Chapter Text
From all these months together, Matt loved days like this the most: his ass sat on a kitchen floor, Mello walking past, the smell of fried meat thick in the air. His right hand holds a can of beer that's still freezing and full. A pile of clean laundry cradles the back of his head. Mello cooks breakfast so loudly it makes Matt want to cry with exhaustion.
It’s Friday night. He saw Mello kill a man for the first time today. Or, he saw Mello crash the grip of his gun against a man's skull again and again until it bled, which wasn't that much because he hit like he was getting a sugar rush from it. The man himself was armed (that's why Mello jumped him in the first place), but he didn't put up a fight. He was doe eyed, slightly taller than Matt, and his face turned green when Mello made a show of taking the safety off. His knees hit the floor hard. Once he was laying flat on the floor, breathing with a noise like a car was pressing on his chest, Mello shot him twice, then kicked his deflated lungs with the tip of a shiny leather boot. Matt, very stoned and drunk and drowsy from the trip, vomited on the entry rug. Luckily, he had only eaten two sandwiches like, four hours ago, so it wasn't that gross. Most of it was beer and cheese.
"Get the fuck in and close the door," Mello told him.
Matt babbled something between "shit" and "Jesus" and stepped on his puke on his way in, which seemed to piss off Mello a ton because he grabbed Matt by his arm hard enough to make him stand upright and kicked the door shut himself. His big eyes drifted to their feet for a second before pulling Matt away from the vomit. Mello's hands had been plush and lady-like even at Wammy's, but what he lacked in strength he made up for in vice. Matt's back hit the wall. His heartbeat spread from his body to the bricks of the house. It seemed to bounce around.
"Gimme a second, man, I'm not feeling well" Matt said, the taste of his voice strange to his own mouth. "I'm not kidding."
He wasn't. He hadn't been feeling great since the last few hits at two past twelve, when Mello came out of his meeting looking desperate with sadness, demanded to drive and pressed on the gas. He wasn't feeling great when Mello drove for another hour after leaving the city, then another one but into the woods, then parked the car in someone else's lot, in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Mello said, "You're fine."
"I don't feel fine."
"Cause you're fucking high."
"This is not–" Matt realized he was breathing through his mouth. The wet sound of the man's skull giving in played over and over on his oversensitive memory. He turned to stare at the limp body. It did nothing, of course, it hasn't moved from where it was sprawled like a crushed cockroach. "What are we gonna do with him? God, what are we even gonna do?"
He let Mello drag him by the arm around this dead stranger's house. There were no photos on the walls, but they walked past a bedroom with rows and rows of books. The bathroom was at the end of the hall. Mello locked them both inside and told Matt to strip down to his underwear while he ran the hot water.
"Get in."
He held Matt by the elbow to help him sit on the floor. When the spray hit his head, Matt's mouth and nose filled with water for a second and he coughed, gasped, hugged his naked arms to his stomach. Mello pulled forward him by the shoulder.
"This isn't your first bad trip, Matt, I can't have you doing this shit."
Matt tried to focus on his voice, trusted it to bring him back to earth. He tried with all of his strength not to think about Mello's steady pulse when he pulled the trigger. "What are we gonna do with that guy?"
"Take a look at this place. Do you think anyone is gonna come looking for him?" Mello stood up and pulled the shower curtain closed, caging Matt inside an orange rubber cocoon. "Find me when you ride it out."
He left Matt alone in the bathroom, went out with a bang, as per usual. Matt had never been so sure he was about to die. He cried because that's how he rides things out. It took an hour for the paranoia to stop and by then the shower was on the colder side and Matt had grown familiar with the rust the dead man seemed to cultivate on his razors. Mello came by with towels and a change of clothes and undressed while Matt was still there. He had bruised knees and blood around the nails. They got close enough for Matt to catch his ragged breathing.
"I left him in the guest room, so stay away from there."
Mello pulled the shower curtain closed before taking off his underwear. Matt was spent. He stared down at his leg hair, wet and soapy, pathetic, reddish brown, sticking to his skinny calves.
That was about two hours ago, when it was still dark. Now the sun rises high from the woods and they can fall into their little game of celibate boyfriend and girlfriend, have burgers and resentment for the munchies. Mello is angry at Matt for not holding his smoke and have the nerve to badtrip in front of Mello, right when he needed him to be Good, to be quick and smart and not ruin things, while Matt is mildly annoyed at Mello for killing a guy in front of him and not apologizing about it. Mello's part involved giving Matt the cold shoulder but cooking for him anyways. Hitting some pans, filling it all up with noise and smoke, cursing out loud at a burnt fingertip. He always had a thing for theatrics. Matt, on the other side, only has to sit below Mello's level and whine like a dog.
"Go get the plates," Mello says.
They take the dead man's fridge and make it their own. Breakfast is devoured under the pale morning light, the both of them with their knees tucked under their thighs, very apart from each other on the couch. Matt wants to know what is going to happen now.
"Someone's coming to take the body in a few hours."
"Who?"
"Someone who handles this kind of thing."
"A friend?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I have contacts, Matt."
"He has contacts." Matt's testing his luck now. His poor, fried brain works on booze and willpower alone and he’s been up for so long he’s on the other side of tired. He feels he could say anything. "What would your contacts do with a girl like me?"
Mello cuts a piece of his burger with the edge of his fork. "I can dispose of your body myself just fine."
There's an awkward silence where Matt does nothing but chew and stare at the bloodstain on the parquet at his left. Mello doesn’t seem to be very good at cleaning crime scenes.
"And after that?"
"I don't know," Mello shrugs, jaw set. "Might stay for a season."
Something at Matt's stomach burns a little, begging him to run. Depending on how deep you are into delusion you might call this burn "instinct" or "rational thinking", but since Matt has decided to ignore it altogether, it's whatever for him. He just--shuts it up. He's good at it.
"Here?" he asks, failing to mask the tightness in his voice.
Mello looks him right in the eye for the first time since the sun came up. The relief is so intense his doped heart buzzes with it.
"Here. You have anything else to do?"
Matt knows Mello knows he doesn't. "Nah."
Mello stretches and leaves to dispose of his dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. When he returns, he's unbuckling his belt.
"I'm taking a nap," he says.
Matt watches him disappear into one of the bedrooms down the hallway. He listens at the bedsheets rustle, the mattress cracks. The living room stinks with the aftermath of death so he finishes his food standing in the kitchen, gulps down a liter of water and snoops on the pantries without Mello surveilling his every movement. There's a lot of tuna cans, lots of rice. He leaves everything out of order.
A small, square window above the sink shows part of a fence and miles of autumn crisp forest. Maybe the dead man was lonely enough that his death didn't mean much for anyone in the whole wide world. Maybe Mello was right.
Mello sleeps on his stomach with both hands under the pillow, pink lips parted and dry. Shirt off. Pants off. Socks off, which always weirded Matt out. The bedroom is too dark to see anything. Black out curtains, that’s great. A digital clock on the night table lights a black leatherbound notebook with the cybernetic green of nine in the morning.
Matt remains dressed. Mello's skin is warm with sleep, and he wishes he could curl around his bare feet.