Disclaimer: Death Note & characters belong to Takeshi Obata and Tsgumi Ohba. Pokemon belongs to Nintendo and Satoshi Tajiri.

"Shut the window,"

"What?" Matt glanced up distractedly from the laptop balanced on his legs and peered across the dimly lit room at the irritated-looking blond stretched out on an armchair.

Mello glowered, "I said, shut the goddamn window. It's fucking cold out there and the heating in this place is shit." He nodded towards the half-open window on the opposite wall, which was covered with a lopsided shade as it had been for the past three days. The wind coming in from outside was blowing the shade out at a forty-five degree angle, and it would smack back against the window frame with a loud thwack whenever the breeze died down. Mello had been watching it intently for the past five minutes and he was about another two away from going insane.

Rolling his eyes, Matt's fingers danced over the keyboard as line after line of code flashed across the screen, reflecting in the tinted glass of his goggles. "Why do I have to shut it? I'm not cold." Seriously, the guy wasn't much of a genius if he thought it was a good idea to walk around in a teensy leather vest when there was snow outside. The whole leather thing made Matt laugh a bit, when he was alone and several countries away from Mello and his guns. Mello had always gotten annoyed back at Wammy's when people thought he was a girl, so what did he do? Dress exclusively in leather and grow out his hair, of course. Matt just assumed his friend was gay and had never brought the subject up.

"You have to shut it, asshat, because you were the one who left it open after smoking your stupid cancer sticks all afternoon." Mello flipped his bangs out of his eyes and glared caustically at the gamer. "Idiot. Where's my friggin' chocolate?" Feeling around blindly with one hand on the table behind him, Mello finally seized a bar and immediately ripped into it with his teeth. He pulled off the wrapper and spit it across the room before taking a large bite of the expensive chocolate and chewing contently.

"Fiiiine," Sighing, Matt set down his laptop and hopped over the back of the couch. It was sort of cold, actually, he thought as he reached up behind the curtain and slammed the window shut. Shame they couldn't put the shade up, but it would be too easy for someone to spy on them through the window of their second-floor hotel room. At least they'd be moving again soon. Hopefully this time it would be to somewhere halfway decent, instead of the dumps they'd been living in lately. Matt was tired of shitty wi-fi reception and of having to share lumpy mattresses with the blanket-stealing Mello.

Turning around, Matt shot Mello a cheerful grin and cracked his knuckles, "Hey, Mels, wanna play N64?"

The sound of snapping chocolate paused briefly as the blond looked over, then resumed while he shrugged absently and returned to inspecting his gun, "Maybe. What game?" He wouldn't mind playing a couple games with Matt, even though the redhead had continually kicked his ass at everything video game related since they were kids. But loosing to Matt at video games wasn't that important, and most of the games were pretty fun. Except for Mario. Mello detested Mario with every particle of his being. The stupid fat bastard spent his life running around tossing shit at turtles and rescuing the same princess time after time without complaint. If it was him in the game, Mello would've thrown a fit after the second time or so and told her to rescue her own damn self (and had in fact yelled that at the TV the day Matt bought Super Mario Brothers 3).

Matt jumped back over the couch and pulled his box of games out from below the TV. He toyed with the idea of pulling out some random Mario game and seeing Mello's reaction, but since there was still a gun sitting on the blond's leather-covered lap, that would probably not be so great of an idea. So after a moment of indecision, Matt finally pulled out a cartridge and tossed it at the blond. "Yes?"

Mello picked up the game and immediately rolled his eyes, "Pokémon? God, you're such a dork. Fine. But I get to pick first,"

"You always pick first," Matt observed, pulling the N64 out from under a pile of random garbage (old newspapers, chocolate wrappers, etc.) and plugging it into the TV. Mello tossed the game back and slid off of his chair, crawling across the floor to flop down beside Matt and snatch up the first controller. Pokémon was a decent game, even though he always felt sort of like he was eight years old when playing it. Matt grabbed the other controller and smirked at Mello, "Bring it on, blondie. Maybe you might actually hit me this time, eh?"

"Shut the fuck up," replied Mello, who had turned on the game and was now selecting the battle rules with a bored expression. "And close your eyes, dipshit," he instructed as the Pokémon selection screen appeared.

Sighing, Matt put one hand over his goggles and pressed the other to his chest, "You are so kind to me, Mello, babe. I think I might actually cry. Your sweet attitude and love of-" His speech was cut short as a leather glove came whizzing from Mello's general direction and smacked Matt across the face.

"I thought I told you to shut the fuck up. And you'd better not be spying on my team."

Matt laughed, one hand still over his eyes, and leaned back against the couch. "Ooh, cranky. Don't worry, I'm not looking. You're going to loose either way, though, my friend." Though he might always be number three to Mello's number two, when it came to things like video games and computers Matt was always the best. It was just because he thought that kind of stuff was fun, really; if he put his mind to it he could probably be as good as, or better, than Mello at everything else. Maybe even Near. But that wasn't Matt's thing. He didn't care about being some super detective and having the weight of the world on his shoulders. He'd seen what even the promise of that could do to a person and it just wasn't worth it.

"Yeah, yeah, we'll see," tossing down his controller, Mello stretched out on the floor on his stomach and yawned. "Your turn, Mister Pokemon Master." He snapped a square of chocolate off of his bar and popped it in his mouth, gazing around the floor in search of the glove he'd tossed at Matt. This was like things had been at Wammy's, just hanging around and playing games with nothing to think about but upcoming tests and whether or not they were going to get into trouble for switching all of Near's gundams with headless barbies. It was kind of nice.

Less than a minute later Matt had finished choosing his Pokémon and he and Mello were sitting next to each other, fingers pressing rapidly at the controller buttons. Every now and then one of them would curse and say something like, 'Aw man not my Dragonair!' while the other laughed and cheered for his Espeon. Mello's body rocked from side to side when he started to get into the game while Matt stayed totally still, green eyes trained on the screen and a cheery grin on his face. He had always had more strategy than Mello and picked Pokémon with offense, defense, and varying skills. The blond went for ones with high attack stats and flashy moves without giving a thought to battle tactics. Matt smiled when he saw Mello's first Pokémon: some people never changed.

After taking down Mello's Raichu with his Steelix, Matt laughed and smiled over at his friend, "Hey, Mels, remember the time I bought Emerald?"

Mello gave a grudging smile, "Yeah. I stole your Gameboy and tossed it out the window because you ditched me for a week to play with your stupid pocket monsters. You were so pissed," He grinned. That was a bit of an understatement. In fact, Matt had gotten so mad that he broke into Mello's secret stash of chocolate bars and dumped them all in the playroom while Mello was asleep. This had started a long power struggle between the two boys, or would have had Near not beaten Mello on a test two days later and totally distracted him from the fight with Matt. Though in all honesty he'd never been very good at staying angry with the redhead.

"Dude, I wanted to kill you," Matt laughed, selecting an attack for his Steelix to use on Mello's Charizard. "I think Roger did too, with all the shit we stirred up after. Crazy stuff. Oh, BA BAM!" Matt did a mini victory dance after Steelix took out half of Charizard's HP with Iron Tail. "Eat steel, baby," He grinned while the blond huffed.

"Roger always wanted to kill me. I think I still have scars from that goddamn cane. …Matt my man, I think we were just bad kids," Mello grinned, debating over which of the four attacks to pick. Shit, it didn't matter, Matt was halfway to beating him anyway. He would lose, as usual, and then they would go back to doing whatever things they'd been doing before they started playing. That sort of sucked, in Mello's opinion. Not that he would rather play video games than save the world from a psycho killer, but... Well, sometimes he would just rather play video games than save the world from a psycho killer. If, however many years ago, someone had said to him, Hey Mello, you wanna play Pokémon or you wanna risk getting murdered by some freak with a god complex and a magical note book, he would have gone for the Pokémon.

But Matt had had that choice, and he'd elected to follow Mello around the States and almost get killed at least once a week, for no reason other than he was just that kind of person. Goddamn. Mello sort of wished he was a good guy, sometimes. More often he wished that Matt had, oh, he didn't know, opened a fucking gaming store or something and lived out his life being a geek and selling kids violence in a box instead of being an ass and going with Mello. Shit. Mello's Charizard had fainted and his next Pokémon wasn't looking so hot, and in another five minutes they would be back to surveillance and hardly speaking to each other for the rest of the day in case they missed something while talking. Mello might have cried, if he was a whiny bitch crybaby sort of person.

"I love you, Mello," Matt said casually, not even making eye contact as he KO'd Mello's Zapados. He had seen the look on the blond's face, felt the nostalgia oozing from him, and knew he had to do something or there would be no living with Mello for the rest of the day. So Matt had said the first thing he felt, which a millisecond later he realized might not have been the best idea. Mello took feelings like he took insults; angrily and followed by a punch to the face for whomever had made the mistake of confiding in him. But, fuck. Not like it wasn't true, so there was no covering it up now. Hopefully all the leather did mean what he'd assumed.

Mello made a sort of choking noise, paused, then shook his head and grabbed Matt around the shoulders in a vice grip of a hug. Matt hugged him back as Mello buried his face in the gamer's shoulder.

"You don't know how much I wish that wasn't true."