Note: Going on with the part dedicated to Snappygirl, and the Matt abuse part, you'll see why at the end of the chapter.
I can't tell how many chapters each of you will get but I'll try to make it as even as possible, and how long this will be, honestly, I have the plot but that's about all.
I'm sorry in advance for the bad that will happen there, I guess it's as hard for the reader to read than for me to write it. I'm talking about the whole fic, this chapter is really light compared to what's coming.
I challenged myself to include all the requests, that are supposed to be positive events like first meeting, first time they fall for each other, first date etc, into a negative background, and a negative relationship. Writing a situation I hate concerning those two, actually. Yeah, I like to torture myself ^^
Hope I can make it.
PS: chapter rewritten on december 2nd, 2009.
"Matt!" the blond opened every closet on his way through Wammy's corridors, "Matt where are you?"
He finally found the redhead, curled in the closet nearing the kitchen. Carefully, he grabbed his hand and pulled him out.
Unfolding his whole body slowly and painfully exiting the wardrobe, Matt faced his friend but kept his head down. Reaching for his chin, Mello lifted Matt's face to look at the extent of the damage.
A wide bruise was starting to show over his left eye, and the purplish color of his lips didn't bode well either.
"Matt, when will you fight back? What are you waiting for? That they completely ruin your face? Last time they broke your nose, and the time before, you almost lost your front teeth." the blond shook his head in despair.
Once again, the elder orphans had caught Matt in a corner just as he crossed the courtyard, up from the guardian's lodge where postal mail arrived everyday, to go back to the room he shared with Mello after going to check if his magazine had arrived.
The orphans were allowed to get a yearly subscription to the magazine of their choice, and when Matt wasn't playing his games, something he had started to do when Mello had offered him the device he had stolen to another kid as a revenge for beating Matt, he read magazines about games. Getting his hands on the newest issue each month was one of the rare things that could drag him out of the building. Usually, he would go with Mello, who nearly never let him wander alone.
But Mello had been called in Roger's office after a prank he had made to a child he hated, because he always seemed to get more attention than himself. Near. Younger, but smarter than Mello on the paper, and this, Mello couldn't stand it. If he wanted someone to want him, he had to be first in Wammy's ranking!
So along with working so hard he sometimes forgot to sleep, he couldn't help himself but trick the albino child, everytime he had the occasion.
Ten years old, and already, Mello had learnt to make his way through life and the hard law of the orphanage with his fists and feet. He didn't even question himself, if the easiest way was to punch, then he would punch.
"I already told you to wait for me, you know they never miss a chance to get you..." Mello sighed, as he dragged Matt in the bathroom of their dorm to clean up the blood off his face.
Matt winced but let the blond's fingers delicately wipe the red stains away with a washcloth. He briefly closed his eyes but shot them open when the warm feeling of Mello's hands disappeared.
"Matt, please, next time, wait for me, ok? I've told you so many times, either you wait for me, or you decide to fight for yourself, but don't just let them beat you like this without even saying a word!" the blond seethed, glaring into Matt's eyes. He shook his head again in front of the helpless look of his friend. There was nothing more than innocence in those pupils.
The heads of the orphanage, be it Mr Wammy, Roger or any of the teachers, had been more and more dismissive about violence among children. The more they scolded, the more the victims would be caught later for revenge. It was a neverending circle where the lion ate the lamb, and the whip of Mr Loyal was long forgotten.
And throwing out the bullies wasn't an option, they were too precious to go to waste in the outside world.
So orphans were kept in Wammy's arena, where the law of the strongest is always the only one valuable. The trained monkeys turned into preys or hunters, lambs or lions, and the circus director watched from a distant eye brains work and increase their potential, uncaring for a misplaced childhood blooming into an unsteady adulthood thanks to the constant watering of tears.
There's an exception to every rule though.
In the smallest of the orphanage's rooms, on the right of the building, at the very end of the corridor, the lion slept beside the lamb every night...
Mello ran through the corridors, his face contorted in a worried expression, as he slammed the sick bay's door open and rushed inside of the small room, making everyone start.
"Mello! Could you stop making so much noise?" the nurse scolded him with an angry glare as he approached the bed where the person she was taking care of was laid, the sole reason of Mello's presence in the small white ether smelling room.
Matt turned his head with difficulty to look at his friend, and smiled sheepishly, his eyes half lidded.
"Shit Matt..." the blond whispered, his eyes discovering the damage.
"Mello, language." the woman reprimanded him severely. He glared at her, and she stood up, leaving her place to the teenager as she finished tying the last bandage.
"Sorry..." the redhead whispered painfully.
"I told you! Fuck! I told you not to go out without me! You knew Ike would do that, he had been waiting for that for months!"
Mello was furious. No matter how many times he warned Matt, his friend would always go outside alone at a moment or another, and it would end like this. No matter how many times Mello avenged Matt, Matt would always be paid back at a moment or another.
But this time, it had gone too far. Matt's ribs were broken and his face was nothing more than a whole bruise, his lower lip cut in two. Even his old scars from the night he had been slaughtered by the serial killer seemed pale in comparison to his current state.
Mello hid his face in his palms, sighing. Soon, he felt fingers creep clumsily on his right hand.
"I'm sorry Mello, I'm so sorry..." Matt was crying.
The blond stared at him a moment, then left, in silence. A feeling was slowly creeping inside of him, one that would rest here, nurtured over years with every bruise his friend would get, every trouble the redhead would put himself through: guilt.
Fifteen years old, and already, Matt had learnt to make his way through life curled in a ball, rolling along, only bumping from time to time on obstacles, getting hurt in the process, but going on all the same. If he met violence, he would only reply by bending his back and taking it, without a word.
Mello leant against the wall, breathing to clear the nausea away.
Not only would the bullies pay for that, but he would comfort Matt and nurse him to make him forget that he failed once again at being a good friend. Why did he have to let Matt go to see Roger alone? He knew it, he knew it, goddamn! It was always like this, and still, he had let Matt run into the danger. What kind of friend was he?
It was strange to cross this fence after all these years in captivity. But Matt and Mello were both eighteen now, and on this first day of february, they left the orphanage, no one being able to retain them anymore.
The cold was still biting and the wind still freezing, but Matt had never felt so warm, walking on this pavement he had stared at so many times from the window of their shared room in the orphanage, feeling free and so tied at the same time. Free from violence and hurt, but so tied to the one that was offering him this escape route, like a dog following his master willingly on a leash.
Mello had worked on this issue for months now, searching for a job and an apartment, since he had reach the legal age in december already, and now that Matt's birthday had finally come, Mello could, at last, keep his promise, and take him away from this hell.
And he could also runaway from a place where he had never been wanted. Never had he been able to rank first, and maybe, outside, he could change this, in the end, and have someone that would want him, wholly, fully, not just for his mental capacities. Someone whom he would be first for, in every aspect and without restrain.
They deposited their bags on the carpet, in the middle of the all-purpose room of the apartment Mello's small salary could afford. Except a kitchen and a bathroom, the place consisted of a single room that would be their bedroom as well as a living and dining room. They didn't have much furniture anyway, the few of them being a double bed, a couch and a small coffee table, but they didn't care, it was finally a place they would be able to call home, their home.
Mr Wammy had allowed them to take what they had in their dorm at the orphanage: a laptop, a TV, gaming consoles, but that was about all.
Matt looked around him. The peeling paint on the ceiling was beautiful. The washed out decorating paper on the walls was of the most pretty dirty yellow he had seen, and even the stained and cigarette burnt old rug on the floor was soft under his feet. But what made the apartment perfect, above all, was the blond standing in the middle of this paradise. After all, it was normal to find an angel in paradise, right?
Matt approached the window, looking at the snow that covered the streets and had finally stopped falling. Then he turned around as Mello joined him.
"You didn't lie." the redhead simply said, and smiled.
Mello smiled back. He was now the first adult that hadn't lied to Matt.
Mello had quickly been fired from his job as a waiter, after a fight with one of his female workmates over 'the cute redhead that came to pick you up yesterday'. Mello had seen red after she had bugged him all day to get Matt's number and called the girl a bitch, unfortunately at the moment when the boss came behind him.
He had to find another job, real soon, otherwise there wouldn't be an apartment to live in anymore for him and Matt. So he took the easiest way again and joined the Mafia after several days of lying to Matt about his job going well and a fruitless search for something else to pay the rent.
He didn't tell Matt, because he knew that the less his friend knew, the better he could protect him along with not getting himself into trouble. You don't fuck up with the mob, and Matt had a proneness to attract bad luck like no one.
One night, Mello came home, late, as usual since he had begun working as a henchman for the local mob. He had drank several beers with his boss and if he wasn't drunk, he wasn't far from it. Once he managed to open the door with a shaky hand holding the key and legs that wouldn't carry him properly, he carefully stepped in the dark apartment, or at least, as carefully than his trembling legs could, trying not to wake up Matt who probably had to wake up early for his own duty the next day.
But the dark wasn't complete, for a little lamp was lit next to the bed, and Matt was reading.
Even with the alcohol, Mello could tell it wasn't a normal thing for Matt to do, since what he was reading wasn't a magazine about games, but a book, a real book. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, one of Mello's favorite books.
The blond approached the bed, and, almost letting himself fall on it, he slurred: "Matt, you read books now?"
"Calvin took my PSP today at work and you know the TV is broken so I can't play any other game, so I thought I could try to read your books for once." the redhead replied, his eyes betraying sorrow at Mello's reaction.
"Matt... why... did you let him take it? I mean... forget it." the blond sighed and laid on the bed, getting rid of his jacket and shoes.
"I'm sorry Mello..." Matt replied.
"Stop being sorry Matt, I don't understand you, whatever people do to you, you just accept it without a fight. You're not a kid anymore, and still you let this Calvin steal your game, just like that! What are you waiting for? I won't go to your workplace and beat the shit out of him to get your PSP back, Matt, we're not children, it's the real world and we're supposed to fight for what we want!" Mello exploded, spitting his words at Matt the best he could as his tongue felt heavy with the alcohol.
"I'm sorry..." Matt repeated, looking down at the book he had closed in his lap.
"Holy fuck Matt!!! Did you hear what I just said?!" Mello yelled, lifting himself on an elbow to glare at his friend, "Fight for what you want! Do something damnit! Don't just let people use you, grow balls for once!"
Matt looked at him, sad eyes on the verge of tears, and as he opened his mouth, about to say something, a fist connected with his jaw.