since i took my AP test on Thurs (fairly sure i passed! :D) i don't have anything to procrastinate for by writing fic.

but now i have an epic fever, and i'm looking at a week of bedrest. so! looks like i'll be shipping matt/mello for that much longer, at least. wrote this in about twenty minutes, and it isn't really my best, but... the hell with it^^

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The subway train is crowded. I glance disinterestedly at the passengers across the aisle, most of whom have headphones on. Some stare glassy-eyed at nothing in particular, or peck at cellphone keyboards like pigeons in Skinner boxes.

Mello crosses his legs and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, and I smirk. "You're so camp."

"Oh?"

"Yep. Camp as fuck."

Mello drapes an arm possesively over me, and my heartrate ticks up. His fingers slide down my shoulder. "And you know what? It turns you on to no end, doesn't it?"

"That… that's not the issue in question here." What is the issue is that we're in the middle of a subway train surrounded by people who may or may not be homophobes. I do value my life, and to a somewhat lesser extent, my pride.

"I'm going to take you right on the floor when we get home," Mello says softly, and his grin is all teeth. "I'm going fuck you senseless," he whispers, nearly inaudibly, "and I'm going to make you scream."

Then he bites my neck.

I curse under my breath, and look the other way – fixing my gaze on a stain in the floor at the other end of the train – but I can already feel my face becoming flushed.

"Get the hell off of me," I mutter, mortified. But I don't push him away.

Mello nips my earlobe for good measure and settles back in his seat, smug. He removes his arm from where it's slung across my shoulder, though. I feel colder.

"I own you." His voice is matter-of-fact. His face is composed, but I shiver and the corner of his mouth twitches up.

Now we've attracted curious looks from several other passengers, and part of me really, really wishes the ground beneath my feet would open and swallow me whole. Part of me knows that it's never going to happen, and even if it did, Mello would find some way to keep me here.

Part of me thinks I should be mildly disturbed.

I shift awkwardly in the plastic seat, experimenting between sitting up straighter or hunching. Neither helps. Mello, of course, is practically reclining – relaxed, arms crossed now, legs splayed and out and feet solidly on the floor like he owns this train.

He tilts his head and spares me a glance from the corner of his eye. "Having trouble getting comfortable?"

I barely repress the urge to kick him in the shin.

"Or are you a little… too comfortable in certain places?"

The man seated across from us coughs and absorbs himself in a book. Part of me kind of hates Mello for doing this to me. In public. In front of other people. Christ.

Part of me is seriously turned on.

Several minutes pass, during the course of which I decide Mello is satisfied and I am not in danger of being publicly groped. I let out a sigh and lean against him, trying to calculate how far we are from home. Shouldn't be much longer. Idly, I grab his hand and fiddle with it. His fingers are so long. They're thin and pale, but I know how strong they are, too. I trace patterns on his palm, softly.

Mello graciously refrains from subjecting me to humiliation. Further humiliation, anyway. Maybe he's suddenly chosen to respect my personal space.

Good. Maybe he's come to accept that I have rights, and those rights include not being violated, mentally or physically, on a public fucking subway. Because I can say no. If he tried something like that, I'd say no, I wouldn't let him and he wouldn't get any. Right?

Right.

"Hey Matt."

"Yeah."

Mello turns his head toward me conspiratorially, and his voice dips down. "You do understand that the only reason I'm not raping your mouth in an obnoxious kiss right now is because you wouldn't stop me. And then I'd get carried away, because you'd start fucking begging for it."

…or maybe Mello isn't groping me because he just doesn't want to be interrupted.

I swallow.

Being with Mello is like playing chicken with a bulldozer. If you run away, you're a coward, but if you don't, you're a fool — a dead fool at that.

I run away. Besides, the sex when we get home will be great.

"Yeah."

"And stop with the monosyllabic answers. I know you're intelligent. Show it. Say something like 'Yes, Mello, I understand that I'm a whore and I'm grateful you have enough self control for both of us, because I obviously haven't got any'. Okay, Matt?"

"You can come off as a real jerk, sometimes." There's vitriol dripping from my voice, and I'm running through my mental inventory of 101 ways to kill Mello painfully.

"But you wouldn't have me any other way."

The train skids to a halt.

The anger goes out of me; I can't really help it.

I wrap our fingers together, and Mello squeezes my hand. His eyes are laughing. "I love you, you know that?"

"Asshole."

"Yeah."

I punch him in the arm after we've stepped onto the platform. And then, in the middle of a fucking crowd of people in the middle of the fucking subway station, Mello dips me back into a movie-style kiss. It lasts for ages. When he finally starts to pull back, I wrap my fingers in his hair and crush our mouths together again. I don't care about anybody else, or what they think. I just want his mouth, on mine, right now. I hear a weird mewing, and Mello breaks the kiss for real this time. He's looking at me strangely, from beneath hooded eyes. We're both breathing heavily.

Oh, shit.

That mewing was me.

Mello's right. I do start begging for it.

I turn on my heel and stride for the exit, and Mello runs to catch up. We walk up the steps in silence, and emerge into the sunlight on the busy sidewalk. The world takes no notice of us.

Thank God.

"So, when we get home…" I grin. I'm half-hoping he was only saying that to get me riled up. We had a conversation with Near yesterday that didn't leave Mello in the best of moods. Suffice it to say he needed some stress release.

I'm still sore.

Mello tips back his head and laughs. I wonder what it is that he finds so funny.

"Your face," he says, "the look on your face is priceless."

I'm not really sure what to say to that, except ask again, "Well, when we get home –"

"I was serious, baby. I'm going to take you right on the kitchen floor."

"That's not going to be very comfortable." Forget comfortable, that's going to hurt.

Mello raises his eyebrows in a way that makes me feel infinitely inferior. "Do you think I don't know that?"

"No." But I thought you cared, I add silently.

Mello smiles again, cryptically.

"What?"

"You. Just, you… you act like I should feel guilty for the things I do, but you'd be offended if I didn't. In fact, you'd be miserable."

Our apartment is a few blocks from the subway entrance. We're about to pass an empty alley when Mello grabs me by the shoulders and steers me into it.

"Can't wait, huh?" I quip.

Mello rolls his eyes. "Shut up, will you?"

I pantomime zipping my lips, locking them and tossing away the key. Then I wrap my arms around him, coyly.

"Honest to God, Matt, I treat you like garbage sometimes."

I'd say I know, and I love it, but my lips are metaphorically zipped. Instead, I sidle up to him and smile prettily.

"I don't know why you enjoy it," Mello growls, but he holds me a little tighter. "You are seriously messed up, Matt, you know that?

I grin and slide my knee between his legs. Mello lets out a little gasp and slams me back into the wall.

"'Kay, unzipping my lips now," I whisper. "I know, I know I'm messed up."

I start to trail kisses down his neck, and Mello shakes his head incredulously.

"But you love it too, Mel."

We stand like that for a few minutes, until Mello puts his hands on either side of my face and just stares at me. I can never tell what he's thinking, so I don't bother trying. I just stare back, content to have him this close.

"Whatever makes you happy, Matt. If you need to think I do this because I think you like that, then keep on thinking that. But the truth is that I'm going to take what I want, because I can."

I'm eighty percent sure he's putting on an act because he knows it makes me really, really hot.

Or he could be serious.

That turns me on even more.

"You're beautiful, you know that?" And it's true. The light catches his hair in just the right way, and he looks like an angel. His face is running through a thousand expressions, all of them sexy as hell. Even though it's totally inappropriate, I let myself slip up and admit what neither of us want to think about. "I love you."

But Mello surprises me. "That's good," he chuckles, "because I don't know what I'd do if you didn't. Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change..." Mello looks at me significantly.

"Is there something I'm missing?"

"Yes, you moron. It's a quote."

"…still not getting it."

"Never mind, then," he sighs.

"Can I kiss you again, then?"

But instead, Mello kisses me. And even though my back is pressed against a grimy, graffitied brick wall and there's trash at our feet and we've still got to walk four blocks to get home, I'm in heaven.

"So, who was that quote from?" I ask curiously, when we've realised air is, in fact, necessary and one cannot, in fact, kiss for extended periods of time without breathing. Somehow it's something I always forget.

"The Marquis de Sade ringing any bells?" Mello mumbles into my shoulder, before biting down hard.

That's going to bruise. "Mmmph. Uh, yes." Great. My lover is quoting the man from whose name the term sadism originated.

Mello slides his hands across my chest and unzips my vest, then tweaks a nipple.

"Yes," I gasp out.

"I know," Mello says quietly. "Do you still want me to take you on the kitchen floor? Because, to be honest, you're looking like you'd rather do that now."

"Does it matter what I want?"

Mello thinks this over. After a moment's deliberation, his hand moves to my crotch.

"What answer would you rather hear?"

That man has got fucking borderline personality disorder, I swear.

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