AN: Oh. Hi there. Been a long time, you say? Yes, yes, I haven't posted anything in ages, I know. But my first year of college is over now so I can hopefully focus on my various writings! :D

I have a bunch started actually, mostly Death Note, so I hope you still like Matt and Mello 'cause that's probably all you're getting! XD In any case, I've actually had this written for a while, but I kept meaning to add to it and never did. Now I kind of like it as a oneshot, though I may add one more chapter to make it...a doubleshot? Mmm, sounds like Starbucks.

Well, then, here's your order of a Tall doubleshot M&M fic, not too sweet, with extra sentence-fregments on top. Enjoy! : 3

His breathing was soft and even as it filled the darkness, deep and steady and all around, an anchor and a curtain keeping the world sane, keeping chaos out to let the stillness reign for just these few hours.

His hair was a dull mahogany in the dim moonlight sifting through the missing chinks in the old blinds, a soft, warm color rippling with the tiniest motions of his breath.

His eyes, unobstructed now by the familiar plastic lenses, were closed, long lashes casting spidery shadows on the smooth white of his cheekbones.

His mouth was slightly open, relaxed, quiet little snores escaping occasionally from his throat to sneak past the parted lips. Those lips. Pink and full and soft. Warm. Pliant. Desperate. On his.

Mello ran his tongue along his own lower lip fleetingly, tasting the rawness where passion had broken the skin. He did not move, hardly dared to breathe, poised on the edge of the bed and putting none of his weight on it for fear of waking him. For fear of breaking the silence. The stillness. The now.

He wanted only this, simply drinking him in, seeing only him, only now, only those lips and those eyelashes and the gentle curve of his neck and the wide expanse of his shoulders and the dormant strength in those somehow sculpted yet scrawny arms.

He wanted. He wanted so much.

With one pale hand, silvery and bare in the moonlight without the protection of leather gloves, without even dark nail polish tonight, so bare and small and thin he hardly realized it was his own, Mello reached out to trace the air above his waist, following the arch, hovering over his shoulder, over his neck, where—when he looked carefully­—he could see the trill of his pulse against the skin. The hand continued, fingertips brushing the air centimeters over his cheek, over the curve of his ear, the warm messy mass of his hair. Without touching. Without waking. Without giving himself the chance to regret anything.

It wasn't like he had known what would happen. But perhaps he could have stopped himself. He could have stopped Matt.

It wasn't like he had wanted it. It wasn't like he had wanted it so badly. It wasn't like he needed the touch, the heat, the passion.

It wasn't like that at all.

It wasn't like he loved him.

Mello closed his eyes, but the image didn't change, his minds' eye providing him with the same sleeping form in perfect detail, down to every tiny freckle on his nose and every callous on those strong hands. He tried to remember the last time he had seen Matt sleep so peacefully. The last time he had seen Matt sleep at all.

He couldn't recall it. Matt didn't sleep much these days. Neither of them did. And Mello was never really around anyway. Never here, even when he was physically. Always looking ahead, he had never stopped for something so simple before, something as simple as watching Matt sleep. Watching the steady rise and fall of his bare chest, still glistening dimly in the moonlight with dried sweat. Watching the way his eyelids fluttered when he sighed quietly, the way his muscles rippled when he shifted, the way the tendons on his hand grew more prominent when he curled his fingers around the corner of the pillow, the way the sheets slipped a little down his hips and the way the shadows fell across his legs.

Mello opened his eyes, the scene still there before him as it had been in his mind.

Nothing was different.

Everything had changed.

Would Matt realize, when he woke up tomorrow? Would he notice? Would he even remember?

For the first time, Mello looked down at his own body. The first thing he noticed was that the pants weren't his. It wasn't as if he'd really cared so he had grabbed at the first thing he could find, and now Matt's old sweatpants were covering his legs, baggy and odd. They sagged low on his hips, too loose for his slightly thinner frame, and his eyes traveled up his own skin. Tiny bruises blossoming, small flowers of color in the silvery expanse of his flesh, on his waist, on his arms. When he touched them, feather light, the sensation was one of awe and admiration, never of pain. The strangest shiver would run up his spine, and he remembered the heat, the closeness, how right it felt.

How it felt to give himself to someone so completely. To let another mark him, to want to be marked. To forget, give in, let someone else take care of him for once.

He was so tired.

Every day, every night, every waking minute, even in his dreams, his mind was furiously working, spinning, leaving him behind. So much, so much to do and in so little time, so much he had to prove, so much he had to accomplish. He had no time, no time to care, not for himself and certainly not for anyone else. He was a man with a goal, and everything, everyone else was merely a means to the end he sought. Nothing else mattered. There was no room, there was no time, there was no place for weakness and no tolerance for need. There was only life, his life, the only way he knew it and the only way he'd ever lived because he was simply that kind of man.

The kind of man who had no room for love. Who did not want to be loved. Who had never been loved and hardly knew its meaning. Who had always associated the thing with idealism and fairy tales, never with the cruel reality of the world, because such a thing could not exist.

He was the kind of man who couldn't recognize love until it grabbed him by the arms and pinned him to the bed, until it was breathing heavily with hot sweet breath against his neck and tearing off his clothing with trembling hands. Until it left little flowering bruises on his hips and red rose marks on his chest. Until the sting of teeth on flesh and skin on skin were the only things he felt, and his body was slick with sweat, and tang of salt was in his mouth, and the faded scent of cigarettes and faint cologne filled his mind.

Crystal blue eyes traveled back to the sleeping form on the bed and Mello felt his tongue exploring his bruised lip once more. The tingle felt like heaven. The memory was rapture. And it was all so wrong, so different, so painful.

It wasn't like they hadn't done it before. No, not as if Mello hadn't come home angry and wasted and screaming and needing to vent, needing something, anything, and Matt had been there. Not as if he hadn't covered Matt in bruises. He'd done it more times than he could count, breathless and shouting and raving and crying. Matt had let him, perhaps not even because he couldn't have stopped him if he'd tried. He just let him. Let Mello take what he needed, let Mello deal in the ways he could. It was always the same, and it was never Matt's fault, but he was always the one hurt.

It wasn't need, it certainly wasn't love, it wasn't even lust. It was just something to prove they existed perhaps, something for Mello to prove to himself that he was strong and dangerous and feared because that's what he had always known. Weapons. Inside and out, he was a battleground. He was a war and he would not be beaten. He was a disaster and he would not regret it because to do so was to admit defeat, and he would not be defeated after all these years, after all the hatred and anger and burning and sin. He was fighting. He was always fighting.

Always.

He never gave in. That's just not what he did. Not what Mello did. Never.

So when Matt's mouth was on his and the stale taste of whiskey and cigarettes filled his lips and those strong calloused hands grabbed his wrists and took charge, why hadn't he pushed him away?

Matt never initiated it. Matt was there for him to use, and the redhead knew it and professed not to care. Matt was there for him to vent, Matt was there to be beaten, to be put down so Mello could use him to pull himself higher, to be stepped on so Mello could reach the next rung on some unending ladder of ambition. And Matt was always the martyr.

Azure eyes, still slightly too wide from shock even hours later, closed with reluctance, the beautiful image on the twisted and sweaty sheets fading into a forced darkness briefly before it all came rushing back.

Matt's mouth on his, parting his lips by force, pushing him back and slamming his body against the wall. Matt's arms on his, rough and demanding. Matt's chest against his, hot and close until their hearts beat the same wild pace beside each other. Matt's breathing mingling in his, Matt's hips pressing against his own, his legs tangling theirs together, his hair in Mello's eyes, his tongue on his skin.

He had been drunk. Drunk and stupid and impulsive and reckless and he hadn't known what he was doing.

Mello had been about to push him away. Mello should have pushed him away. Mello would have shoved his elbow into the idiot's throat and smashed his head against the edge of table beside them. He would have screeched and shouted and tied his wrists behind his back and pushed him to the floor and shown him exactly what he was. A toy. A means to an end. A useful tool.

A weakness.

And while in his mind he played out scene after scene of what should have happened, of what previous experiences said was normal, of what he had to prove and what lines Matt was overstepping, Mello hadn't moved. Yielding to the surprisingly strong arms wrapping around him, rough kisses, hoarse whispers, hot, living skin sliding over his, Mello hadn't struggled. And he certainly hadn't expected his body to react in the way it had, hadn't expected the whimpers escaping his throat, hadn't expected the tears in his eyes and the sudden need, inescapable and overwhelming to just let him.

Because when Matt held him, it didn't hurt. When Matt kissed him, he was not lessened. When he pressed himself close and lay on top of him and their bodies entwined until he wasn't sure what was his and all of it was his, Mello did not feel powerless or demeaned or needing to prove his existence. For the first time, he had felt complete.

He wondered if Matt had known. He wondered if Matt had been wanting to show him something. He wondered how Matt could forgive him and lead him to love despite all the pain and humiliation and hurt he caused the gamer every time he was home.

He wondered if Matt was just drunk and everything was simply a happenstance caused by too much whiskey and one too many all-nighters in front of the computer.

He didn't want to ask. He didn't want to know. He didn't want Matt to open his eyes and flinch at his nude body and assume it was like every other time. But he didn't want to tell him. And he didn't know what to do.

Slowly, the blonde slid his precariously perched body from the corner of the bed, letting gravity pull him down and folding his knees beneath him to lean back against the bed frame, watching the ceiling.

Matt's breathing was just above his head. He could feel the rustle of sheets when he moved. He could smell the sweat and that cheap cologne the redhead had bought himself a few days ago because of some similarity in its name to a game character or something. He could see the flash of orange plastic on the nightstand and the box of cigarettes beside it. He could hear the gentle snoring rumbling in that warm and well-muscled chest.

All the stupid little things, all the stupid little details. All the reasons. All the reasons for everything he felt, and everything he denied, and everything he thought he didn't believe in and everything he didn't know how to say.

All of it was Matt.

And somewhere along the line, somewhere between the violence, between the idiocy, between the chirp of game systems and beeping of computers, between the orange and the red and the stripes and emerald eyes, somewhere along the line, Mello had fallen in love.

Disclaimer: Matt and Mello belong to Ohba and Obata. Obviously. If they'd belonged to me, they'd have gotten a hell of a lot more screen time.