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“Zoom in there, that’s my shipment.”
Matt suppressed a sigh and zoomed in. The blurry number plate on the back of the van he was following snapped into focus, rumbling leisurely down a mountain road, without the faintest idea it was being surveilled by the American Mafia.
“Perfect! Those fuckers aren’t getting away with anything.” Jack Neylon grinned, baring his disgusting, plaque-coated teeth, and slunk contentedly back into the couch.
Those fuckers weren’t trying to get away with anything. Matt had been trying to conduct routine surveillance for Mello when Neylon had barged over and demanded he put in some Canadian IP address. Stupidly, he obliged, thinking it was a new order from Mello, but actually, Neylon was just trying to track his own personal drug shipment.
Typical.
Neylon was a disgusting, insecure little man with an obvious addiction to crack, and an inferiority complex he couldn’t budge. He looked to Matt as though he had been inspired by a hippie-era John Lennon, as he styled his hair in the same way and wore the same glasses… but nothing about Neylon screamed Imagine to Matt, and he doubted he’d be serenaded with Hey Jude anytime soon. Neylon was no Beatle, he was a creep.
“Great, now can you fuck off? I’m trying to work.”
“Watch your mouth, you don’t get to talk to me like that!”
“I don’t work for you.” Matt rolled his eyes and shut off the camera, killing the image of the shipment van. Neylon surged forward as if chasing the footage, his tiny glasses slipping down his nose, and let out a noise of strangled disbelief.
From across the room, Mello laughed uproariously and leaned towards Rod Ross, and lit his cigar with a flick of a lighter.
Both Neylon and Matt’s eyes snapped towards them.
It was hard not to look, after all. It was a strange sight. Rod, the Don, built like a tree trunk, with bulging muscles the size of bowling balls and a terrifying glare that could make a grown man piss himself, all cosied up to lithe little Mello with his long blonde hair and slutty leather pants.
So weird.
When Mello had first told him he was working for the mafia, Matt couldn’t picture it at all.
Sure, Mello had been scary at Wammy’s- but that had been Wammy’s; he’d dominated those halls with a choir-boy haircut and baggy jeans, and a whiny posho accent.
But in LA, he was an entirely different person.
The first thing Matt had thought when he stepped off that plane and into the blanketing heat of LA was; “Aw shit, it’s boiling!” and then, “Aw fuck, Mello got hot.”
And of course, Matt had always thought Mello was pretty good looking, but that was back when nobody else did. He was the only one to look beyond the stupid hair and perpetual bitch-face, and he never had to share. For years, that side of Mello had been his best-kept secret…. but not anymore. It was abundantly clear now that Mello was attractive, and everybody knew it. Especially Mello.
Just great.
Matt averted his eyes.
Things had been pretty much terrible since he’d got here.
Apparently whatever relationship they’d had at Wammy’s was all in the past now; all Mello cared about was Kira and the Mafia and Near- Matt was a fucking idiot for ever thinking they might get to spend any time together just hanging out.
“You still rank below me, so watch it.” Neylon hissed, his mosquito-voice killing Matt’s train of thought.
Oh yeah, he was still mid conversation. For fucks sake.
Neylon was glaring at him, inferiority complex in full swing, but when he’d spoken his voice was low. He was just as scared of Mello as everybody else here.
Well, maybe not scared of Mello himself exactly… every single man in here was twice his size; if a physical fight broke out, then he would be fucked- but his relationship with Rod terrified them all. Matt saw it painted across all of their faces every time Mello strutted in; swaying his hips and smirking like a little bitch: ‘Who is this twink and why does Rod like him so much?’
It went without saying, the Mafia were bending a lot of rules for Mello. Matt could hardly believe it; he thought he was supposed to go through rigorous, brutal initiation- hell, he thought he was going to have to kill someone- but no, Mello just snapped his fingers and boom- here comes Mail Jeevas; newest and laziest Mafioso!
No wonder Neylon hated him.
“Whatever, man. Don’t you have people to shoot or something?” Matt asked dryly, and started to input the IP Mello actually wanted surveilled. If he’d missed something, he was going to kill Neylon- there, that would be his initiation. Fair and fucking square.
From the corner of his eye, Matt saw Neylon’s beady little eyes peering over at his laptop screen.
“There’s no one to shoot; Kira has killed them all.”
“Aw, shame. You’ll have to find another pastime.”
“Like playing on a computer?”
“Yeah, su-” he started on another snarky rebuttal that probably would have warranted an ass-kicking, but Mello’s sharp voice cut across the room.
“Matt can do it,” he was saying, leaning towards him across the desk he and Ross sat at, chin resting on intertwined fingers.
He probably didn’t mean to sound coy, but he did, and that was Mello through and through. He was born with a mischievous twinkle to his eye and an impish lilt to his voice, and when he leaned towards Matt like that, he felt his resolve melt away instantly.
He craved it. It was hot and wicked and dangerous, and he loved being on the receiving end.
Maybe a little too much. He hurried to pull his laptop further onto his lap.
“He can?” Rod asked doubtfully.
They were all looking at him now. Rod, Neylon, Mello, and the four other goons who existed only to leer threateningly at anyone who got too close to Rod and the Big Boy table.
“Yeah, Matt’s great with tech,” Mello said, and then after an awkward pause, prompted, “Aren’t you?”
“Oh uhh, yeah, totally! If it’s tech-related, I’m your guy.” Matt replied lamely. His voice cracked halfway through and he had to clear his throat. Nobody reacted other than Mello, whose coy smirk deepened, and he looked away before he started laughing.
Matt wanted to die.
Or he wanted the ground to swallow him up. Something like that. Anything that got him away from how terrifying and fucking embarassing this was.
But alas, the ground stayed stubbornly solid, and before long Rod was clapping him on the back and shaking his thin, willowly fingers with his own boxing glove of a hand. “A friend of Mello’s is a friend of mine!” he proclaimed jovially as he dragged him over to his personal monitor, and Matt couldn’t help but think about the fact Rod hadn’t so much as looked at him in the two months he’d already been working here, but oh yeah, he was all friendly now Mello had called him over.
That made sense.
He found himself sandwiched between Mello and Rod, as Rod launched up a paranoid tirade about government surveillance and private networks, and all other matters cyber-security.
He was clever, Matt could give him that. He knew how to keep himself safe, and he knew what to look out for.
Matt might have almost been impressed… if not for the fact the left side of his body was pushed right up against Mello’s, and Mello was leaning right into him to look at the monitor and fuck, he smelt so good.
He’d read before- or maybe Mello had told him- that scent is the most powerful emotional trigger for memory, and this was confirmation that it was true.
Mello smelt like leather and cigarette smoke- all once alien, but he was starting to grow accustomed to this LA Mello scent, but beneath that….
Beneath lingered the smell of lazy Saturday mornings in the orphanage, and lessons spent stifling giggles with their hands, and long, dragging detentions in Roger’s office.
He smelt his best friend and his first kiss. His only love and his only heartbreak.
“That’s the failed breach.” Mello was saying, pointing at a jumble of neon code. “They didn’t get in, but we don’t know where it came from. Can you find it?”
It took Matt several seconds to recalibrate.
“Oh uh, yeah, sure I can take a look.” He said automatically, scanning the code with his eyes but taking absolutely nothing in.
Mello had shifted beside him, leaning back from the screen again and turning his body so their knees were touching, and if Matt turned his head, their eyes would be at perfect level.
That was another thing he’d missed, Mello’s eyes, they-
“Take a look or fix it?” Mello asked sternly. There was only one right answer.
Neylon snickered in the corner.
“Yeah I meant fix it, yeah! Sorry, just…”
“We think it’s Kira Worshippers.” Rod interrupted, voice low to press the severity of this situation. “They’re looking for anything that leads to our identities.”
“Oh shit,” Matt said in what he hoped was an empathetic tone. In all honesty, he couldn’t give less of a shit if these men died. As long as Mello was safe, he didn’t care. “Well uh, you haven’t got your names or addresses or-“
“Of course not,” Mello cut in sharply, “We’re not stupid.”
Oh right- We.
Matt thought bitterly that there was no we. Mello and the mafia were two separate units entirely. He didn’t know why it pissed him off so much that Mello thought otherwise.
“We’ve scrubbed it all clean; that’s not our concern. We need their location now.” Rod stood, effectively ending the conversation.
Matt could fill in the blanks. He was going to be a murder accessory. Great.
He didn’t know how he felt about killing people, actually (surely that didn’t make them that different from Kira?) but that was just not a conversation he could ever have with Mello, so he was going to have to be cool with it.
“I’ll get it.” he said solemnly, and Rod clapped him painfully on the shoulder.
“Good kid, I knew Mello would choose well.”
He hated that sentence almost as much as he hated the way Mello glowed with pride after it was said.
He hated the way it made him think of Teachers Pet Mello, back at Wammys, who preened under the attention of their professors, all straight-backed on his chair, arm stretched up high as he desperately begged to be asked for his answer.
He never changed.
Fuck, he’d loved that kid so fucking much.
Current Mello- LA Mello- was standing too, his bare stomach right at Matt’s eye level, peeking suggestively out at him from beneath a tiny leather vest. He ruffled Matt’s hair fondly and then stepped towards Rod.
Rod seemed to close in on him, stepping closer in a way that should have been unremarkable, but for a man of Rod’s calibre it meant so much, and Matt felt his stomach sink when he realised they were going to be leaving together.
It wasn’t unusual, but it made him feel like shit.
It was probably just all business related. Rod had a wife and kids, and Matt wasn’t really worried about that…. as far as he’d seen, even the great Rod Ross couldn’t convince Mello to talk about anything other than Kira… but fuck. That teeny tiny niggling doubt….
He forced himself back into the code.
Mello didn’t even say goodbye, he just unwrapped another bar of chocolate and waited boredly as Rod barked out last-minute orders to his faithful goons… and then they were gone.
Nobody spoke much once the door swung shut beside them. The atmosphere had turned pretty sombre… but Matt doubted the rest of them had the same thing on their minds. They were probably worried they were about to drop dead from a heart attack. Matt was pretty sure he’d only die of a broken heart.
He typed code in with robotic accuracy, fingers landing heavily on the keys, eyes distant and unfocused. It was hard to concentrate, and he didn’t even care about what he was doing. It felt so fucking pointless… so useless. Everything Mello was doing felt pointless. He wished he’d never bothered coming. He wished he’d never replied to Mello’s plea for help. He wished he’d just stayed depressed and locked up all by himself at Wammy’s…
But then he lifted his arm to push his fringe from his eyes, and in that second he caught a waft of Mello’s lingering smell clinging to the fibres of his jumper, and a painful twinge in his heart reminded him he never, ever wanted to be anywhere else.