Mello wanted a partner. He needed some back-up, but he wouldn't say why. Matt really shouldn't prod. It was money. It was money under the table. It was what he needed.
It had been a good three, four years since he'd seen Mello. Since those wild eyes held him in place. He never met them, preferring instead the green glow of the video game clutched between his hands, but he could feel them on his skin, greasy and slick. The world was shit now, a scary place to be. Not that it had much of an effect in this place. It was as dark and smelly and alone as it had always been. New York was no different in Kira's world than it had been before.
He'd last seen Mello when the boy had stormed out of Wammy's House, that hellhole they called a training center. A fucking institution, that's what it was. They were all fucked up when they came out, nervous ticks and cravings for chocolate, a need to always be solving and digging and piecing things together that maybe were best left alone. Matt had been there, had spent an ominous chunk of his days there, stuck in that desk, solving riddles and rearranging variables in complicated equations, trying to follow in the cautious footsteps of a madman.
He was never considered a successor; he didn't know why they kept him there. He was an animal caged and maybe that's what they'd wanted. Maybe they wanted to show the Mellos and the Nears that this could happen to them if they didn't study hard, think hard, idolize like fucking workhorses. They wanted the brilliant ones to see Matt and his kind sitting in chairs aimed into corners, feet up on the wall while they played their video games and counted their tiles and chewed holes in their mouths to taste the blood - anything to keep their minds from unraveling or folding in on themselves in that asylum, that prison for little kids, erected in the name of justice. Where was Matt's justice? Or Mello's?
Christ, Mello. Mello with his scarred face. It used to be so perfect, beautiful almost. The eyes had always been crazy, the mouth always slightly twisted. And those features were still there, standing out even wilder over the rippled, raised, paled flesh. Mello had been brilliant. And beautiful. Now he was a monster.
Matt pretended he didn't notice when the blond beside him took a too-large bite from his chocolate bar, a chunk tumbling down his chin to land in his lap. He pretended he didn't notice when Mello crawled up behind him, wrapped his long, leather-clad legs around his narrow waist. Just like old times. He felt - heard - Mello breathe against his ear and that rush was back in his head as his thumbs pressed at buttons and green, pixelated men leapt between treetops. It was just like back home. No. Not home. Back at the asylum. He'd be crazy if he let this madman pull him back in again.
"Are you in?"
Matt frowned and listened to the electronic sounds ricocheting around the efficiency apartment, scaring away the cockroaches. He wasn't in. He wasn't crazy like the rest of them with their oral fixations and childish addictions. He watched his digital man fall down a cliff. Game over.
"Why should I be?"
Mello's teeth nipped at his ear; he shivered.
"'Cause it'll be just like a game. It'll be fun."
Matt let his eyes slide shut and tilted his head back onto Mello's shoulder. "Like a game?"
"Just like a game."
Matt sighed. As Mello's fingers moved up under his shirt, he knew he couldn't say no.