Infatuation

As Mello walked down to the dining hall, hands firmly in his pockets in an unconscious imitation of L, he felt very discontent. These situations—L’s suggestion and L’s attractiveness—were simply not going to work. Near could not be dealt with. Near was impossible. Surely L, as the most intelligent human being Mello knew, would realise this in time.

Mello’s attraction to L, however—that was something that had a solution somewhere. There were two obvious answers: confront L or get a girlfriend. To his chagrin, his mind unhelpfully supplied the mental image of Matt in a sundress.

Well, actually…that wasn’t a bad idea, all sundresses aside. Matt almost certainly wouldn’t mind—after all, it wasn’t like they’d never experimented a bit before—perhaps if he simply focused all of his romantic feelings towards Matt, he wouldn’t need to worry about L. Solution!

Amazed by his own brilliance, Mello entered the dining hall and went to go sit next to Matt at their usual table, only to discover that Matt was not there.

The hell? Mello couldn’t sit by himself! He twirled around frantically to locate Matt and was appalled to see that he had sat down at the table where those kids who played Yu-Gi-Oh always were. Mello angrily strode up to the table; Matt had obviously made a mistake. He patted Matt’s shoulder.

“Hey, what’re you doing over here? You’re not playing Yu-Gi-Oh, are you?”

“The game is called Duel Monsters, Mello; don’t be stupid. I’m sitting here ‘cos I’m mad at you ‘cos you’re a berk.”

“What the fuck? You weren’t mad at me an hour ago!”

“Yeah, well, I forgot. But then I remembered.”

“Matt, do you even know why you were mad at me?” Matt turned slowly in his chair to stare Mello in the eye.

“You stole and turned off my Game Boy while I was about to beat Lance of the Elite Four in Pokémon Red. That is what you did.”

Seeing no other option, Mello tapped him on the nose. His hand was quickly swatted away, and Matt’s back was once again facing him.

“I had just beaten his Gyarados, Mello. GYARADOS.”

“Pssh. GAYrados, more like!”

“That’s not even funny. Now go away. I’m sitting with these guys because they understand me.” Matt gestured at the league of unwashed boys, all of whom were busily comparing monsters. Only one of them seemed to be inclined to speak at this point.

“Oi, redhead kid? Gyarados isn’t that hard to beat. He’s only level 58 in Pokémon Red, and Lance isn’t even the final boss—you have to beat Gary at the end. And if you use the Rare Candy cheat, you-”

“I DON’T USE CHEATS!”

The boy quickly returned to his deck. Mello, finding himself with nothing to contribute, decided to go back to his room. He had a large box of chocolate somewhere in his closet; he’d just eat that for dinner.

And Gayrados, he thought angrily, had been funny as hell.

Mello reclined on his bed, holding a textbook and nibbling a chocolate bar thoughtfully.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, changes in military organisation, weapons, and tactics sharply increased the cost of warfare. Because traditional sources of revenue were inadequate to finance these growing costs-

Fuck that. Mello was far more interested in, say, the French Revolution. Peasant revolts and beheadings were better than financing the growing costs of whatsit. He threw the book across the room in defeat just as Matt walked in.

Matt glanced disinterestedly from the abused textbook to Mello and seemed to deem a response inappropriate. He merely situated himself upon his bed, grabbed the Game Boy Mello had left there, and began to finish his battle with the sound turned all the way up as a form of petty revenge.

Mello groaned and shoved his head firmly under his pillow, but it failed to block out the digital cries of dragon Pokémon experiencing the agony of defeat (or whatever the hell that sound was supposed to be).

“Matt, use your headphones or something. It sounds like…like a pterodactyl being raped.”

“Hmm. That sounded an awful lot like this kid I used to know. Annoying bastard, he was. But I suppose it must just be the wind.”

“God damn it, Matt—now you’re just being immature. Now please at least turn off the light—I wanna go to sleep.”

“I am not sure why the wind wants to go to sleep, considering the sun just went down, but it did say please.” Matt took off one shoe and threw it in the direction of the light switch. Instead, it hit the door and fell on its side, sad and pathetic in its failure. Matt cursed under his breath, picked up the shoe and, presumably to restore some dignity, used it as a surrogate hand to flip the switch.

“The sun did not just go down; it’s been down for three and a half hours.”

Matt snickered. “The wind said ‘go down’.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

Mello tried his best to burrow below his warm, fluffy comforter and was deeply satisfied to note that Matt had turned off the volume. Mmm. Life was good. All was well. For roughly fifteen minutes.

Due to a general inability to shut itself off, Mello’s mind had taken the liberty of producing a modified version of that evening—a much-improved version in which L had supplied him with a giant chocolate cake of his very own while assuring him, in a sensuous voice, that Near would be put to death by firing squad upon the morrow, all before sweeping him off of his perfectly-groomed feet and kissing him passionately, then confessing his love in a voice made hoarse with passion while roughly ripping aside his and Mello’s shirts…

As this fantasy grew more explicit, Mello found himself wishing Matt hadn’t turned off the volume after all. He was developing a problem: a fairly ordinary problem with a fairly ordinary solution that he didn’t particularly want Matt listening to.

He couldn’t help but squirm slightly, knees knocking together and toes curling, heart beating faster and hands twitching. This was just stupid.

Keeping his ears alert for any noise from Matt, Mello allowed one hand to languidly trace circles on his abdomen while the other ran over his chest. Mello willed himself to believe that his own thin hands were L’s bony ones, that it was L who was sliding his warm fingers beneath Mello’s waistband and finally touching him, L who was rubbing in all the right places and pulling maybe a little too hard, but Mello didn’t mind at all—L who was picking up speed, going faster and stronger and FUCK that was really starting to hurt. Mello couldn’t stop his sharp intake of breath as dry friction caught up with his consciousness.

“I can hear you, you know.”

Matt had mistaken his gasp of pain for pleasure. Mello was about to correct him, then realised how easy it would be to fit this into his new plan of using Matt as a replacement for L. Matt definitely wouldn’t be able to resist…

“Hm. I guess you can either sit there listening, or you can pick the second option.”

“…What’s the second option?”

“Matt! It’s not sexy if I have to say it!”

“Oh. …Oh! No! I—I’m mad at you!” Matt was clearly trying quite hard to sound indignant, but there was a definite hint of regret in his tone that Mello was not above exploiting.

“Yeah. Shame, that. Sucks for you.”

“Mm,” Matt murmured sadly in affirmation. “Wait, no. How does that suck for me? Sucks for you! You’re the one wanking.”

“Yeah. I’m the one wanking, and you’re the one wanking to the sound of me wanking. And that’s just sad.”

“I am not wanking to the sound of you wanking.”

“Not yet.”

Matt made a sound of scepticism. Mello moaned in imitation of sexual ecstasy. This was shortly followed by the sound of covers rustling and Matt clambering into Mello’s bed. Mello grinned.

“That’s what I thought.” Mello wrapped his legs around Matt’s waist and decided, as he nipped at his neck, that he couldn’t be arsed to feign self-control. Matt seemed to have the same idea; forgoing his pretence of anger, he rolled on top of Mello and ground their hips together, fumbling for the zipper of his jeans. The pressure of denim was not helping Mello’s friction issue whatsoever.

“Matt…”

Matt looked up at the sound of his name, his eyes half-lidded and only vaguely comprehending. Mello himself didn’t feel too eloquent either, so he merely whimpered and scooted up while pushing Matt’s head down. Matt blinked at him for a moment, then seemed to understand and smiled smugly.

“Did you-”

“Shut up and suck me off, Matt.” Matt stuck out his tongue, but complied anyway.

Matt sunk below the blankets, leaving only the top of his head exposed. Mello marvelled momentarily at the ease with which he could imagine that the red hair was black. In the dark, there really wasn’t that much difference…but then he felt hot breath and a tongue and had to throw his head back with his eyes squeezed shut anyway. He grabbed onto Matt’s head, his hips writhing and his breath coming in pants and whines. It was entirely too easy to believe that the hot, wet mouth belonged to L—oh God, L.

Mello pulled weakly on Matt’s hair in half-hearted warning, but Matt either didn’t notice or didn’t care. It became clear to Mello that it was the former when he slumped back, completely spent, to the sound of Matt coughing and spluttering. He kept his eyes closed to avoid the glare he knew Matt was sending in his direction.

“That is so disgusting. I’ve told you that you need to warn me or something. Jesus.”

Mello frowned. When Matt spoke, he was clearly not L. His illusion shattered, he opened one eye and looked apprehensively at Matt’s exaggerated expression of disgust. “Whatever. Do you need me to-”

“Er, no. I kind of…I’m-”

“Oh, okay.”

It was always uncomfortable just after, when the sheer randiness had been dispelled and they were left to clearly see their sticky messes and awkward bodies that had previously seemed so deeply appealing.

Mello closed his eyes again and rolled onto his side; he felt the weight of Matt lift and heard the other bed creak slightly as it accepted him instead. He smiled to himself once he was alone, pleased that his idea of substitution had worked—for he was indeed not all that horny anymore.

But he definitely still wanted to try that with L.