Note: This oneshot popped up this morning, as I abandoned my comfortable bed in the early hours, unable to sleep because of my significant half's snoring. It was supposed to feed my Frankenstein, as I began typing it as a short text, but it ended up bringing more and more ideas so it's finally a separate oneshot.
Don't trust the emotional beginning, it's crack.
Matt's thinking of his life and how he was scared of the monsters under his bed, and his thoughts drift along the way to random events.

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No one wanted to be my roommate back at Wammy's.

I arrived there when I was four, and my parents had just been killed on the road while coming home from a dinner in town. Who would have thought that having irresponsible parents, leaving their kid alone at home while they were having fun outside would save my life?
But at that time, being forced to go to bed just before they left (although they had told me they were staying downstairs, the liars), without a story, without even a kiss goodnight, I believed very hard that they had been eaten by the monsters under my bed.

I could hear them, every night, creeping, crawling, groaning. I imagined their furry bodies, large yellow eyes with goat-like pupils, long claws, and fangs poking out of their mouth, and I could even guess that they were multicoloured. What Muppets do to a four years old mind...

And so, when the Police came in the house, that night, and told me that my parents had gone to heaven, I knew, yes, I KNEW that, after ignoring my complains so many times, never checking under my bed and call someone to get rid of the monsters, I don't know, a zoo keeper, a rat killer, a hunt dog, whatever that could get rid of the creatures, the monsters had gotten them, sliced and devoured them.
My brain even went so far as think that the Police had saved me because it would have been my turn soon, and I decided that I would be a policeman later.

So when they sent me at Wammy's to learn how to be a detective, I exploded of joy. It was somehow like being a policeman, even better, right?

But I couldn't help it. Each and every night, I cried and shook because of the monsters. The ones in my parents' house had been destroyed, but here? There were so many rooms, with so many beds, and so many kids to eat, so there must have been billions of monsters!

And no one wanted to sleep in the same room than the 'Cry Baby', as they all called me. Not that anyone would have been able to, with the noise I was making.

You see me coming: Mello.
Yes, he arrived a few months later. And oh the look he gave me when I asked him, like I did with every newcomer, if he was afraid of monsters.

He was sat on the stairs leading to the courtyard, snapping large chunks of a chocolate bar, and he glared at me when I sat beside him, spitting at me a "I won't give you chocolate." that made me cringe. I didn't want chocolate, I didn't even like chocolate, but the way he said it, I knew immediately that he wasn't afraid of monsters. Not him, it was impossible.
So I had to ask, just to make sure, and maybe he would help me kill them.

"Get lost." he replied to my question.
I looked at him. In awe. I may have been only four, but that's all it took to tie the leash around my neck.

I just stayed there beside him, and I stared, stared, stared. Long. All the time he took to bite, lick, munch, swallow, I stared. He didn't show it, and he never said it, not even years later, but that's what it took to make his hand slip in the handle of the leash.

Once his chocolate bar was totally gone and his fingers licked clean, he turned his head, his hair lightly brushing his shoulder, but I didn't have time to gape in front of this golden halo suddenly catching the daylight because he set two crazy eyes on me.
I've never found a better word to describe them. God, in which Mello believes so hard, was crazy to give him those eyes. Insanely crazy. You don't give such beautiful gems, such mind melting, body numbing orbs to someone that will use them against the world to his own advantage. Those eyes are weapons of massive destruction.
The reason why I'm still with Mello today is because despite the destructive power of those eyes, they never done anything else to me than build something in me.

So he glared at me, but just like I saw the potential he had in him, concerning my monsters, he saw the potential in me that would serve him, and he smiled. Or should I say, he made that grimace that you could call a smile if it hadn't held so much of the insane thoughts in his mind. Roger used to say that Mello's smile was enough to punish him even before he did anything else, the mischief he was planning to do was already written all over his face.
But The Eyes prevented that. Even Roger retaliated when Mello looked at him, when he was about to get scolded.

You're gonna laugh, but I tried to do the same. Mello pulled me in so many tricks to the poor Near that I began to get my share of punishment, so, one day, after Roger had put me in detention once again, and noticed and confiscated my pocket game, I tried to give him my own version of The Eyes. I never scared him. Actually, he smiled, and Roger NEVER smiles. He went all 'awww' and let me go.

From that day, Mello had The Eyes, but I had The Puppy Eyes. And to Mello's disappointment, whereas The Eyes didn't work on me, my Puppy Eyes had the same effect on him than on anyone else (and believe me, I've never been one to feel guilty to use my puppy eyes on him, actually, it saved me a lot of trouble). It pissed him off, every time, but it also melted him, and that's how he ended up kissing me one day, but that's another story.

Back to my monsters.
You can think Mello was a hard nut to crack, a weird mind to understand, but he wasn't. Flatter him, and he deflates.
I was four, but I was a genius, after all. So I easily figured out how to get him to take care of my monsters. Don't laugh. Yes, I was a genius who believed in monsters under my bed.

"No one here is brave enough to kill them." I stated blankly.
"Kill who?" He glared harder.
"The monsters." He scrutinized me, looking for any sign that would show him I was joking, but I wasn't.
"Monsters?" He repeated. I'm pretty sure that at that moment he took me for a retarded.
"Under my bed..." I whispered, almost scared that saying it out loud would call them.
He stared at me for a moment, trying to decide if he should laugh or hit me (with years, he would abandon the thinking part and hit immediately, sadly...) but finally looked away, right in front of him, and stirred another chocolate bar out of his pocket.
(And it makes me suddenly think of how skinny he was. You'd always thought he was, looking at his thin frame, but if you considered that he had chocolate bars placed in all his pockets and, I suspected, even in his briefs, it made him even skinnier once they were gone.)

But back to my monsters. Once again. I tend to get distracted when it comes to Mello.
He didn't say a word as he ate the treat (which wasn't even a treat for him, it was food. Period.)
I looked down at my feet and waited. He had to do something at a moment or another, so I just waited in silence.
He stood up a few minutes later, and I followed. I thought that he would dismiss me at some moment, but he didn't. I even caught him glancing above his shoulder once or twice.
I was feeling extremely happy at that moment. Better, excited. (Yeah, like a puppy. You can say what you mean out loud.)

But my wagging tail stopped in a split second when he slammed the door to his bedroom abruptly (and I was still outside, of course...)
It felt like he had crushed all my hopes in the doorframe. So, feet racking against the thick carpet of the corridor, I went back to my room and I cried.
I didn't even have dinner that evening. I tried to distract myself from sleep as long as I could, when the curfew ring resounded at 10pm, with my pocket game, all lights on, but Roger came in at some point and scolded me for wasting electricity and shut the light off, as he was doing his night round.
I tried to play in the dark, but I could feel the fear grow in me, twisting my stomach and making me want to scream.
On the second round, around midnight, Roger scolded me for being still playing, so I had no choice but to save and 'try to sleep', as he said.
Yeah, like hell I would. With all the creepy monsters under my bed as teddybears?

At some point, I could feel them so close that my nose itched because of their hairs. I snuggled even more than I was under the sheets, and silent tears turned to sobs, until I was crying out loud, hiccuping and shaking.

I started hard when the click of the door knob resounded. Shit. Now all the monsters of the other rooms where coming to party under my bed. Why me? I thought. It wasn't fair, why not Mello? He had chocolate. Ah, monsters probably only liked fresh little redheads' meat...

I was about to scream, as something touched my arm, but a hand covered my mouth in lightning speed. A chocolate smelling hand. No, at that moment, I didn't realise it was Mello.
Actually, my brain created in a split second a story about the monsters eating Mello since he had just arrived (don't ask why my brain wouldn't process the knowledge that all of the other kids where safe, I was four and irrational), and they had stolen all his chocolate in the process, icing Mello's body with chocolate before sharing a leg, an arm, a buttcheek between all of them.
It's only when he hit me on the head and whispered an angry "Shut up, dammit!" that I knew it was him.

He lit the night lamp on my side table, and covered his lips with his index, commanding silence.
I wiped my tears to see him better, but he had already disappeared downward. Bending over the border of my bed, I saw him slip under it, a pillow and a comforter in his hand.
I quickly shifted to the other side, wondering if some of the monsters would be pushed out in the process, to make room for Mello (I was four, shall I say it again?), but I saw nothing.

And from that day, I've been sure, certain, convinced, that Mello could frighten any monster, like I knew he would the first time I saw him.

You can tell what you want about Mello's diva attitude, his egoism or whatever, but he spent months sleeping on the ground, under my bed, instead of his comfortable mattress, and this until I finally admitted that monsters didn't exist. It was the same day that I learnt that Santa didn't exist either, and this gave me another reason to cry for days.

Oh, if you ever wondered why I also hated Near, like Mello, although I didn't care for ranking and I knew he wasn't to blame for the fact that he beat Mello each time, here's the reason: Near was the one to tell me that Santa didn't exist.

Yes, I still resent it today, at twenty-one years old. Even with Mello standing in front of me right now in a red and white attire that he didn't steal to Santa, but Miss Santa (and now you get the mental image, don't you?), with a furry monster plushie in his hands, making a fake roar as he shakes the plush under my nose.
Yeah, rrrrrr, that's exactly what I was thinking, looking at Mello's legs in red fishnet stockings.

Right now, excuse me, but I feel the urge to show the monster in my pants to Mello...