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“C’mon, man,” Matt said, almost whining. “It’s no fun on your own.”
“Doing drugs?” Mello snapped.
“Aw, man, don’t say it like that.” Matt was hanging upside down off the foot of his bed, feet lazily kicking the air, as he played his GameBoy. His thumbs moved over the toy’s flat, gray buttons, making clicking, tapping noises that faded into the background of Mello’s unbroken cogitation on organic chemistry. O-Chem, Mello called it. An unceasing nightmare of a class, Matt called it. It was memorization on memorization, it was sleepless nights, it was flash cards that went fwip-fwip-fwip in the night when Matt was trying to sleep. Matt could never take a class like that.
The toy beeped and gave a cheerful musical sound.
“Yes!” Matt pumped his fist, too hard, because his feet lost balance in the air, and he toppled backward off the bed and fell with an earth-shaking crash! to the floor. Mello whipped around.
“Oh- Are you okay?” He bit his lip, trying not to laugh, as Matt rose up, head throbbing, brown hair a mess, and probably looking like he should have yellow birds tweeting around his head, like characters had in cartoons after they had a fall.
“Yeah, man, I’m good. Smoke with me?”
Mello sighed, softening a bit.
“I don’t know, Matty. I’m busy.”
“You’re always busy,” Matt countered.
“Doing important things, like not doing drugs.”
“Aw, man,” Matt said again, and Mello rolled his eyes. “It’s not drugs, it’s pot.”
“Same diff. Gateway drug.”
“One joint, Mel. One.”
Mello sighed. “You know, in a week, you’ll be off this kick and not give a shit about pot.”
Matt perked up. “That a yes?”
“No,” Mello said, but his lips were twitching with a smile. “Weren’t we in the same D.A.R.E. class? Crack is wack, Matty. Gotta learn it.”
Matt laughed, pulling out a naked stick of gum from somewhere in his bottomless pockets. “This is your brain,” he said, holding it up, like he was doing a monologue. Then he shoved it in his mouth and chewed viciously, and spat it out again into his hand. “This is your brain on drugs.”
Mello was laughing, shaking his head; Matt felt his heart soar, and his face hurt from grinning. Mello plucked the soggy-soft-sticky pale green gum from his open palm and popped it in his mouth.
“Yeah, yeah,” Mello said around a mouthful of gum, turning back to his never-ending flash cards. “I’ll do drugs with you. Tonight. But only because I was peer-pressured into it.”
Matt could have laughed and never stopped laughing.
That night, near midnight, they sat behind the art building, the joint cradled in Matt's hand. They had snuck out to sit on the patchy, yellow grass there, hoping no one would notice the smell of smoke this far from the main building.
Where he had gotten the joint from, Matt would never say, although Mello kept wheedling, coaxing Matt to just tell him.
"Nope," Matt said flatly, and pulled a lighter from his deep left pocket. Mello held his hand out.
"No way, I want the first hit," Matt protested. "It's my joint. Besides, don't you want to see how it makes me feel?"
He didn't know yet that weed takes a while to kick in. In his mind, the image of himself smoking was so very cool; imagination Matt took a hit and immediately felt the effects, getting giggly and swaying.
In real life, it wasn't quite as interesting.
Matt flicked the lighter, sucking in.. and promptly coughed his lungs up, hacking and wheezing.
His brain felt.. wavy, like he was rocking on a ship in the ocean, despite the fact that he was sitting down right now. Maybe it was the weed- or more likely, lack of oxygen. He took a deep breath through his nose, and felt a bit better.
He blinked. For a long while, he didn't feel anything, besides roughness in his throat and chest and tightness in the corner of his jaw and- oh.
Actually.. He felt.. much better.
It was like all the knots in his consciousness, everything that made him jittery and restless and mind numbingly bored all the time, had just.. drifted away. It was like a cigarette, but better. Cigarette 2.0. The high had seemed to sneak up on him, but he felt the effects by now, though it had been less than a minute, and smiled dazedly.
He felt good. Better than he had felt in ages, maybe forever.
A hand was covering his, and he startled- but it was just Mello, taking the joint from him.
"I gotta try this," he said, and sucked on the lit joint, only to cough his lungs up even more than Matt had.
They weren't being quiet, but Matt couldn't care. He was too zen.
Pot was so much different from nicotine, and yet so similar. It hit differently.. where nicotine was like a sudden wall of calm hitting him in the face, pot seemed to sneak up on him and massage the calm into his shoulders.
Weed tasted good, and so did cigarettes: they both smelled good, too.
He snuck outside a couple of nights a week to smoke a cig, because he didn't want to get caught, but also because Mello didn't like the smell, even the smell afterwards, the lingering remains of smokiness on his clothes.
So he snuck outside in the night to smoke, whenever he was able to bum them from random homeless ladies in the town nearby. He always went for women, since they were nicer (sort of) to a kid like him. (Well, not a kid, he was fourteen.) They smiled at him and crooned about how he reminded him of their son, nephew, grandson, whoever, and when he said he was dying for a fag, they almost always gave him one.
The first cigarette he ever smoked was from one of them. He was in town during the day for once, buying (well, borrowing.. okay, stealing) games, and some lady in an alley called him over (hey, baby, got any extra change? she had said) asking for money. He gave her the change he miraculously had in his pocket, and she gave him a cigarette (thanks, sweetie. here, have one). He didn’t even know which side to light and which side to smoke from, but she patted the ground next to her, and he sat, and she taught him. She gave him a pack with three in it (good boy like you) and pet his hair (my hair used to be nice and thick like this). It sounded sleazy, but she was nice, and old, and homeless, not to mention giving away cigarettes, so Matt let her. She kissed his cheek, and he politely excused himself by running away, but not after snatching the box (bye, baby, she had said. ‘til next time.)
That’s where he’d gotten the weed from, too, ‘cause why not? Drugs were for thugs, but pot wasn’t the same as drugs, and in those D.A.R.E. things they’d been shown, weed always made people so.. Calm. Maybe a little goofy, but more chill. If anyone needed to be more chill, it was Matt. He’d always envied the way Mello could sit down and just do things, just concentrate and come up with something, just sit still. Just think. Matt was more flighty, more fidgety, more restless. On good days, he was energetic and enthusiastic and engaging. On bad days, he bit his nails bloody and felt like screaming, feeling nothing and everything all at once. Feeling like his head was spinning and his body was floating, gone from this world, and he wanted something, anything, to fucking stop it already.
So.. Drugs.
Not drugs- pot.
The old lady- Flora, her name was- talked to him for a while, and she was nice, if a little scary. She had grandkids, two of them, but they died in a car wreck years back, and her landlord kicked her out for some reason that Matt didn't catch due to her speech impediment (accent?), and she couldn’t afford her rent. After a while, she gave him a joint and let him leave (come back anytime, sweetheart) without too much complaint. Thankfully, she didn’t kiss him again.
The next time, she did, though. But she was nice, and she gave him cigarettes, so he let her.
"I got the joint-" he blurted, feeling a sudden urge to tell Mello. Mello side-eyed him.
"-from Flora," Matt finished.
"..Is that one of the older girls?"
"Well- an older girl, yeah, but not one of the ones here. She's.." he suddenly regretted saying anything, but pressed on: "She's this homeless lady I know."
Mello stared.
"She's a what?"
"You heard me," and Matt took the joint back, taking a pull off of it. The end lit up prettily, lighting the space in front of his lap so he could see the yellow grass there, tinged orange with the glow of the joint. The feeling of the hit was intense- acrid in his throat and jaw and chest. But the feeling, oh, the feeling- he was immediately calm, and knew that everything was going to be okay. He was in absolutely no pain, mentally or physically. Although there was generally a twinge in his back from how much he slouched, it wasn't there, and it felt wonderful.
He sighed. When he looked at Mello, he was staring at Matt, gaping.
"I- you- that is insanely dangerous!" Mello was waving his hands dramatically, and he looked like a character in a Spanish soap opera, like the one Matt had caught the end of the other day while flipping through channels.
"I thought you bought it from somebody, not- you can't just- ugh!" He sputtered.
"Eh," Matt replied.
"Don't talk to old homeless people, Matt! You're gonna get yourself murdered and-or raped, you idiot!"
Matt made a "pfft" sound. "You're an idiot."
"Are you even listening to me?"
Nope. Matt tapped on his knees like a drummer, but with his fingertips. When he did this on his desk in class, he was usually hissed at to shut up by some classmate or another (once, the entire class unanimously), but Mello never seemed to mind.
"I said, you need to quit seeing that lady. Just because she gives you cigarettes and weed doesn't mean she's a saint. She could be dangerous."
"Hey, c'mon- she's cool! You know she speaks French and Italian?"
"I don't care if she's fluent in Klingon-"
"How sick would that be though?"
Mello considered that, then his mouth tightened. Warm wind blew his hair, and Matt knew that spring was on its way.
"Even if she did. Nerds can still be rapists."
Matt sighed, lips puffing out, without even realizing he had done it.
"Yeah, but she's cool, dude."
Mello looked him in the eye, literally stared him down.
"People don't just give away drugs, dude. Especially broke, homeless people. Especially to a kid. Not without something in return. Stay away from her. I'll get you cigarettes if you want 'em that bad."
Matt just made a face at him, disbelieving. Mello didn’t control him; he could talk to old homeless ladies in exchange for cigarettes if he wanted. Besides Mello was never going to get him cigarettes (how could he?), Matt knew that for certain.
The conversation petered out as they continued smoking, passing the joint back and forth. Matt found himself dizzily wondering whether he could taste Mello's spit on the joint, and found to his slight disappointment that he could not. All he tasted was skunky weed, but hey, at least that wasn't bad. He tried holding the smoke in, but ended up coughing until he thought he was going to puke.
The feeling passed (eventually) and he found himself staring at Mello as he took a hit. Mello's face was sharp: sharp nose, sharp jawline, and padded with a bit of puppy fat around his cheekbones. He wondered what Mello thought about Matt. He wondered if Mello liked him. He wondered whether Mello had ever kissed someone. He wondered what kissing Mello would be like. Not that he was gay, just.. he wondered sometimes. Would Mello's lips be soft? Probably not, he was always gnawing on his lower one when he studied, and he never used lip balm, as far as Matt had seen.
But would that feel good? The chapped-ness? Matt felt a twinge deep in his belly, and knew that it would.
"What are you looking at?"
Mello's words made Matt's ears twitch, and he startled.
"Nothing! Just.. thinking."
"About?"
"Uh.." Matt's mind scrambled. "..how high I am."
Mello looked at him, and Matt was suddenly sure Mello knew he was lying, but Mello only said:
"Yeah, me too. I feel.. good. Like.. high, I guess. Do you want to go inside?"
"Nah, they'll smell the joint if we take it in, right?"
"We could.. bury it?"
The joint was barely half gone. "Waste of a joint, though."
"..I guess we gotta smoke it all."
"Guess so," Matt said, feeling relief surge through his veins. He never wanted this night to end. And it was a good thing he was high, because he felt like time was going v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. He kept swaying where he sat, and kept looking (staring) at Mello, and kept thinking things like, I wonder what his mouth tastes like, I wonder what his tongue feels like, I wonder-
"Matty?"
Mello was holding out the joint to him, and Matt startled, again.
"Sorry." Matt took the joint, and brought it to his lips to inhale. He didn't even cough this time, and felt vaguely mature as he sucked down weed smoke and exhaled into the warm, midnight breeze.
"So.." Mello said slowly. "What are you actually thinking about?"
Matt felt sudden uneasiness, an ache in his stomach and a tight lump in his throat.
"Um," he said hoarsely. "Nothing, dude."
Mello leveled his eyes with Matt's, tucking a stray blonde hair behind his left ear.
"You know I can tell when you're lying, right?"
Matt swallowed.
"Um.. I was just.. it's nothing, really, dude." And passed Mello the joint.
Mello took a small hit, and gave it back almost immediately.
"Seriously. Do I wanna know?"
"I- I dunno. Maybe."
"Then tell me. I'm your best friend, I deserve to know. Agreed?"
"..Agreed," Matt said reluctantly.
"You look like you're thinking about something, like, really deep. And I wanna know. So tell me." Mello said it all matter-of-fact, like it was a no-brainer.
"..But it's not deep, I'm just.. I'm just thinking about, uh.."
Matt took a hit in order to stall; it was a long, long one. He held it in as long as humanly possible, and exhaled, letting the wind take it away. It was a good thing it was mostly dark out here, because he was blushing like a motherfucker. He passed the joint back to Mello only when it was clear he couldn't stall any longer.
"..I'm thinking about.. k..kissing." He chickened out slightly, but managed to get the word out, though with a stutter.
Mello coughed, choking on smoke.
"You- uh.." he said hoarsely, and coughed harder; Matt thumped on his back.
It took Mello a while to recover, and when he did, he muttered, still hoarse:
"I, uh- I wasn't expecting that. Um.. Kissing who?"
"Uh.. no one, just.. kissing."
Mello slowly grinned, teeth flashing white in the dark.
"I don't believe you," he sing-songed. He was clearly feeling the effects of the weed. As for Matt, anxiety had seemed to eat away at the feeling of calm. Nervousness twisted in his gut.
"C'mon, you can tell me. Is it Ashley from Biology? It's her, isn't it?" Mello's smile was wide, and Matt's stomach hurt.
"N-no.. it's uh-.. s-someone you wouldn't expect."
"..Near?" Mello was wide eyed.
"No!" Matt almost shouted. "No fucking way! It's..someone closer to me."
"Hmm.. Linda, then? She's pretty cute, I guess.."
Matt almost chickened out again and said, yeah, that's it. But.. he couldn't lie to Mello.
"No, I was thinking about.. kissing.. you. Sorry," and the confession and subsequent apology fell out of his mouth like he was tripping and falling over his own feet.
Matt couldn't even look at Mello; he just took the joint from Mello's hand and sucked, for strength. The warm wind whooshed the smoke away.
Mello took the joint from Matt's mouth, and put it out in one of the patches of dirt in front of them.
Then he said something Matt would never have predicted.
"I've thought about it, too."
Matt couldn't even care that Mello had put the joint out; he was staring and he knew it. He was gaping, and he knew it. But he couldn't seem to stop doing either of those things. Matt's heart was excitedly beating a fast rhythm against the wall of his chest, and he licked his lips unconsciously. Mello's confession was echoing in his ears.
I've thought about it, too.
God, Matt wanted a cigarette. No- he wanted to kiss Mello. He wanted to go inside and lay on Mello's bed and have Mello suck his-
"Well?"
Matt licked his lips again.
"I.. uh.."
Mello rolled his eyes, and kissed Matt.
It was a brief kiss, and Matt froze as soon as Mello started to lean in. Mello's lips were chapped, and a little damp, and warm. As soon as Matt figured out how to make his lips move, Mello was gone with a "mwah!".
Matt couldn't hold back a giggle.
"What?" Mello said, affronted.
"..you know you don't have to make that sound, right?"
"I- It's not like you know how to do it any better," Mello snapped.
"Nah, I bet I can kiss better than you."
Mello spluttered.
"You- you fucking jerk! I can kiss better than you, any day of the week!"
"Wanna bet?" Matt smiled. And maybe he just wanted to feel Mello's mouth against his own again, but Mello didn't need to know that.
Mello growled under his breath, and yanked Matt forward by his red and black striped shirt, planting one on him.
Their lips mashed together, and Mello's wet tongue poked awkwardly into his mouth, slipping in.. stroking quickly along Matt's tongue.. and out. Matt could feel the heat of Mello's face, and knew that he had to be blushing. They separated with a smack! and a small sigh from Matt. It was his second kiss ever.. and it had been totally radical.
"See?" Mello said, and Matt saw, in the low light of nighttime, him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I told you. I know how to kiss. Way better than you."
"I mean.. we weren't really together long enough for me to do anything, so.. we can't really compare unless we do it again. Y'know?"
Mello's mouth gaped. "Are you serious right now?"
"As a heart attack."
Mello almost looked suspicious, but Matt couldn't quite tell in the low light. He was staring, still.
"...Okay. This is the last time, though."
And they kissed.
Ever so slowly, they let themselves lean forward and press their lips together.
It was pretty incredible, learning all these new things about his best friend. Matt was proud of the fact that he was Mello's closest friend, and that he knew more about Mello than anyone in the orphanage. Probably more than anyone in the world. But he never knew all this.
How Mello's spit tasted. The way that he kissed. How his lips felt.. The sound of his quick little breaths up close. How his hands felt on Matt's knees, hesitant and kind of clammy.
Beyond the learning though, the most fun part of kissing Mello was.. well, kissing Mello.
He was way more shy than Matt would have predicted (again- if he had predicted this). He seemed to prefer to let Matt take the lead- when Matt decided on a whim to bite at Mello's lips, Mello started to do the same back. When Matt swirled his tongue around Mello's, Mello made a little noise, and then did the same to Matt. When Matt sucked at Mello's lower lip-
Mello gasped, and Matt felt it against his own mouth, the cold rush of air.
Mello pulled away, and coughed awkwardly.
"Uh.. let's.. let's go inside now."
"What? No way, I'm finishing this joint." Matt picked it up from where it lay on the ground, and lit it, sucking leisurely. His third kiss had been even more radical than the last, and he felt great. A little shaky, yeah- but pretty great, too.
Mello seemed to not feel quite as good, though, shifting around where he sat. He reached out for the joint, and took it from Matt's mouth.
"That was good," Matt said conversationally.
"..Yeah."
"Agreed?"
"..Agreed," Mello said softly, and took a pull off the joint, blowing gray-white puffy smoke into the midnight air.
They were silent and still for a second, letting it soak in.
"..I think I'm high," Mello said finally. "Do you wanna go in?"
"Mm.." Matt mused. "Nah," he said.
"..I wanna finish this joint. And," he continued, feeling brave, "I wanna kiss you again."
Mello inhaled.
"I.." he whispered. "I kinda do, too."
"Kinda?"
"..I really want to, I mean."
Matt grinned, and he could feel a tingling in all of his extremities. Adrenaline was seeping into his veins, as slowly and deliberately as molasses drizzling from a spoon.
"I really do, too. We could make out on the grass, yeah?"
"..Yeah. Let me take a hit first, though," Mello said, and made a soft sigh. His blonde hair, looking almost brown in the dark of the night, blew with the gentle breeze.
Matt took the joint from him and tried to take another hit, but it was near the end so it burned his fingers. He hissed in surprise and dropped it on the patch of dirt in front of them.
"Is it done?" Mello asked, slight disappointment evident in his voice.
"Yeah, I think so. You can try, though."
Mello did, picking it up gingerly and inhaling slow and deep, and dropped it on the dirt. It had burned his fingers, judging by the way he'd startled.
"Okay, it's definitely done," Mello said, sounding dazed.
Matt shrugged. He felt high enough, anyway.
"Bury it."
Mello dug a small, shallow hole in the crumbly dirt with the tips of his fingers, dropped the end of the burnt up joint in, and covered it with soil.
"Well.." Matt said. "Wanna make out?"
"..yeah."
They both leaned in and kind of mashed their lips together, kissing feverishly. They weren't experts at it or anything, but it was the best kiss Matt had ever had, by far.
On impulse, he sucked on Mello's lower lip, and then again, harder, until Mello made this incredible noise and pushed at Matt's chest. Matt's head was spinning, but eventually he got the memo and laid down on the grass. Mello followed quickly.
Matt surged forward, kissing Mello. Their teeth clicked together briefly, but they tried again, and did much better the second time.
The grass was scratchy below Matt, and he felt the slightly cold, slightly damp soil through his clothes (from the recent rain), but all he could pay attention to was Mello's mouth on his. All he could really feel was Mello's shy, sweet tongue swirling around his.
He made such nice sounds as they kissed, too. Matt kept doing the same things, to make Mello's pretty gasping noises come out- licking along Mello's tongue, sucking his lower lip, nipping at him over and over again.
He was learning how to breathe through his nose as he did all these things, but Mello seemed to need to breathe through his mouth, because he kept pulling them apart to gasp in air.
"Breathe through your nose," Matt instructed gently, and stroked Mello's side.
Mello nodded quickly, and leaned in.
Matt kissed him, excited as all hell. Their bodies were separated carefully, and it was a good thing, because Matt was definitely hard in his cargo pants, straining for it. His body was screaming at him to just move forward a half a foot, just rub them together like he knew Mello had to be desperate for, too.. But he didn't know that for certain, and he didn't want to disrespect Mello, and he definitely didn't want this to end, if it turned out that Mello didn't actually want him the way Matt wanted Mello. Matt's tongue faltered, hesitating as he thought, and Mello seemed to notice, and pulled away.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just.. thinking."
"About?"
"Nothing. How much I like kissing you. Or- a lot of things, actually."
"You wanna tell me?"
"..not really."
No.. He couldn't risk it.
Matt leaned in, and Mello accepted his answer, kissing him back. But he pulled away much too soon, before Matt could even do that lip nibbling thing Mello seemed to like so much.
"Are you okay?" Matt asked, echoing Mello's earlier words.
"I'm.. um.. tired, that's all. I think it's the weed, it's making me sleepy."
"..Oh."
"C-can we go inside? I think I want to go to bed."
Matt felt a disappointment well inside him, an awful ache in his stomach.
"Yeah," he said, instead of the no! his brain was screaming.
So they made their way back in, managing, miraculously, to not be caught. When they got in their separate beds, Mello seemed to fall asleep instantly, laying down fully clothed and beginning to give deep, sleep-type breaths.
"Mel?" Matt whispered, after a while. "You awake?"
"Mm.."
"Is that a yes?"
"Mhmm.."
"I just wanted to ask.. um.." Matt rolled on his side so he could see Mello, the lump under the covers on the small bed next to him. It was dark, but he could see the steady in and out of Mello's breaths. Matt felt his heart stutter in its rhythm.
"I wanted to ask.. Do you like me?"
"..What kind of a question is that?" Mello asked sleepily, and rolled around in the dark to where Matt could (almost) see his tired face.
"The normal kind?"
"Not really. But.. yeah, obviously I do. Otherwise we wouldn't be friends."
"But.. Do you.. like-like me?"
Mello paused.
"Did you really just say that? How old are you, nine?"
"Jerk, I'm trying to be subtle!"
"It's not working."
"Okay, fine, so you don't like me, just say that!"
Matt found himself surprisingly miffed, and felt a lump in his throat that hadn't been there before Mello started talking.
"But I.. I do.. like you. Like-like, I mean," Mello whispered, so quiet Matt had to strain to hear it.
But he did hear it, and his heart began to thump faster, soaring, though the lump in his throat remained.
Matt swallowed, trying to rid himself of all these emotions, of all this desperation, but it didn't work.
He wanted to kiss Mello again. He wanted to finally feel the length of Mello's thin body against his own.. He looked so tempting, so warm and holdable. Matt wanted to take his best friend in his arms and kiss him and tell him how much he liked him: how much he like-liked him, that was.
"I want to kiss you," Matt said. "I think it's a good idea right about now. Agreed?"
"..Agreed," came the soft answer in the dark.
Matt grinned, and got out of bed.