Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. If I did, Matt would've gotten a lot more attention, I mean c'mon, he's only the third smartest Wammy's kid.

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Ordinarily, the events that took place when Mello came home to the apartment he and Matt shared transpired as follows:

"Matt!" he'd scream the moment he stepped inside, slamming the door behind him. He didn't always have a demand in mind when he called out the name, but that didn't matter, he'd think of something. What mattered was getting a response.

"Eh?" Sometimes he'd have a cigarette in one hand and a Wii-mote in the other. Other times it would be the game cube or the x-box (What was the difference between these two items and why had he spent so much money to get both of them, Mello sometimes wondered privately) that held his interest. There had been a time when the Nintendo DS got the most attention, but Matt was abstaining from the DS for a while due to recently developing the habit of forgetting he didn't have a cigarette and absent-mindedly sticking the stylus in his mouth. The point was that no matter what time of day Mello arrived, no matter how much or little sleep Matt had apparently been getting, no matter about the fact that food was disappearing from the fridge and therefore the man must stop to eat from time to time, he was always distracted by some video game when Mello called to him.

Then, after more yelling and eventual use of the pause button, some excuse would be provided for aforementioned yelling. These excuses ranged from "We're out of Hershey bars again" to "I need someone eliminated and I don't trust my current underlings with something this important; shouldn't be that hard to do a drive by, here's the details..." Matt usually obliged to the simpler tasks (things involving shooting weren't all that bad, it was the long journeys to select stores to buy special brands of chocolate that got on his nerves) and then the shouting would cease and life would go on: Mello pecked away at his laptop with one hand and held a Hershey bar in the other while Matt picked up his game where he left off without missing a beat. This was the way things went, ordinarily.

However, tonight was not ordinary.

It started out ordinarily, though. "Matt!" Mello screamed, slamming the door behind him.

No response.

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Mello tried again, louder this time. "Matt!"

Intolerably forceful silence predominated in the apartment. At last Mello realized something may be wrong. No video game sound effects, no sounds from the kitchen to indicate the consumption of a mid-game snack, no snoring from the bedroom...

"What the hell..." Mello murmured, pulling out his gun. All the lights were out. He decided to proceed without turning any on to further alert any intruders of his presence, just in case.

Indeed, Mello found after a quick search, the apartment was completely Matt-free. Even though it was also free of signs of struggle, robbery, or foul play, Mello was somewhat panicked. Did Matt ever leave the apartment when he was gone? He never came home to new groceries in the fridge or anything; all evidence pointed to "no." But then what could be so important to make him leave today?

Nerves fraying as he tried to think of what to do about this situation, Mello was about to call Matt's cell phone when he heard a noise. Struggling to quiet his already shallow breathing, he crept toward where it had come from: the front door. Holding his gun ready he watched the door open from a dark corner of the hallway. The door opened. Mello lowered his gun and heaved a sigh of relief in the dark. It was Matt.

Sliding the door shut quietly behind him while balancing two Wal-Mart bags and one bag from Game Stop in his non-smoking hand, he tentatively called out, "Mello?"

Opalescent eyes glittering in the dark as he walked up to face to man, Mello growled, "Where the hell have you been?"

"The uh," Matt gulped. Obviously, Mello was pissed. "The Game Stop closes at nine and I had to pick up Winter Vengeance." The expression on Mello's face was a perfect dead-pan blank. "Y'know," Matt elaborated, "The new Zelda game I ordered in advance?" More blankness. "We're also out of cigarettes and chocolate, so I picked some up on the way home..." He held up the Wal-Mart bags in demonstration, one filled as much as possible with packs of cigarettes and the other overflowing with chocolate bars; Matt knew to buy in bulk. "I figured you'd probably make me go out and get chocolate when you got back anyway..." he continued, wishing Mello would say something.

A preemptive strike aimed at the daily task, Mello noted, not a bad idea. Aloud he still said nothing.

"Look," Matt said, having gone from nervous to frustrated, "I don't see why you have to be all pissy about this, so I went out to get a game, so what? Big deal."

A tense moment of silence passed.

"Had it ever occurred to you, while you were out," Mello began in a low voice, "That you are the closest person in the world to me and I'm in the frickin' mafia so I might be a little concerned for your safety in the event that you mysteriously go missing? That something might've happened to you, that it could have been a really 'big deal'?"

Matt was taken aback. Sure what Mello said made sense, but now he realized that the blonde wasn't just pissed, he'd been scared. As inconceivable as that seemed, something else got to him. The way Mello said "the closest person in the world to me." What an awkward way to word it. Why didn't he just say "my best friend"? There had to be a reason he said it so weirdly...

Eventually Matt mumbled an apology and walked into the kitchen to put the chocolate in the refrigerator. Mello remained by the door, watching him. Matt noticed Mello staring but didn't say anything. As he was about to retire to the living room to get a start on Winter Vengeance, he heard Mello call out to him. "Matt?" Walking all the way back to where the leather-clad mobster still stood near the doorway, he asked, "What?" What Mello did next was more mind-boggling than getting scared over a twenty-minute shopping trip. He kissed him.

As Matt's eyes widened in surprise behind their goggles Mello tried not to panic again. Relief washed over him when his red-headed companion didn't pull back. From this angle he couldn't really analyze if Matt's facial expression read "I think I love you too" or "What the hell?" but that didn't really matter. What mattered, Mello reminded himself as he eventually pulled away, was getting a response.

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Okay, so my friend absolutely hated that ending due to not getting to see aforementioned response. If you agree with her and tell me so in a review, I do have an idea about a Chapter 2 for this…