of the worlds finest and handsomest people, had ended up in a cramped L.A. apartment that smelled of smoke and despair, with furniture scavenged from bins, and that huge dork sitting in it, taking up space and being annoying.

He had tried and failed to educate Matt on the finer things in life. Wine gave Matt headaches and they point-blank couldn't afford to go out to the kind of restaurants Mello deemed worthy of being seen in. When he'd brought Matt some designer clothes (in a desperate effort to make him look nice) they'd somehow ended up looking cheap on Matt.

Hell, even trying to get him to stop smoking had been a resounding failure that resulted with a very irritable Matt and a slightly nervous Mello.

It drove Mello up the wall to think that Matt could be satisfied with the crappy life they were etching out for themselves.

"What do you want my opinion on, dork?" he snapped.

Why did he always have to smile when Mello insulted him? As if it was a pet name, for gods sake… it really annoyed Mello that there didn't seem to be a thing he could do that would really, truly annoy Matt as much as the world annoyed Mello.

The gamer always said it was just a matter of not letting the bad stuff in, and remembering that there was always someone worse off.

And sometimes he winked at Mello and said 'Hey, even if you're calling me names, you're still talking to me, angel.'

Matt stretched and eased himself up from the couch, holding out his little hand-held, bleeping out its cheerful tunes.

Mello growled, "If its another level you've designed on that damn game I don't want to know about it, in case you hadn't noticed I'm sort of busy saving the world and kicking Near's albino ass."

That damn smile stayed on Matt's lips. "It's not, I just finished naming my cows in Harvest moon, I want your opinion on them. Since you're good at names."

Mello raised an eyebrow. That was a weird thing to say, even by Matt's standards. He wondered if the gamer was referring to his rather impressive grasp of languages and grammar, something that Matt had struggled with all through Wammy's.

With a deep sigh he took the hand-held from Matt, holding it by the edges, not in a tribute to L, but because if at all possible, he didn't want to absorb the 'dork' from it.

He tilted his head and scanned the screen. There was a list of the names Matt had chosen to give the bits of data, little pictures of the creatures next to them.

"Mmh, nice enough I suppose." He muttered, offering it back, before he noticed the slightly hurt look on Matt's face. "what?"

"You didn't read them, Mells." He mumbled. "I know you didn't."

Mello rolled his eyes, "Well I'm busy, and why is it so important to you anyway? Its some stupid cow names."

Matt's eyes narrowed behind the plastic of his goggles. "Mello, I know you don't get the stuff that's important to me, but if you care about me at all you could at least read them."

Mello sighed and once more lowered his fine blue eyes to the screen, reading aloud the names, just to be sure Matt couldn't whine to him.

"Will, Ewe, Mary, Mee." He snapped. "Weird names Matt. Who names their cow 'Ewe'? and isn't 'Will' a girl cow?"

There was a small laugh from somewhere in front of him, and Mello lowered the game to see Matt kneeling in front of him and holding out a ring box.

And it occurred to Mello that despite Matt annoying him, he couldn't imagine spending one day without the adorable dork. And that it took a lot of time and effort to get that many cows.

And that sometimes, the simple things were the best.