DN -- Foul Deeds
Title: Foul Deeds
Collection: Fifteen
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Matt/Mello
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 864
Prompt: Foul deeds will rise/Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes. -Hamlet I-ii
Warnings: self-harm
Summary: No, light is necessary.
Author's Note: ...
6. FOUL DEEDS WILL RISE/THOUGH ALL THE EARTH O’ERWHELM THEM, TO MEN’S EYES
Mail Jeevas is a table lamp.
No, light is necessary.
He’s a puppy dog.
No… kicked and whimpering, yeah, but you have to take care of your pets, or they leave you, rather than the other way around.
He’s a chocolate bar.
Yeah.
Cheap chocolate, the kind that never sells out at the gas station minimart, the kind that’s just enough to get you through, ’cause it’s still chocolate, and that’s what matters. The kind you eat on autopilot. The kind you just consume, without appreciating it at all.
Mello licks his fingers and drops another crumpled wrapper to the floor.
Matt stretches to shove a warehouse-discount-store-size box of Easy Mac up on top of the fridge, and something in his back twinges, and his breath comes out Ah-!, and the corner of the cardboard hits the bottle of maple syrup, nudges it off the edge, and sends it crashing to the counter, where it shatters and splatters and splashes the toaster and the microwave at once.
Matt stares at the shards of glass now floating in the oozing syrup sea and wants to cry, because it’s crying or going over and punching Mello in the mouth. But Matt saw the bruises on Mello’s hips and ribs, saw that this scar was the deepest but not the first, sees now that Mello slips into his quasi-parallel universe to plot and plan and research because believing that he can do this is the only thing that keeps him together. Matt sees that it’s not even so much that Mello’s letting Matt take care of him as that caretaking doesn’t even cross his mind.
Matt gathers himself as he gathers the pieces, and picking the glass out is fun, because it’s like Russian roulette, whether or not he’ll prick his fingers. A few wet paper towels and some dish soap and a building ache in his knees, and you’d never know that something had broken here.
He tosses a plastic bag of chocolate bars at Mello’s feet, sings You’re welcome! in his mind, and goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. He doesn’t lock it, because some part of him’s still hoping that someone will open it and find him and know.
The bathtub faucet’s two settings are Scalding and Freezing, and he prefers the former by a small margin most of the time. It cools off as he sits and prods idly at the bruises on his knees, swiping soapsuds over them until they disappear. He leans back and thinks about how streaked and grimy all the tiles are. He needs to find an old toothbrush to scour the grout.
Humming softly, Matt takes the razorblade in slippery fingers and draws its edge across his wrist.
It’s funny how it’s like when Mello paints his nails-when Mello used to paint his nails. It’s easier to do the left side, because Matt’s right-handed, so he has more control.
He carves lovingly, the spluttering of the faucet drowning out his gasps when he gouges a little too deep, and as he breaks the scabs on Sunday’s handiwork, it feels like he’s cutting himself free.
Pain makes him feel human.
He’s making gills. He opens them here, on the tender, half-healed skin on the insides of his arms, and then he can breathe.
When he’s bleeding, he knows he’s alive. He wouldn’t otherwise. Mello wouldn’t notice either way. Matt’s a fixture. Matt is wallpaper. Matt fades. Or he would, except that the blood is bright, like his hair, like Mello’s eyes, and anything that hurts this much must be real.
And now his outsides match his insides. That’s fair.
It makes him happy, a distant happy like cotton-candy insulation for his heart, as he winds the gauze around his wrists like a sports player and tapes it down at the end. It makes him happy that he has a secret. It makes him happy that there’s something Mello doesn’t know.
Mello thinks he sees straight through Matt-thinks he knows him up and down, thinks he’s translucent and dependable, which is why he doesn’t care if he forgets that Matt is here, and real, with a heartbeat and a soul.
Then again, maybe Mello doesn’t think about souls anymore.
In any case, Matt hides the razorblade under the canister of Comet, because Mello could not be moved to pick up a cleaning product unless his life was on the line, and the odds of that happening in the foreseeable future are fairly low.
He leaves it close enough to the spare rolls of toilet paper, though, that Mello might knock it over reaching for something else, because the part of him that doesn’t lock the door, the part of him that doesn’t wash the tub, the part of him that leaves the gauze out on the counter and doesn’t explain, wants Mello to find out. Part of him-a lot of him-wants Mello to learn it, see it, and know that he has failed his only friend.
Part of him wants Mello to hurt as much as he does.
Collection: Fifteen
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Matt/Mello
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 864
Prompt: Foul deeds will rise/Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes. -Hamlet I-ii
Warnings: self-harm
Summary: No, light is necessary.
Author's Note: ...
6. FOUL DEEDS WILL RISE/THOUGH ALL THE EARTH O’ERWHELM THEM, TO MEN’S EYES
Mail Jeevas is a table lamp.
No, light is necessary.
He’s a puppy dog.
No… kicked and whimpering, yeah, but you have to take care of your pets, or they leave you, rather than the other way around.
He’s a chocolate bar.
Yeah.
Cheap chocolate, the kind that never sells out at the gas station minimart, the kind that’s just enough to get you through, ’cause it’s still chocolate, and that’s what matters. The kind you eat on autopilot. The kind you just consume, without appreciating it at all.
Mello licks his fingers and drops another crumpled wrapper to the floor.
Matt stretches to shove a warehouse-discount-store-size box of Easy Mac up on top of the fridge, and something in his back twinges, and his breath comes out Ah-!, and the corner of the cardboard hits the bottle of maple syrup, nudges it off the edge, and sends it crashing to the counter, where it shatters and splatters and splashes the toaster and the microwave at once.
Matt stares at the shards of glass now floating in the oozing syrup sea and wants to cry, because it’s crying or going over and punching Mello in the mouth. But Matt saw the bruises on Mello’s hips and ribs, saw that this scar was the deepest but not the first, sees now that Mello slips into his quasi-parallel universe to plot and plan and research because believing that he can do this is the only thing that keeps him together. Matt sees that it’s not even so much that Mello’s letting Matt take care of him as that caretaking doesn’t even cross his mind.
Matt gathers himself as he gathers the pieces, and picking the glass out is fun, because it’s like Russian roulette, whether or not he’ll prick his fingers. A few wet paper towels and some dish soap and a building ache in his knees, and you’d never know that something had broken here.
He tosses a plastic bag of chocolate bars at Mello’s feet, sings You’re welcome! in his mind, and goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. He doesn’t lock it, because some part of him’s still hoping that someone will open it and find him and know.
The bathtub faucet’s two settings are Scalding and Freezing, and he prefers the former by a small margin most of the time. It cools off as he sits and prods idly at the bruises on his knees, swiping soapsuds over them until they disappear. He leans back and thinks about how streaked and grimy all the tiles are. He needs to find an old toothbrush to scour the grout.
Humming softly, Matt takes the razorblade in slippery fingers and draws its edge across his wrist.
It’s funny how it’s like when Mello paints his nails-when Mello used to paint his nails. It’s easier to do the left side, because Matt’s right-handed, so he has more control.
He carves lovingly, the spluttering of the faucet drowning out his gasps when he gouges a little too deep, and as he breaks the scabs on Sunday’s handiwork, it feels like he’s cutting himself free.
Pain makes him feel human.
He’s making gills. He opens them here, on the tender, half-healed skin on the insides of his arms, and then he can breathe.
When he’s bleeding, he knows he’s alive. He wouldn’t otherwise. Mello wouldn’t notice either way. Matt’s a fixture. Matt is wallpaper. Matt fades. Or he would, except that the blood is bright, like his hair, like Mello’s eyes, and anything that hurts this much must be real.
And now his outsides match his insides. That’s fair.
It makes him happy, a distant happy like cotton-candy insulation for his heart, as he winds the gauze around his wrists like a sports player and tapes it down at the end. It makes him happy that he has a secret. It makes him happy that there’s something Mello doesn’t know.
Mello thinks he sees straight through Matt-thinks he knows him up and down, thinks he’s translucent and dependable, which is why he doesn’t care if he forgets that Matt is here, and real, with a heartbeat and a soul.
Then again, maybe Mello doesn’t think about souls anymore.
In any case, Matt hides the razorblade under the canister of Comet, because Mello could not be moved to pick up a cleaning product unless his life was on the line, and the odds of that happening in the foreseeable future are fairly low.
He leaves it close enough to the spare rolls of toilet paper, though, that Mello might knock it over reaching for something else, because the part of him that doesn’t lock the door, the part of him that doesn’t wash the tub, the part of him that leaves the gauze out on the counter and doesn’t explain, wants Mello to find out. Part of him-a lot of him-wants Mello to learn it, see it, and know that he has failed his only friend.
Part of him wants Mello to hurt as much as he does.