End Transmission

Suggested Listening: Out! by Lunatica

Chapter Eleven: Bleed

Matt woke slowly, groggily, around nine hours later. He ever slept that long and it left him feeling sluggish and tired. Far more tired than he had a right to be after such a long sleep. He lay flat on his back and stretched for a moment before he curled onto his side and closed his eyes again.

He breathed in deeply after a long moment and sighed. He was still so damn tired... but knew that sleep would not return to him. Just as well, he supposed. He had things to do after all. He always had things to do, for the most part. It was generally best to get them done while he wasn't worrying too.

At least he believed there was nothing to worry about as Mello should still be home. He yawned and sat up, rubbed at his goggle-less eyes and groped blindly for the orange tinted lenses that were somewhere on the nightstand.

Finding them, he slipped them over his eyes and the pain that had begun to pool behind his eyes receded as everything came into focus and the ever present blur was left behind. Damn he hated his eyes. His eyesight had always been bad, but it seemed to get worse the older he got. He had already had to change his prescription twice in the last five years.

Knowing his luck he would be blind by thirty at this rate. Damn disease…

Assuming L didn't have them killed before then, or something Mafiya related happened to cause the same end result.

Matt stood up from the bed and wandered over to his dresser, where upon inspection, he realized that he had no clean clothes. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. It was time to do laundry.

He supposed he really should have seen it coming, as he hadn't done any in a while, not in recent memory at the very least. He would have to see if Near needed anything done while he was at it. He would have just done Mello's stuff, but most of it was dry clean only.

Matt and Near ended up doing most of the housework around there, as Mello wasn't home long enough or couldn't be bothered, and he couldn't help but feel like a housewife or hired servant sometimes.

They cooked, cleaned and did wash for the blond, the things that weren't dry clean only, and damn if Matt didn't feel stupid for avidly waiting for the blond when he was gone, like some pet waiting for their master to come home, or a lovesick teenager. Which he supposed he was. Damn that sucked.

With a sigh he pealed off the current shirt he wore and tossed it into the pile, a rather large pile that was sort of hard to miss though he had managed it, in the overstuffed hamper. With another sigh, and larger yawn, he heaved the hamper off the floor and left his room.

He walked, mostly naked, being clad in only a pair of one-up mushroom boxers, to the laundry room. Mello had paid no mind to the amount of money that was spent on the things in the apartment, merely going for whatever was deemed the best, and that included the washer and dryer. It paid to be in the Mafiya at times, Matt thought.

Though he was still only able to fit about half the pile into the first load. He really had gone too long without doing wash. He'd blame it on Mello and move on. Things were usually Mello's fault anyway, as Matt got so caught up trying to make sure the blond didn't get himself killed, or worrying about him, that everything else seemed to fade into the background.

Well that and he needed sleep and game time. But he sure as hell wasn't about to pin it on his games.

With the first half of his laundry in he wandered from the room and carefully peaked inside Mello's bedroom, after finding the door shut, to see that the blond was still sleeping. Matt smiled slightly; Mello really had exhausted himself.

He was sprawled, face first, into the mattress with the covers half off the bed despite only wearing a pair of boxers that hung dangerously low on his slim hips. Matt tore his gaze from their wandering and stepped lightly into the room and tugged the blankets up to the blond's shoulders.

Mello mumbled something and curled up under the new warmth of the blankets and Matt shook his head. Some Mafiya boss; Matt could have killed him by now if he'd wanted. Though maybe Mello simply felt safe with them... Matt decided he wanted to go with that.

He made sure to carefully close the door behind him, as quietly as possibly so as to not wake the blond, and was startled by Near who stood there silently watching him. When he was far enough away from the door he took a deep breath. "Fuck Near, you scared the shit out of me. Damn creeper." he added the last bit playfully and smiled as Near's lips twitched into a small grin.

"Mello is still sleeping I presume?" he questioned as his fingers played with a strand of hair, something he had never grown out of. Matt nodded and wondered how odd it must have looked for Matt to walk out of Mello's room in only a pair of boxers.

"I'm doing laundry, do you need me to do any of your things while I'm at it? I'm down to this pair of boxers and that's it, so my stuff will be in there for a bit." he asked while he wandered into the main room to find his cigarettes. Seeing them on the desk he lit one up and turned to Near who he knew had followed him.

"I will do my own when you are done. I do not have much else to do. There were no more attempts at the system whilst you slept. I will be taking a nap for a short while. Goodnight Matt."

He inclined his head to the shorter albino and watched as he disappeared behind the wall as though he were merely a ghost. Matt wondered if they would ever get used to the odd hours of sleep they received. Again it was Mello's fault, but neither of them minded much.

Matt smirked around his cigarette. It wasn't as though Mello even knew what they did to keep his systems safe, so not all the blame rested upon him. The rest could be placed on the idiots who tried to hack into it. Matt could hardly believe the amount of people a week, never mind a month, that attempted.

Most of the time the firewalls Matt had installed, just about the only thing Mello had let him do, which had been in the early days, stopped the offenders before they even reached the outer walls of the system; but enough times Matt or Near were needed to fend off the hacker where the firewalls had failed.

Only once had Near had to rouse him from slumber to get rid of someone. Matt had taught Near everything he had known about hacking, though they were both still constantly learning, but Near simply wasn't as good as him.

They generally took turns in monitoring the system but every so often their schedules ended up the same so they were able to spend time together. Usually Matt was able to get Near into a game of chess or dominos for a while.

But as the albino was going to sleep, Matt would have to entertain himself for a while.

His stomach chose the moment to growl loudly at him, reminding him that he had yet to eat anything in quite a while. Between sleeping and his energy drink feast, he'd had nothing of any real nutritional value for some time.

Not that what he planned to eat was much better. But it tasted good.

He pulled the box of toaster pastries out of the freezer and slid two of them into the toaster while popping a third into the microwave; and while it was not as good as cooking it in the toaster, it worked well enough. The ingredients were already cooked so Matt figured it didn't really matter.

He leaned against the counter only to jerk away as a shock of cold had run through him. He rubbed his side to warm it and really wished his clothes would finish soon. He would go and lay under the covers, except for the fact that he needed to monitor the system while Near was sleeping; and he would be more than tempted to fall back to sleep in the warmth of his bed.

With a sigh Matt took his breakfast and sat on the couch; the leather provided some comfort after the initial shock of sitting against the cool material. He ate in silence, having not bothered to switch on the television, and stayed seated for long moments after he was done.

He found that his thoughts drifted not nothing in particular and instead went to the most mundane things, wondering if they had enough laundry soap left for the rest of the week, or if the crappy game he was playing online would have been updated with new content yet.

The latter though, he decided to actually check out as he still had around another twenty minutes before he could place his things in the dryer.

The game did, in fact, have new quests added to it; though in Matt's opinion it could have been so much better. In fact, it rather bored him. But in the interest of passing time he sat there and diligently finished the quest, while making a note to perhaps, fix the glitches he'd seen. Simply for the fact that the programmers would be in wonderment of how the errors had simply disappeared...

With those twenty minutes up, and he didn't care if the wash wasn't done, as he would make it done, he left the laptop on and wandered back to the laundry room. It had just finished the last spin cycle and he grinned as the loud click of the door locking mechanism coming off sounded in the room.

He quickly tossed the clothes into the dryer and set it on high. He didn't worry about things shrinking as he generally wore clothes a size or two too big as it was. He shoved the remaining dirty clothes into the wash, having to completely pack the machine, and left it to do its thing.

Matt knew that his clothes would take longer than ten minutes to dry, at least all of them, he just hoped that one or two would be dry enough to wear. He sighed again. He was a genius, and yet he hadn't thought to simply pick out a shirt and jeans to dry so he could wear them?

Perfect.

With a grumble he sat back down at the laptop and decided on a game of solitaire. Or more like a few games of solitaire. At some point later he shivered and winced at the feeling of an oncoming stomach ache. He frowned and lit another cigarette in attempt to placate it, though he doubted it would. His body had never taken well to being cold, and at the moment, he was freezing.

The wash would still need to be in at least another five minutes for things to be moderately dry. He heaved himself up from the chair and went to into the kitchen where he proceeded to make himself a cup of coffee.

It would only warm him a little, but it was better than nothing as well as a good distraction; it was either that or count down the minutes in his head until the dryer was done. And that was not something he'd prefer to do.

With the coffee firmly in his grasp, cigarette held between his fingers, he took a sip and shivered as the warm liquid made its way down to the pit of his stomach. He hated being so damn cold.

And with that thought in mind, he decided that he could deal with something not quite dry, it would dry quick enough while he was wearing it. Gulping down the rest of the coffee the and leaving it on the counter, Matt quickly walked to the laundry room and stopped the dryer, which still had fifteen minutes to go.

He sighed in slight irritation, still not quite caring enough to get angry, when everything he touched was damp; far too damp to be worn. With a frown he chose a pair of jeans and found that only the legs weren't dry. He could deal with that. Or at least that was his thought until he put them on. He frowned at the unfamiliar sticky wet feeling of the denim but heaved a sigh and buttoned them despite it. It was better than nothing.

Most of the shirts however, having been balled up in the middle of the wash, were no where even close to being done and Matt doubted that even fifteen minutes would do it. The ash dropped of the end of his cigarette and fell onto the clothes but he paid it no mind in his hunt for a shirt.

He was about to simply go grab his blanket from his bed and huddle by the computer, which he should have done before, when he found one that was dry. Completely dry. It had been stuck on the outer wall and closest to the heat and was nice and warm.

The only problem was that it wasn't the same color as it had been when he'd put it in the wash that morning. He groaned at the realization that he had forgotten to wash his black and white striped shirts separately... now they were pink and black. He just wasn't having a good day.

He slipped it on anyway. He didn't really care, he'd just didn't like the color pink. At all. But the shirt was warm.

He closed the dryer door, after adjusting the remaining time to an hour, and turned around to see Near staring at him blankly; though for Near the expression was something akin to 'what the hell are you wearing?'

He had honestly thought Near would have slept a bit longer.

"I forgot to wash my reds separately." he shrugged. He would just have to buy more shirts, as after this he wasn't wearing any of the pink ones. He'd had about six black and white striped ones when he'd started the wash; he figured it was too much to hope that the rest of them had stayed that way.

Near's expression was slightly dubious, in his own way; as though he didn't believe Matt in the least despite not having seen him wear such colors ever.

Matt rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'm gay, but I honestly didn't intend to make my shirt pink. I'm not that gay." Near's lip twitched upwards in what Matt would call amusement. He didn't mind telling Near as he had known Near had suspected it.

"Besides, it's not like you've caught me whacking off to gay-porn or fingering myself." Matt told the albino in an offhanded manor, just because he could. And what the hell, he was on a roll; that and he wanted to see what Near's reaction would be.

Near just blinked in his usual bland way while still making it abundantly clear that he had not, in any way, needed to hear that.

Matt just laughed and walked off down the hall as though he had not just revealed to his friend that he possibly preferred to take it up the ass.

He went back to the kitchen to fetch another cup of coffee, out of the pot that he'd made, and sighed.

Really... it was almost a relief that Near knew. Now the albino would not look at him with that calculating look he sometimes got when certain situations arose; though that had also probably just solidified, in Near's mind, what his feelings for Mello were.

He really had no reason to hide it from Near, it was only Mello that couldn't find out. He wished Mello wasn't so hell bent on bringing L down that everything else was pushed to the side. But that was just how the blond was when he got obsessed.

And while Matt agreed that L had to be brought to justice, rather ironic in a way, he also wanted to live, at least somewhat, in the meantime, not simply exist. But both himself and Near had stopped trying to change Mello's mind years ago. It just wasn't worth the fights and subsequent silence that followed such actions.

Matt just wished that they had thought to protest long before it had become too late to do so; perhaps it would have gotten through? Though he knew it was useless to speculate. Mello was Mello and would do what he wanted, consequences and others feelings be damned.

"Matt." he turned to face Near, who held out a pawn in his hand, and smiled.

"Shall I set it up then?" he asked the albino as he stirred sugar into the cup. He didn't bother with cream at the moment as he wanted the liquid to stay warm for a while longer than it would have with the cream added.

Near nodded and he knew, not that he hadn't before, that the albino didn't care about his sexual orientation. He took the cup with him as they left the kitchen and went back into the main room, where the chess board was.

They would probably only play a few games, but it would be fun while it lasted. That was the thing though, any happiness around there only lasted a short while...

Matt didn't know how, but the entire L thing had to end, he wasn't sure how any of them could truly be happy otherwise.

-End Bleed-

AN: Ha! My favorite part is when Near finds Matt with the pink shirt. Honestly I was literally sitting at my computer and SOMEHOW, because even i'm not sure, my mind got from whack (as in kill) to whacking off in like 3 seconds flat and this was born...heh