DN -- Intoxicated, Part II
Title: Intoxicated
Fandom: Death Note
Pairings: Matt/Mello, Light/L, Mikami/Gevanni/Near (no, really)
Rating: R
Word Count: 10,603
Warnings: language; widespread drunkenness; assorted sketchiness; tactful sex
Prompt: "bitch bunnies"
Summary: Mello shoved a drink into his hand. “Less talking,” he ordered, “more drunken shenanigans.”
Author's Note: PART DEUX. ( Part Un.)
INTOXICATED (PART II)
Blearily, Mello opened his eyes.
This was not his bed.
This was not his carpet.
This was not even the hallway outside his apartment.
He’d fucked up somewhere.
A stream of expletives was welling behind his lips as he raised his head, finding himself in a neat, utilitarian bedroom. There were soft sheets and warm blankets draped over him, and the digital clock on the nightstand read 9:12.
AM, a piercing ray of sun gliding through the windowpane to blind him added cheerfully.
Mello was naked and hungover in someone else’s bed.
This wasn’t supposed to happen-he never let this happen. Mello always went home with the guy, bailed if he looked like a perv, slept with him if he didn’t, and then ran like hell. He always woke up first and fled, because mornings-after were fucking awkward.
Well, post-fucking awkward.
His internal clock must have been malfunctioning like a bitch if he’d stayed unconscious this long. Something was wrong with him.
Mello gathered the sheets around himself a little, too unnerved to be amused by his own cracked-out concept of modesty, and peeked out the window.
This place was five floors off the ground, and it didn’t have a fire escape.
Wasn’t that illegal?
Fuck.
He took a few deep breaths, slipped out of the bed, and hunted for his clothes. After fifteen seconds of scouring the floor, he noticed that a certain collection of leather had been carefully laid out on the desk chair, chumming it up with the two laptops (and probably another in parts) that occupied the desktop.
The more he thought about it, though, the less appealing sheathing himself in leather began to sound.
There was a pair of flannel pajama pants crumpled on the carpet. He picked them up, shook them out, and stepped into them, knotting the drawstring. Matt’s hips were broader than his.
He actually stumbled as the recollections flooded back-it was melodramatic enough to set his stomach to roiling, though the hangover certainly helped. Jesus Christ, Matt-Matt, who hit warm, wet, and heavy, like a tropical hurricane.
Mello ground the heels of his hands against his eyes, casting around for an anchor to focus on instead.
Nope. Everything in the room was tied to everything that had happened in it.
He floundered vaguely out the door, stumbled through the living room, and was struck with a wave of glorious scent as he neared the doorway to the kitchen.
Matt turned, glancing over from where he stood at the stove tending to his frying pan.
“Pancakes,” he confirmed. “Are you staying? I made a lot.”
Mello sat down at the table, in large part because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Matt put a stacked plate in front of him and set the syrup down.
“Have as many as you want,” he urged. “Usually I force-feed Light, but who knows where the hell he is.”
Mello pushed his hair back. His throat felt like a rusty scaffold trying to support his voice.
“Probably with L,” he rasped out. “The brunet, right? L was eyeballing him.”
Matt grinned, moving to the fridge. “Light wanted your friend bad,” he remarked. “Orange juice?”
“Sure,” Mello managed faintly. “Thanks.”
Matt beamed.
This had to be the weirdest one-night stand Mello had ever undertaken.
He sipped tentatively at the orange juice, in part because he had strongly suspected that some of the fuckbuddies he’d fled would have drugged him and kept him sedated for their own nefarious purposes if he hadn’t slipped away in the nick of time.
The larger portion of it, however, was the worry that Matt might not be the type to have used up all the orange juice before it expired.
This glassful was no sourer than it should have been, as it turned out, and Mello hid behind it, watching Matt. His hair was a brighter red in the sunlit kitchen-a deep color picked out with tones of coppery orange, and completely authentic, as far as Mello could tell. He was wearing ratty jeans and a black tee-shirt advertising for something called “Oingo Boingo.” Mello liked his arms and his elbows. He almost missed the stupid goggles, though it would have taken a whole chariot race’s worth of horses to drag it out of him.
Matt sat down and skewered a pancake.
“Did you say you were a detective?” he asked.
Mello nodded, attempting to keep his hair from ending up in the syrup.
Matt smiled.
“That’s really cool,” he said. “Do you get to carry a gun?”
“We’re more into the intellectual aspect of it,” Mello explained. “Though when we can’t get any good hired help, we do sometimes bust people.”
Matt’s eyes shone. “That’s awesome,” he decided. He then looked a little put-out. “I work in a cubicle.”
Mello winced sympathetically.
“It’s a pretty nice cubicle, though,” Matt rustled up. “I’ve got weird shit on the walls and stuff. And Light’s just the next one over, so we hang out and make fun of people and get our work done at the last minute.”
Mello was more likely to proclaim the sexiness of stupid goggles, but one of his favorite parts of work was playing darts with Near when L was out, so he understood.
“Well,” he managed, “that’s the important thing.”
Matt nodded and gulped down some of his own orange juice, which proved either that it was safe, or that Matt was insane.
Mello wasn’t sure he liked those odds.
He cut a wedge from the stack of pancakes on his plate and tried it. It was good.
There was, however, one thing missing.
Mello shifted in his seat and tucked his hair behind his ears, trying to look cute. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Do you have chocolate?” he asked.
Matt made a face. “For breakfast?” He realized that Mello was serious and stared.
“You must really like chocolate,” he observed after a moment of silence.
Mello smiled, only a little bit evilly.
-
L paused on the way to the kitchen the next morning.
Light was sleeping on the couch, his jeans and his Oxford shirt draped on the back, snuggled up with the spare quilt L had offered the night before. Horatio was curled up against the boy’s stomach and purring softly.
L’s own stomach was twisting most unsettlingly-he must have been more intoxicated than he’d thought, to have invited a stranger into his home. He didn’t even let Mello visit, though that was mostly because Mello always ate all the Rocky Road ice cream as soon as L’s back was turned.
It was strange, however, that he had welcomed Light in without a fight, and it left him uneasy. What was it about the boy on the couch that made L want to trust him regardless of the consequences?
Vaguely disappointed with his own appalling lack of circumspection, L stumped over to the covered dish of donuts on the countertop. He ate a favorable glazed specimen and licked his fingers, feeling a little better.
He jumped despite himself when he heard an unhappy groan.
L peeked into the living room, where Light had sat up on the couch, the blanket bunching around his waist, to consult the cat.
“I am so fucking hungover,” he confided.
Horatio’s ears flicked in a way that might have been sympathetic.
“Would you like some breakfast?” L asked.
Light started in surprise and then smiled at him sheepishly. “Oh. Yeah. I mean, that’d be great, thank you.”
L indicated the kitchen with a hand, and Light extricated himself from the blanket carefully so as not to displace the cat, who seemed to appreciate the sentiment.
L appreciated the view-Light in nothing more than his tight tee-shirt and his gray boxers was something you could charge admission for.
L pretended not to be calculating ticket prices according to ogling time (in quarter-minute increments) as he led the way to the kitchen and offered Light a donut.
Light chewed on his lip, which L also did not mind.
“Do you have anything-plain?” he wanted to know.
“Anything that won’t send a regular human being into a diabetic coma, do you mean?” L responded idly, opening the cabinets.
Light laughed nervously. “Yeah. Something more like that.”
Light considered the contents of the refrigerator and retrieved the sizeable bowl of fruit salad that he had assembled in a moment of extraordinary productivity. He proffered it to Light, who beamed.
“That’s perfect,” he enthused, “though I can’t eat it all.”
There was something wrong with this guy.
L supposed it was typical for models to have strange eating habits.
Obligingly enough, he found Light a smaller bowl and a fork, and then he set to making some extremely-instant coffee, which was the only kind he had the patience for.
He was willing to bet Light wouldn’t want any sugar.
Thinking about it, as he sat tentatively across from his guest and dug a tablespoon into the sugar dish, maybe that was a good thing. It left more donuts and fruit and sugar for him, after all. The two of them complemented each other.
This was a disturbing concept, to say the least.
He drank some thick, slightly gritty coffee and peered at Light over the rim of the mug. What was he supposed to do now? What did he say? “I had a bizarrely nice time taking care of you while you were wasted; do you want to go to lunch sometime”?
L considered. “Well, nice to meet you; please get out of my house” didn’t sound much better.
Light hesitated, fork most of the way to his mouth, and then set it down, clearing his throat.
“I-about last night,” he said.
L blinked quickly four times, then slowly twice, which spelled out hm in Morse code.
Light shifted and chased a grape around his bowl with the fork.
“Just… I’m really sorry I put you through all that,” he said, his shoulders sinking noticeably. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t how you wanted to spend the Friday night before your birthday.”
L added a little more sugar to his coffee and mashed it down with the spoon.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I would have spent it aimlessly wandering the bar if it hadn’t been for you.”
Light sipped at his own mug, looking unconvinced and unenthusiastic. “I was hardly good company,” he replied.
L was terrible at smalltalk, and he wasn’t too cut out for being comforting, either. His talent was in raw intelligence, so he used it-he tried to determine, from an index of experiences in cinema, television, literature, and daily observation, what a regular person might say at this juncture.
He concluded that regular people avoided this sort of situation.
He swallowed, and he decided to tell it like it was.
“To be very honest, Light,” he began, “I’m on my own so often that it has actually been-”
Horatio leapt up onto the table, Light flinched, and his mug slipped out of his hands, drenching his shirtfront with hot coffee.
“Sweet Jesus!” Light cried, fumbling to get the mug onto the tabletop as he scrambled to his feet, plucking the steaming cotton away from his skin.
“Take it off,” L ordered, already at the counter, where he jerked a paper towel from the roll, folded it, and soaked it in cool-not-cold water from the tap. Light obliged, gingerly holding the sodden article in one hand, and L knelt before him and held the paper towel to the epicenter of the prospective burn.
This amounted to being level with Light’s abs, in close quarters with his chest (and with other things that lay in other directions), which was another opportunity L could have sold at theme-park rates.
“Does it hurt?” he inquired, struggling not to get distracted by the coarse, dark hairs trailing most suggestively downward from Light’s navel.
Their owner set his jaw. “A bit,” he said.
L nodded idly. “That’s good. It means you haven’t obliterated any nerves.”
“Hallelujah,” Light managed.
“Quite,” L replied, peeling back the makeshift poultice. “Yes, this doesn’t look too bad. I suppose there are advantages to taking one’s time with one’s coffee, as it were.” He inclined his head towards the shirt dangling from Light’s right hand, feigning ignorance of the way it was dripping coffee on the linoleum. “We can take that down to the laundry room for you, if you like.”
“Well, I-I’d hate to impose,” Light stammered, looking down at him with something unlike any reluctance L had ever seen.
“You wouldn’t be,” L assured him. “It’s been very nice having someone to share coffee with.”
Light smiled. “And, apparently, to share with his shirt as well.”
L was slightly surprised to discover that he was grinning.
-
After he’d chugged a tall glass of chocolate milk, Mello looked a lot saner-more like a slightly jittery person and less like a cornered animal flexing its claws and pinpointing the jugular.
Matt toyed with some spare syrup on his plate and watched the sex machine (who had more than earned his title) from behind the safety of his eyelashes.
Mello paused in packing pancakes into his incredibly lean frame.
“Do you always treat people this well the morning after?” he asked.
Matt smiled. This guy really didn’t bandy words.
“When they stick around,” he answered truthfully, “yeah.”
Mello stabbed a pancake straggler viciously.
“You’re a full-service station,” he remarked.
Matt grinned. “If you want a show,” he added, “I can beat Super Smash Brothers faster than anyone I know.”
Mello raised an eyebrow. “A man of many talents.”
Matt waggled both of his. “You wanna see?”
“Sure,” Mello said, unexpectedly. “Let’s see.”
In two minutes, Mello was sprawled on the couch with more chocolate milk, and Matt was sitting on the floor before him, beating the shit out of people with the Master Sword.
“You bastard!” he shouted when Donkey Kong somehow managed to pull a fast one and dropkick him off of the platform. “Fucking cheat!”
“That shit is bananas,” Mello commented, completely innocently.
Matt had to pause the game to laugh before he made things even worse.
Weirdly, Mello just sat and watched and-this was really weird-cared as Matt burned through every level like the game was going out of style.
Mello was right about one thing-this wasn’t the way it usually went. Some of the girls left phone numbers-some of them even left valid phone numbers-but, once he’d fed them, they never stuck around. Having someone stay was totally bizarre and strangely… okay. More than okay-nice. Comfortable.
Matt didn’t want Mello to leave.
In fact, it sounded so terrible that, when he had reigned Super-Smashily victorious, he worked up the courage to turn around and look the sex machine in the eyes.
“I’ve still got a bitch of a hangover,” he reported, “but do you want to go out for lunch?”
Mello blinked, blue eyes brilliant, if a bit redder than they had been the night before.
“Me, too,” he said, “but… yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Matt had a tickly feeling in his stomach, distinguishable from and preferable to the lurching feeling engendered by the remnants of the booze.
“Really?” he said, feeling a grin overwhelm his face. “Cool. There’s all kinds of stuff down on the street; we could check it out.”
“Cool,” Mello agreed, making uneasy caution look awfully good. “I-can I borrow some clothes?”
Mello also made slutty leather look awfully good, but he might get arrested for disturbing the peace if he went out in broad daylight strutting that shit.
Then there would be handcuffs.
Matt needed a cold shower and a new brain.
In the meantime, he headed to the bedroom and turned up an outfit that wouldn’t turn so many heads.
This was Mello, so they were going to attract some attention, but Matt figured that some attention was better than pointing, staring, and drooling from everyone with eyeballs.
“I dunno what you wanna get,” Matt went on bravely, forcing himself to look away as Mello shamelessly dropped the pajamas to replace them with Matt’s offerings-not because he didn’t enjoy the view, but because enjoying it too much would have left him with another distraction he didn’t need. “What’s your favorite kind of food?”
He dared to peek, and Mello gave him a smoldering look conveying You so clearly that Matt shivered down to his toes.
“I like Italian,” Mello then answered guilelessly.
This was a fun game.
In twenty minutes, they were seated at a streetside café (French, not Italian, but who was counting?), and the girl behind the counter had hit on both of them in the process of giving them their total, which Matt had insisted on paying.
“That,” Mello was explaining, “was when I pulled out the warrant, and Lawli said, ‘Sir, if you were hoping for anonymity, making a bonfire of the evidence in your backyard was not the way to get it.’”
Matt laughed in mid-sip and choked on his lemonade, and Mello offered an apologetic cringe.
When proper respiratory function had been restored, however, Mello looked more solemn-almost… hesitant.
After just over half a day, Matt knew that that was uncharacteristic.
“What’s wrong?” he prompted, steeling himself to take whatever answer came.
“There’s just one thing I’m still wondering,” Mello divulged.
Matt tilted his head, trying to think where he’d been misleading. “What’s that?”
Mello reached across the table, seized a fistful of his shirtfront, and hauled him in for a deep, thorough kiss shot with a lemonade tang.
Matt melted into it, the prickling sense of other people’s eyes on him fading in seconds flat, and Mello became the only reality in the whole of the world.
When they broke apart, the blond sat heavily back, his eyes wide, looking shaken and perturbed.
Terror crept up Matt’s chest, and he blurted out the necessary question before it could freeze his voice box as well as his heart.
“What? What is it? I-”
“Fuck,” Mello said blankly.
Matt blinked.
Mello grabbed Matt’s unsteady hand and raised it to his cheek-warm, smooth skin, wispy pale hairs at his temple, the curve of his cheekbone, the shift of his jaw as he spoke.
“You kiss even better when you’re sober,” he announced.
Matt stared.
Then he grinned.
Then he cupped the other hand under Mello’s jaw and drew him in to earn the compliment.
-
Light was standing in his underwear in a stranger’s kitchen.
To his credit-such as it was-this was a situation with which he had absolutely no previous experience.
Hadn’t he had pants when he’d arrived?
He tried twice, managed to clear his throat on the third go, and attempted not to notice where L’s face was in relation to his last flimsy article of clothing.
On the upside, the awkwardness had caused him to forget the pain of the burn almost entirely.
“Why don’t I,” he said, “…um.”
“Yes,” L replied, which kind of made Light wonder what he’d proposed that L had been willing to agree to.
Odds were that they had both remembered Light’s jeans draped over the back of the couch, in pursuit of which he retreated, dodgily it had to be admitted, to retrieve the coveted denim and hop back into it with gusto.
He worked the fly, pulled his shirt on, buttoned it, and smoothed it down his chest, feeling a lot safer behind the bulwark of what he knew were snappy clothes. He always felt better when he knew he looked all right.
L had taken his T-shirt and wrung it out in the sink, and now he returned with it balled-up in both hands and held it out.
“I’ll get the detergent,” he said.
Light took the wet ball of coffee-infused clothing, turning only a little guiltily to watch L slouch his merry way to the hall closet-he was wearing what appeared to be yesterday’s ragged jeans and an old, slightly stained white sweatshirt, long and baggy enough to make him look strangely small and almost delicate. The neckline had slipped to the side enough to bare an angular collarbone, and L’s hands were half-enveloped by the sleeves, disappearing entirely when he curled his fingers into fists.
Light hoped unoptimistically that it was the headache and the hangover that were making him find all of these bizarre details so attractive.
L wandered back with the bottle of detergent, fishing in his pocket with long, pale fingers. His hand reemerged with a quartert of quarters.
“We’ll need a couple more,” he remarked.
Light dug into his own pockets. “Let’s see,” he replied.
Armed with a wealth of spare change, they trooped down the stairs, and L let them into the plain, white-walled laundry room with his little bronze key. It was warm in here, and one of the dryers was giving off a rattling hum. Fluorescence gleamed dimly on the linoleum floor, and the air was thick with the viscerally comforting smell of fabric softener and vaguely industrial cleanliness.
Light dropped his shirt into one of the washing machines, and he and L took turns tipping quarters into the slot. The timer came up, and the mechansims inside made the first overtures of churning and soap.
Light fidgeted-which was unusual for him-and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt-which was not. Apparently similarly inclined, L shifted his weight from one foot to the other, both of them bare on the tiles of the floor.
Then he raised his right hand and touched the pad of his thumb to his lips, angling his head in just such a way that his bangs fell into his beautiful eyes.
Light’s hangover had been making inappopriate suggestions since the moment he’d become conscious this morning, but now the voice egging him on was deafening and irresistible.
And, honestly, at this point, what the hell did he have to lose?
He crossed the narrow aisle between the rows of opposing machines, pushed L against the cold metal of the dryer at the other man’s back, and sealed their mouths together.
It was funny how sometimes even the most detailed fantasy, even endless speculation, even hours of imagining every second and every move, couldn’t prepare you for the real thing.
It was the sharp, invasive kick of coffee on their breath; it was the lingering syrup of the fruit just under his tongue; it was the overwhelming sugar-smooth taste of L’s donuts; it was clumsy hands with butterfly fingers, soft hair tickling at his cheek, and the great and intoxicating warmth of L’s slender body flush against his.
Speaking of flushes, Light had worked up a good one by the time he pulled away.
“Thank you,” he translated.
L’s pink tongue darted over his upper lip, and his eyes were bright and… devious?
“You’re welcome,” L replied-and shoved him up against the vibrating washing machine to return the favor emphatically.
This was a slow way to have a conversation, but Light thought he could get accustomed to it.
-
Blinking, Near discovered that he was wrapped up tightly in two men’s arms.
It was a bit cramped, to tell the truth.
On second thought, as Near settled better in the crook of Teru’s elbow, his cheek by Stephen’s neck, “cozy” was a better word.
The shift of his body had a domino effect-Teru stirred first, then Stephen did, and in a matter of seconds, there was a lot of bleary movement all around. Teru crushed a blind kiss against Near’s ear and sat up, fumbling for his glasses by the clock, as Stephen ran a hand through his hair and stretched, tugging his pajamas back into place.
Near curled his fingers into the flannel before Stephen could get up, garnering a hair-ruffle and an indulgent smile.
“If you want breakfast,” Stephen told him, “somebody has to make it.”
“It’s still early,” Near insisted-which was debatable, but the portion of his brain reserved for argumentative skill was still asleep.
Teru, bespectacled now, stroked a hand through Near’s hair and ran a finger down the bridge of his nose.
“I’m starving,” he declared. “I’m with Stephen on this one.”
Near frowned. “You’re ganging up on me.”
Stephen and Teru stared at his pout and broke out at the same time with a heartfelt, “Aww!”
Near rolled over and held a pillow over his head.
-
For a long moment, Quillish honestly believed that he had walked into the wrong office in the haze of his Monday morning.
L had a box in his lap, from which he was withdrawing various selections of chocolate-dipped fruit to eat-which would have been normal if the box hadn’t read, in straight, unfamiliar handwriting, Happy Birthday.
Near was curled up in his chair, but he also was smiling and glancing expectantly at his cell phone on the desktop beside him.
As for Mello, he looked so happy that Quillish tried to remember if he’d heard on the news about any unsolved homicides.
They all beamed at him where he’d paused in the doorway, which was very much in keeping with this incredible trend.
Quillish removed his fedora and hung it on the coat rack.
“Have they dissolved ecstasy in the water supply?” he hazarded.
L popped a chocolate-covered blueberry into his mouth and answered around it, “That would probably seem more plausible than the truth.”
Mello laughed brightly.
Quillish was never going to get used to this.
Fandom: Death Note
Pairings: Matt/Mello, Light/L, Mikami/Gevanni/Near (no, really)
Rating: R
Word Count: 10,603
Warnings: language; widespread drunkenness; assorted sketchiness; tactful sex
Prompt: "bitch bunnies"
Summary: Mello shoved a drink into his hand. “Less talking,” he ordered, “more drunken shenanigans.”
Author's Note: PART DEUX. ( Part Un.)
INTOXICATED (PART II)
Blearily, Mello opened his eyes.
This was not his bed.
This was not his carpet.
This was not even the hallway outside his apartment.
He’d fucked up somewhere.
A stream of expletives was welling behind his lips as he raised his head, finding himself in a neat, utilitarian bedroom. There were soft sheets and warm blankets draped over him, and the digital clock on the nightstand read 9:12.
AM, a piercing ray of sun gliding through the windowpane to blind him added cheerfully.
Mello was naked and hungover in someone else’s bed.
This wasn’t supposed to happen-he never let this happen. Mello always went home with the guy, bailed if he looked like a perv, slept with him if he didn’t, and then ran like hell. He always woke up first and fled, because mornings-after were fucking awkward.
Well, post-fucking awkward.
His internal clock must have been malfunctioning like a bitch if he’d stayed unconscious this long. Something was wrong with him.
Mello gathered the sheets around himself a little, too unnerved to be amused by his own cracked-out concept of modesty, and peeked out the window.
This place was five floors off the ground, and it didn’t have a fire escape.
Wasn’t that illegal?
Fuck.
He took a few deep breaths, slipped out of the bed, and hunted for his clothes. After fifteen seconds of scouring the floor, he noticed that a certain collection of leather had been carefully laid out on the desk chair, chumming it up with the two laptops (and probably another in parts) that occupied the desktop.
The more he thought about it, though, the less appealing sheathing himself in leather began to sound.
There was a pair of flannel pajama pants crumpled on the carpet. He picked them up, shook them out, and stepped into them, knotting the drawstring. Matt’s hips were broader than his.
He actually stumbled as the recollections flooded back-it was melodramatic enough to set his stomach to roiling, though the hangover certainly helped. Jesus Christ, Matt-Matt, who hit warm, wet, and heavy, like a tropical hurricane.
Mello ground the heels of his hands against his eyes, casting around for an anchor to focus on instead.
Nope. Everything in the room was tied to everything that had happened in it.
He floundered vaguely out the door, stumbled through the living room, and was struck with a wave of glorious scent as he neared the doorway to the kitchen.
Matt turned, glancing over from where he stood at the stove tending to his frying pan.
“Pancakes,” he confirmed. “Are you staying? I made a lot.”
Mello sat down at the table, in large part because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Matt put a stacked plate in front of him and set the syrup down.
“Have as many as you want,” he urged. “Usually I force-feed Light, but who knows where the hell he is.”
Mello pushed his hair back. His throat felt like a rusty scaffold trying to support his voice.
“Probably with L,” he rasped out. “The brunet, right? L was eyeballing him.”
Matt grinned, moving to the fridge. “Light wanted your friend bad,” he remarked. “Orange juice?”
“Sure,” Mello managed faintly. “Thanks.”
Matt beamed.
This had to be the weirdest one-night stand Mello had ever undertaken.
He sipped tentatively at the orange juice, in part because he had strongly suspected that some of the fuckbuddies he’d fled would have drugged him and kept him sedated for their own nefarious purposes if he hadn’t slipped away in the nick of time.
The larger portion of it, however, was the worry that Matt might not be the type to have used up all the orange juice before it expired.
This glassful was no sourer than it should have been, as it turned out, and Mello hid behind it, watching Matt. His hair was a brighter red in the sunlit kitchen-a deep color picked out with tones of coppery orange, and completely authentic, as far as Mello could tell. He was wearing ratty jeans and a black tee-shirt advertising for something called “Oingo Boingo.” Mello liked his arms and his elbows. He almost missed the stupid goggles, though it would have taken a whole chariot race’s worth of horses to drag it out of him.
Matt sat down and skewered a pancake.
“Did you say you were a detective?” he asked.
Mello nodded, attempting to keep his hair from ending up in the syrup.
Matt smiled.
“That’s really cool,” he said. “Do you get to carry a gun?”
“We’re more into the intellectual aspect of it,” Mello explained. “Though when we can’t get any good hired help, we do sometimes bust people.”
Matt’s eyes shone. “That’s awesome,” he decided. He then looked a little put-out. “I work in a cubicle.”
Mello winced sympathetically.
“It’s a pretty nice cubicle, though,” Matt rustled up. “I’ve got weird shit on the walls and stuff. And Light’s just the next one over, so we hang out and make fun of people and get our work done at the last minute.”
Mello was more likely to proclaim the sexiness of stupid goggles, but one of his favorite parts of work was playing darts with Near when L was out, so he understood.
“Well,” he managed, “that’s the important thing.”
Matt nodded and gulped down some of his own orange juice, which proved either that it was safe, or that Matt was insane.
Mello wasn’t sure he liked those odds.
He cut a wedge from the stack of pancakes on his plate and tried it. It was good.
There was, however, one thing missing.
Mello shifted in his seat and tucked his hair behind his ears, trying to look cute. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Do you have chocolate?” he asked.
Matt made a face. “For breakfast?” He realized that Mello was serious and stared.
“You must really like chocolate,” he observed after a moment of silence.
Mello smiled, only a little bit evilly.
-
L paused on the way to the kitchen the next morning.
Light was sleeping on the couch, his jeans and his Oxford shirt draped on the back, snuggled up with the spare quilt L had offered the night before. Horatio was curled up against the boy’s stomach and purring softly.
L’s own stomach was twisting most unsettlingly-he must have been more intoxicated than he’d thought, to have invited a stranger into his home. He didn’t even let Mello visit, though that was mostly because Mello always ate all the Rocky Road ice cream as soon as L’s back was turned.
It was strange, however, that he had welcomed Light in without a fight, and it left him uneasy. What was it about the boy on the couch that made L want to trust him regardless of the consequences?
Vaguely disappointed with his own appalling lack of circumspection, L stumped over to the covered dish of donuts on the countertop. He ate a favorable glazed specimen and licked his fingers, feeling a little better.
He jumped despite himself when he heard an unhappy groan.
L peeked into the living room, where Light had sat up on the couch, the blanket bunching around his waist, to consult the cat.
“I am so fucking hungover,” he confided.
Horatio’s ears flicked in a way that might have been sympathetic.
“Would you like some breakfast?” L asked.
Light started in surprise and then smiled at him sheepishly. “Oh. Yeah. I mean, that’d be great, thank you.”
L indicated the kitchen with a hand, and Light extricated himself from the blanket carefully so as not to displace the cat, who seemed to appreciate the sentiment.
L appreciated the view-Light in nothing more than his tight tee-shirt and his gray boxers was something you could charge admission for.
L pretended not to be calculating ticket prices according to ogling time (in quarter-minute increments) as he led the way to the kitchen and offered Light a donut.
Light chewed on his lip, which L also did not mind.
“Do you have anything-plain?” he wanted to know.
“Anything that won’t send a regular human being into a diabetic coma, do you mean?” L responded idly, opening the cabinets.
Light laughed nervously. “Yeah. Something more like that.”
Light considered the contents of the refrigerator and retrieved the sizeable bowl of fruit salad that he had assembled in a moment of extraordinary productivity. He proffered it to Light, who beamed.
“That’s perfect,” he enthused, “though I can’t eat it all.”
There was something wrong with this guy.
L supposed it was typical for models to have strange eating habits.
Obligingly enough, he found Light a smaller bowl and a fork, and then he set to making some extremely-instant coffee, which was the only kind he had the patience for.
He was willing to bet Light wouldn’t want any sugar.
Thinking about it, as he sat tentatively across from his guest and dug a tablespoon into the sugar dish, maybe that was a good thing. It left more donuts and fruit and sugar for him, after all. The two of them complemented each other.
This was a disturbing concept, to say the least.
He drank some thick, slightly gritty coffee and peered at Light over the rim of the mug. What was he supposed to do now? What did he say? “I had a bizarrely nice time taking care of you while you were wasted; do you want to go to lunch sometime”?
L considered. “Well, nice to meet you; please get out of my house” didn’t sound much better.
Light hesitated, fork most of the way to his mouth, and then set it down, clearing his throat.
“I-about last night,” he said.
L blinked quickly four times, then slowly twice, which spelled out hm in Morse code.
Light shifted and chased a grape around his bowl with the fork.
“Just… I’m really sorry I put you through all that,” he said, his shoulders sinking noticeably. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t how you wanted to spend the Friday night before your birthday.”
L added a little more sugar to his coffee and mashed it down with the spoon.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I would have spent it aimlessly wandering the bar if it hadn’t been for you.”
Light sipped at his own mug, looking unconvinced and unenthusiastic. “I was hardly good company,” he replied.
L was terrible at smalltalk, and he wasn’t too cut out for being comforting, either. His talent was in raw intelligence, so he used it-he tried to determine, from an index of experiences in cinema, television, literature, and daily observation, what a regular person might say at this juncture.
He concluded that regular people avoided this sort of situation.
He swallowed, and he decided to tell it like it was.
“To be very honest, Light,” he began, “I’m on my own so often that it has actually been-”
Horatio leapt up onto the table, Light flinched, and his mug slipped out of his hands, drenching his shirtfront with hot coffee.
“Sweet Jesus!” Light cried, fumbling to get the mug onto the tabletop as he scrambled to his feet, plucking the steaming cotton away from his skin.
“Take it off,” L ordered, already at the counter, where he jerked a paper towel from the roll, folded it, and soaked it in cool-not-cold water from the tap. Light obliged, gingerly holding the sodden article in one hand, and L knelt before him and held the paper towel to the epicenter of the prospective burn.
This amounted to being level with Light’s abs, in close quarters with his chest (and with other things that lay in other directions), which was another opportunity L could have sold at theme-park rates.
“Does it hurt?” he inquired, struggling not to get distracted by the coarse, dark hairs trailing most suggestively downward from Light’s navel.
Their owner set his jaw. “A bit,” he said.
L nodded idly. “That’s good. It means you haven’t obliterated any nerves.”
“Hallelujah,” Light managed.
“Quite,” L replied, peeling back the makeshift poultice. “Yes, this doesn’t look too bad. I suppose there are advantages to taking one’s time with one’s coffee, as it were.” He inclined his head towards the shirt dangling from Light’s right hand, feigning ignorance of the way it was dripping coffee on the linoleum. “We can take that down to the laundry room for you, if you like.”
“Well, I-I’d hate to impose,” Light stammered, looking down at him with something unlike any reluctance L had ever seen.
“You wouldn’t be,” L assured him. “It’s been very nice having someone to share coffee with.”
Light smiled. “And, apparently, to share with his shirt as well.”
L was slightly surprised to discover that he was grinning.
-
After he’d chugged a tall glass of chocolate milk, Mello looked a lot saner-more like a slightly jittery person and less like a cornered animal flexing its claws and pinpointing the jugular.
Matt toyed with some spare syrup on his plate and watched the sex machine (who had more than earned his title) from behind the safety of his eyelashes.
Mello paused in packing pancakes into his incredibly lean frame.
“Do you always treat people this well the morning after?” he asked.
Matt smiled. This guy really didn’t bandy words.
“When they stick around,” he answered truthfully, “yeah.”
Mello stabbed a pancake straggler viciously.
“You’re a full-service station,” he remarked.
Matt grinned. “If you want a show,” he added, “I can beat Super Smash Brothers faster than anyone I know.”
Mello raised an eyebrow. “A man of many talents.”
Matt waggled both of his. “You wanna see?”
“Sure,” Mello said, unexpectedly. “Let’s see.”
In two minutes, Mello was sprawled on the couch with more chocolate milk, and Matt was sitting on the floor before him, beating the shit out of people with the Master Sword.
“You bastard!” he shouted when Donkey Kong somehow managed to pull a fast one and dropkick him off of the platform. “Fucking cheat!”
“That shit is bananas,” Mello commented, completely innocently.
Matt had to pause the game to laugh before he made things even worse.
Weirdly, Mello just sat and watched and-this was really weird-cared as Matt burned through every level like the game was going out of style.
Mello was right about one thing-this wasn’t the way it usually went. Some of the girls left phone numbers-some of them even left valid phone numbers-but, once he’d fed them, they never stuck around. Having someone stay was totally bizarre and strangely… okay. More than okay-nice. Comfortable.
Matt didn’t want Mello to leave.
In fact, it sounded so terrible that, when he had reigned Super-Smashily victorious, he worked up the courage to turn around and look the sex machine in the eyes.
“I’ve still got a bitch of a hangover,” he reported, “but do you want to go out for lunch?”
Mello blinked, blue eyes brilliant, if a bit redder than they had been the night before.
“Me, too,” he said, “but… yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Matt had a tickly feeling in his stomach, distinguishable from and preferable to the lurching feeling engendered by the remnants of the booze.
“Really?” he said, feeling a grin overwhelm his face. “Cool. There’s all kinds of stuff down on the street; we could check it out.”
“Cool,” Mello agreed, making uneasy caution look awfully good. “I-can I borrow some clothes?”
Mello also made slutty leather look awfully good, but he might get arrested for disturbing the peace if he went out in broad daylight strutting that shit.
Then there would be handcuffs.
Matt needed a cold shower and a new brain.
In the meantime, he headed to the bedroom and turned up an outfit that wouldn’t turn so many heads.
This was Mello, so they were going to attract some attention, but Matt figured that some attention was better than pointing, staring, and drooling from everyone with eyeballs.
“I dunno what you wanna get,” Matt went on bravely, forcing himself to look away as Mello shamelessly dropped the pajamas to replace them with Matt’s offerings-not because he didn’t enjoy the view, but because enjoying it too much would have left him with another distraction he didn’t need. “What’s your favorite kind of food?”
He dared to peek, and Mello gave him a smoldering look conveying You so clearly that Matt shivered down to his toes.
“I like Italian,” Mello then answered guilelessly.
This was a fun game.
In twenty minutes, they were seated at a streetside café (French, not Italian, but who was counting?), and the girl behind the counter had hit on both of them in the process of giving them their total, which Matt had insisted on paying.
“That,” Mello was explaining, “was when I pulled out the warrant, and Lawli said, ‘Sir, if you were hoping for anonymity, making a bonfire of the evidence in your backyard was not the way to get it.’”
Matt laughed in mid-sip and choked on his lemonade, and Mello offered an apologetic cringe.
When proper respiratory function had been restored, however, Mello looked more solemn-almost… hesitant.
After just over half a day, Matt knew that that was uncharacteristic.
“What’s wrong?” he prompted, steeling himself to take whatever answer came.
“There’s just one thing I’m still wondering,” Mello divulged.
Matt tilted his head, trying to think where he’d been misleading. “What’s that?”
Mello reached across the table, seized a fistful of his shirtfront, and hauled him in for a deep, thorough kiss shot with a lemonade tang.
Matt melted into it, the prickling sense of other people’s eyes on him fading in seconds flat, and Mello became the only reality in the whole of the world.
When they broke apart, the blond sat heavily back, his eyes wide, looking shaken and perturbed.
Terror crept up Matt’s chest, and he blurted out the necessary question before it could freeze his voice box as well as his heart.
“What? What is it? I-”
“Fuck,” Mello said blankly.
Matt blinked.
Mello grabbed Matt’s unsteady hand and raised it to his cheek-warm, smooth skin, wispy pale hairs at his temple, the curve of his cheekbone, the shift of his jaw as he spoke.
“You kiss even better when you’re sober,” he announced.
Matt stared.
Then he grinned.
Then he cupped the other hand under Mello’s jaw and drew him in to earn the compliment.
-
Light was standing in his underwear in a stranger’s kitchen.
To his credit-such as it was-this was a situation with which he had absolutely no previous experience.
Hadn’t he had pants when he’d arrived?
He tried twice, managed to clear his throat on the third go, and attempted not to notice where L’s face was in relation to his last flimsy article of clothing.
On the upside, the awkwardness had caused him to forget the pain of the burn almost entirely.
“Why don’t I,” he said, “…um.”
“Yes,” L replied, which kind of made Light wonder what he’d proposed that L had been willing to agree to.
Odds were that they had both remembered Light’s jeans draped over the back of the couch, in pursuit of which he retreated, dodgily it had to be admitted, to retrieve the coveted denim and hop back into it with gusto.
He worked the fly, pulled his shirt on, buttoned it, and smoothed it down his chest, feeling a lot safer behind the bulwark of what he knew were snappy clothes. He always felt better when he knew he looked all right.
L had taken his T-shirt and wrung it out in the sink, and now he returned with it balled-up in both hands and held it out.
“I’ll get the detergent,” he said.
Light took the wet ball of coffee-infused clothing, turning only a little guiltily to watch L slouch his merry way to the hall closet-he was wearing what appeared to be yesterday’s ragged jeans and an old, slightly stained white sweatshirt, long and baggy enough to make him look strangely small and almost delicate. The neckline had slipped to the side enough to bare an angular collarbone, and L’s hands were half-enveloped by the sleeves, disappearing entirely when he curled his fingers into fists.
Light hoped unoptimistically that it was the headache and the hangover that were making him find all of these bizarre details so attractive.
L wandered back with the bottle of detergent, fishing in his pocket with long, pale fingers. His hand reemerged with a quartert of quarters.
“We’ll need a couple more,” he remarked.
Light dug into his own pockets. “Let’s see,” he replied.
Armed with a wealth of spare change, they trooped down the stairs, and L let them into the plain, white-walled laundry room with his little bronze key. It was warm in here, and one of the dryers was giving off a rattling hum. Fluorescence gleamed dimly on the linoleum floor, and the air was thick with the viscerally comforting smell of fabric softener and vaguely industrial cleanliness.
Light dropped his shirt into one of the washing machines, and he and L took turns tipping quarters into the slot. The timer came up, and the mechansims inside made the first overtures of churning and soap.
Light fidgeted-which was unusual for him-and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt-which was not. Apparently similarly inclined, L shifted his weight from one foot to the other, both of them bare on the tiles of the floor.
Then he raised his right hand and touched the pad of his thumb to his lips, angling his head in just such a way that his bangs fell into his beautiful eyes.
Light’s hangover had been making inappopriate suggestions since the moment he’d become conscious this morning, but now the voice egging him on was deafening and irresistible.
And, honestly, at this point, what the hell did he have to lose?
He crossed the narrow aisle between the rows of opposing machines, pushed L against the cold metal of the dryer at the other man’s back, and sealed their mouths together.
It was funny how sometimes even the most detailed fantasy, even endless speculation, even hours of imagining every second and every move, couldn’t prepare you for the real thing.
It was the sharp, invasive kick of coffee on their breath; it was the lingering syrup of the fruit just under his tongue; it was the overwhelming sugar-smooth taste of L’s donuts; it was clumsy hands with butterfly fingers, soft hair tickling at his cheek, and the great and intoxicating warmth of L’s slender body flush against his.
Speaking of flushes, Light had worked up a good one by the time he pulled away.
“Thank you,” he translated.
L’s pink tongue darted over his upper lip, and his eyes were bright and… devious?
“You’re welcome,” L replied-and shoved him up against the vibrating washing machine to return the favor emphatically.
This was a slow way to have a conversation, but Light thought he could get accustomed to it.
-
Blinking, Near discovered that he was wrapped up tightly in two men’s arms.
It was a bit cramped, to tell the truth.
On second thought, as Near settled better in the crook of Teru’s elbow, his cheek by Stephen’s neck, “cozy” was a better word.
The shift of his body had a domino effect-Teru stirred first, then Stephen did, and in a matter of seconds, there was a lot of bleary movement all around. Teru crushed a blind kiss against Near’s ear and sat up, fumbling for his glasses by the clock, as Stephen ran a hand through his hair and stretched, tugging his pajamas back into place.
Near curled his fingers into the flannel before Stephen could get up, garnering a hair-ruffle and an indulgent smile.
“If you want breakfast,” Stephen told him, “somebody has to make it.”
“It’s still early,” Near insisted-which was debatable, but the portion of his brain reserved for argumentative skill was still asleep.
Teru, bespectacled now, stroked a hand through Near’s hair and ran a finger down the bridge of his nose.
“I’m starving,” he declared. “I’m with Stephen on this one.”
Near frowned. “You’re ganging up on me.”
Stephen and Teru stared at his pout and broke out at the same time with a heartfelt, “Aww!”
Near rolled over and held a pillow over his head.
-
For a long moment, Quillish honestly believed that he had walked into the wrong office in the haze of his Monday morning.
L had a box in his lap, from which he was withdrawing various selections of chocolate-dipped fruit to eat-which would have been normal if the box hadn’t read, in straight, unfamiliar handwriting, Happy Birthday.
Near was curled up in his chair, but he also was smiling and glancing expectantly at his cell phone on the desktop beside him.
As for Mello, he looked so happy that Quillish tried to remember if he’d heard on the news about any unsolved homicides.
They all beamed at him where he’d paused in the doorway, which was very much in keeping with this incredible trend.
Quillish removed his fedora and hung it on the coat rack.
“Have they dissolved ecstasy in the water supply?” he hazarded.
L popped a chocolate-covered blueberry into his mouth and answered around it, “That would probably seem more plausible than the truth.”
Mello laughed brightly.
Quillish was never going to get used to this.