Reposted due to technical difficulties.

Not my usual characterization of Matt and Mello.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nothing at all.

For the most part, Matt liked to think he could pride himself on being a pretty easy-going guy. He didn't contribute too much to the world, and he didn't ask for much back from it either. That was why when his best friend, who had been MIA for the last few years, had suddenly called and asked for his help with some mafia-related hacking, he had been a tiny bit reluctant to leave his comfortable apartment and start a life of crime. (Because no matter which way you looked at it, working for the mafia was a one-way ticket to hell, at least in Matt's opinion.)

But it hadn't been all bad. The pay was good, and while he missed his old apartment with its relative quiet, the room provided for him at the mafia headquarters was spacious and he still had all his old electronic systems plus any new ones that his various hacking jobs required. And being able to work with his best friend after all those years was a huge incentive for Matt. He would never admit it, and of course the ever-obstinate Mello wouldn't say it even if tortured, but the two had missed each other and the odd friends-but-closer-than-friends relationship they had developed at Wammy's.

So it was in light of all these facts that Matt put his easy-going personality to use to put up with all the things that inevitably happened at a mafia headquarters. He was fine when they had to drop everything and run one day, forcing him to delete important data, all for what turned out to be a false alarm. It didn't bother him when Mello disappeared for days on end, leaving Matt with the other men- who all turned out to be very dull conversationalists. He didn't even complain when he wasn't allowed to leave the base for three weeks in a row because Mello had 'a bad feeling' about some people loitering nearby one day. The fact remained that Mello was very, very good at his job, and Matt trusted him.

What did annoy Matt, however, was staying up for seventy two hours straight, breaking through every sort of firewall and security settings imaginable, knowing that one wrong stroke of the keyboard and they were all screwed, and then finally, finally getting to go to sleep… only to be woken a mere fifty five minutes later by what sounded like a cross between a cat being brutally murdered and the shriek of a pre-pubescent girl meeting her favorite movie star-- but ten or twenty times more pissed off.

Unfortunately, this sound didn't take long for Matt to identify.

Mello was having the temper tantrum of the century.

While Mello may have been a good mafia boss, he was also still capable of throwing a hissy fit the likes of which the world had never seen. Fortunately for Mello, this only added to his subordinates opinions of the blonde being as crazy as an axe murderer and in no way undermined his authority. But the fact remained that it was still completely, undeniably annoying, especially for the person responsible for calming him down-which invariably ended up falling on Matt's shoulders.

Matt listened for a few more minutes to the unmistakable sounds of furniture being overturned and property being destroyed, before grunting in frustration and pushing the covers away from his body. He shoved his feet into his sneakers and swung open the door of his room in pure irritation. He took a few hurried steps in the hallway, meaning to go towards the main room, where most of the shrieking seemed to be originating, when his foot came in contact with something unexpected. Matt looked down in surprise to find that the object in his path was a body.

One of the newer recruits, whose name Matt hadn't bothered to remember, was lying facedown on the floor. Matt nudged him with the toe of his sneaker and made a face. He already had to deal with Mello, so he really wasn't in the mood to deal with a dead body right now. Matt felt a little bit of relief when the man on the floor grunted in pain. Good, if he wasn't dead than he wasn't Matt's problem. He didn't even have to stop and wonder why the man was on the floor in the first place; he was far too used to the way Mello operated by now, namely a hit-whatever-gets-in-my-way-and-hit-it-hard mode of doing things . Maybe next time, the man would learn his lesson and stay far, far away from the boss when he was angry.

Matt's ears pricked as he noticed a sudden absence of crashes and yelling. Maybe Mello had taken a break from screaming or accidently knocked himself out. Thinking that would probably be too good to be true, Matt hopped lightly over the body in his way and made his way out into the main room.

A scene of absolute, Mello-style devastation lay in front of him. Furniture was upside down and broken, papers were everywhere, and- Matt noted with irritation- several computer monitors were smashed in. A quick glance around the room revealed that Mello was no longer in it; there were however two shocked looking men in the corner.

"Hey, you two!" Matt approached the men quickly, hoping they knew where Mello had stormed off too. If he was lucky, maybe he could find him before he destroyed any women or small children out in public. "Where's the boss?"

"He went out that way," one of the men responded, pointing a finger at the front entrance. "Wouldn't go after him if I was you. Boss is pretty pissed about something."

"Yeah, yeah thanks for the advice," Matt replied with a little bit of condescension in his voice. He knew more about Mello's moods than anyone- or so he liked to think. He took another look around the destroyed room. "You two get this place cleaned up before I come back with the boss. He'll just get angry all over again if he comes back and it looks like this."

"Yeah right!" The second man snorted derisively. "Like we're gonna take orders from some computer geek. Not even sure why the boss lets you hang around here; you're just in the way."

"Huh," Matt replied, a glint in his eye. "How about the two of you do what I say and clean up this room, or I tell the boss you try to sneak in my room and do inappropriate things at night."

The two men exchanged incredulous glances, and then the first one spoke up, "Why the hell would the boss care about that lie? You're just a third-rate hacker."

Matt narrowed his eyes. He could take a lot of things, but being called third rate wasn't one of them. "You're right, maybe he won't care. But you really wanna take that chance?"

The men both swallowed, obviously nervous. They knew something had to be up with the boss and that geeky kid who took care of all the computer stuff. They seemed a little too close. Not that any of Mello's men would ever call him out on it. Death would probably be a preferable alternative to what the blonde would do to the man who dared to broach that subject.

Matt smiled; he knew he had gotten them. He patted both men gleefully on the back and said, "So tell me boys, are either of you particularly attached to your balls?"

The two men took the unspoken threat without comment, and as soon the redhead had disappeared out the front door, they immediately started picking up the mess.

It wasn't hard for Matt to follow the path of dented property and frightened pedestrians to a nearby strip mall. After getting several eye witness accounts of crazy blonde woman in leather with a scar on her face screaming in Russian, Matt quickly made his way to men's restroom near an electronics store. He pushed open the door and slid in quietly, wondering what in the hell could possibly be Mello's mental breakdown of the day.

"Didn't I tell everyone to get the fuck out of here!" Mello shrieked from his place on the floor, leaning up against the wall and pointing his gun at the door without bothering to look and see who had come through it.

"Yeah, it's really too bad I've never been one to follow orders," Matt retorted, walking over to stand in front of his friend.

"Matt? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Well, I was sleeping, and then someone's dumbass little temper tantrum woke me up," the redhead replied, glaring daggers at Mello. "Now, how bout you tell me what's wrong right now, instead of making me spend the next couple of hours trying to pry it out of you. Because we both know in the end, you're gonna tell me, so you might as well make it easier on the both of us."

Matt expected Mello to glare back at him, call him stupid, or maybe even cuss him out. What he did not expect was for Mello to hang his head and say quietly, "It's my birthday tomorrow, Matt."

Matt was completely taken aback. Was Mello… sad about something? Matt could count the number of times he had seen the blonde truly depressed and not just angry on one hand. He thought for several moments about the best way to answer before finally settling on a non committal, "Really? And that makes you angry because…?"

Mello stood and walked over to the mirror, leaning in close to his reflection. The blonde traced one leather-clad finger over the ridges of the scarred left side of his face and said, "I woke up this morning and Near had sent me a message. He's closer than ever to finding Kira, and where am I? No matter how hard I try, I come in second to that brat. I'll be twenty tomorrow, and what do I have to show for my life Matt? Years worth of second-fucking-place and a revolting scar. I look in the mirror and I'm completely and utterly disgusted."

Matt sighed and let a small smile creep onto his face. "Is that all, Mello? And here you had me worried that something was actually the matter." The redhead hopped up and sat on the counter, sliding directly in front of Mello. "What do you see, Mello?"

Mello narrowed his eyes in irritation, "I see your dumbass face, Matt. What the hell, I'm trying to tell you how I feel."

"And so am I," Matt replied. "I'm looking straight at you, Mello. Do I look revolted or disgusted?"

"No. Seriously Matt, what are you-"

"I'm trying to tell you that it doesn't matter. You're going to beat Near and when you do, it's not gonna matter that you were second place. All that matters is that you will beat him. Do you get what I'm trying to say?"

"Yeah, I just-"

"Don't be such a drama queen," Matt quipped. There were only so many girly conversations he could have in a day. He hopped off the counter, grabbed hold of Mello's sleeve and tugged him towards the door. "Now come on, we're going to the electronics store; you broke some of my computers. Oh and Mello," Matt added, "I think you're beautiful, scar and all."

"Huh?" Mello looked like he didn't know whether to be touched or offended by the sudden statement. He settled on touched. "Really? That's um… that's really-"

"Don't make a fucking big deal about it. No need to come off any gayer than we already do," Matt snorted. "Now come on, computers don't buy themselves, you know."

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Beta-ed by: Emo-Nerdy-Insane-Writer