you want to hold onto me, i want to hold out on you. [closed, ongoing.]

[virucide]

WHO: Mello (virucide) & Matt (lungrot).
WHAT: An extremely aggravated Mello returns home to an otherwise apathetic Matt.
WHERE: Their shared apartment.
WHEN: Day 160. Early morning.

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[lungrot]

Tucked and tangled in a womb of colorful, rubber-encased wires and blinking lights at the back of their apartment, it's a miracle in and of itself that the redhead glances up from his screen when Mello steps in, slamming the door shut behind him. Bone-thin fingers glide over a stained keyboard, the lightening-fast clicking of it's keys resonating throughout the room, and Matt huffs, snuffs his cigarette into the butt-choked ashtray at his side.

"What?" He either didn't hear him, or doesn't care enough to. Either way, the younger man's gaunt face is expressionless aside from the arch of a russet-colored eyebrow and the slight downward twist of his chapped lips.

[virucide]

Oh, and that's not the place for Matt to be, not when the blond gets like this--angry, riled up and prone to paving paths of destruction. So it really shouldn't be a surprise that Mello would make sure to smash as many coiled wires under his boots as he can when he corners the redhead on that side of the room, a sneer split across thin lips. He's used to this apathy, but it's always made him angrier, always pissed him off more than fighting with someone who could match his foul mood (and there are few, if any) would have.

Mello's hand hits the keyboard, presses several middle keys and a couple fingers down with the weight of his palm, and looms over him, the corner of blue eyes pinched with frustration. "What the hell do you think? Where'd that little opinionated bitch I talked to on the phone go?"

[lungrot]

More concerned with the state of his keyboard than the sick cracks of protest hummed by his knuckles underneath the weight Mello's palm, Matt struggles to slip his hand from the blond's grasp. Heavy lids flutter open, wider, and in the light you can almost see the fine red mapwork of nerves beneath paper-thin skin-- or you could, if Matt wasn't so determined to hide those sunken eyes behind thick amber lenses.

"Oh." Sounding any less preoccupied would be a difficult task, indeed. "I still think your job is shit, yeah." He shrugs, cants his head to the side and cranes his scrawny neck over Mello's looming form.

"Could you move?" I can't see the screen.

[virucide]

White teeth come together in an audible snap, and Mello visibly tenses, the frustration rolling off in waves. He isn't the type to hold himself back from acting on the emotions that steer him, and it's just so very like him to do what he does then: to reach forward with his free hand and wrap long fingers through red hair, tight, holding Matt's head back. The other lifts from the keyboard and hooks thumb through the goggles piece that goes between the eyes, and he holds them back off Matt's face so he can see him.

"Yeah?" The blond's tone is ice, worse than that golden quality his voice often takes on, worse than the embittered sarcasm. Because this is sharper, full of ill-intent. He lowers his head close. "If you really want to speak your fucking mind, Mail, how about you give me a reason instead of this vague teenage bullshit?"

[lungrot]

The redhead winces, bright morning light burning into sensitive retinas, white-hot pain blossoming across his scalp. His lips turn down into an ugly frown, and dull colored eyes pour into bottle-blue ; he's anticipating the blow, learned long ago that there isn't much he can do about it but hit back, hard. Still, there's that infuriating twinkle of defiance when he looks up at Mello, a snotty kind of assurance behind his voice when he talks (yeah, you can hurt me, but i'll hurt you back and you probably care about big ugly bruises on your pretty face a lot more than i do).

"I thought you were too good to play the pawn, Mihael."

[virucide]

Perhaps to the younger man's relief, Mello doesn't snap the goggles into place over those sleepless eyes, instead peels them off completely and tosses them to the wire-tangled carpet. He sneers, then, a vicious look that bares teeth in an almost animalistic manner, and Matt must be one of the few people who can look him in the eye like this without a scrap of fear. May as well come from experience, given how long they've known each other, how long they've had to wear their true colors out on one another. And isn't that why Matt's still here? Because he can put up with it?

"How the fuck," the blond growled, guttural and angry, "does that make me a pawn? Did you even stop to think about what I'm doing? The next time you open your mouth, Jeevas, you better have some goddamn support to back you up."

There isn't even a pause between those last words as Mello's fist comes up, slamming into the gamer's right cheek, fingers loosening in red hair a second before impact.

[lungrot]

Relief, indeed, though it's short lived and Matt resigns himself to what he knows will become a world of pain any moment now. The heat is rising still, and he hasn't escaped the figurative kitchen just yet; the look on the older man's face is enough to convince him of such. Past experiences, ghosts of angry crescents and large purple bruises blooming across chalky-white skin, do little to dissuade him.

The redhead's mouth is open and ready to interject, tongue sharp and ready. Before he can land a single word, however, there's that fist he's so well acquainted with, knocking hard against concealed bone and a row of upper teeth.

Who called it? "Fuck," he spits, head knocked backwards. The room has gone from too bright to abnormally dark, explosions of vibrant color crawling across his vision-- Mello's barely a blur, but Matt knows the fucker is there, probably soaking up the sick satisfaction of having shut him up, even for a moment

[virucide]

Rage boils up under the blond's skin, under a complicated network of nerve and sinew, but the trembling force of his anger doesn't quite reach his face--there's cold, steeled purpose to slitted blue eyes, to the rough line of his mouth twisted back in a scowl, to the tight knots in his shoulders: a practitioner's decidedness, smoothness, assurance

[lungrot]

'Here we go again,' Matt thinks. Keeping his mouth clamped shut has always been in his best interest, but remains a lesson unlearned; the redhead figures it'll take another thousand yelling matches, an infinite number of fist fights before it can ever sink in. Until then, though, he has to settle with the sting of hard knuckle against bone, the swelling of tender flesh, the coppery taste that fills his mouth when he wipes at it with the back of his hand, smearing it with pink saliva. He's on the ground, all right.

Time seems to stand still. Matt's head, bowed and heavy, feels as if it's going to split; both sides of his face swell simultaneously, and the pain is so mind-numbing he might as well have been knocked out. Still; this isn't so unfamiliar, and because of that he knows he can stand back up again, run a shaking hand through the tangled mess of russet hair that sprouts from still-sore scalp, and spit. Heavy red spills onto the carpet, and the younger man swears under his breath. Fuck, fuck, fuck, "Fuck"Fat chance of you

[virucide]

Blue-black eyes drop to that bloody stain on the carpet, and something insignificant turns over in his stomach. It's a nervous reaction, or maybe not, maybe it's just how his body has always dealt with the broken chaos of his mind; the fury sometimes so thick it physically shifts inside of him, makes him want to puke. Months ago, he might've laughed, might've leaned down and kissed Matt through thick metal-tasting fluid and forgotten about the whole messy ordeal that led up to this

[lungrot]

Ironic, because there's been more thought put into the violently climactic exchange of snide remarks and well-practiced apathy than the redhead would care to admit. That Mello questions it, thinks Matt's just talking out of his ass in order to piss him off, makes the corners of split lips tug upwards, unveiling a toothy sneer, yellowed by too many cigarettes and smeared with coppery tang.

It's wiped off just as fast, another powerful blow to the face, and it amazes Matt in a moment of pain-born stupor that the older man hasn't broken his nose or knocked some teeth loose yet; he was certainly hitting hard enough to.

Staggering into the kitchen, the redhead presses the towel gingerly to his battered face, wincing and holding a hiss back from behind clenched teeth. "Shit. You're a real bitch, you know that?" To say that he walked right into those punches would be an understatement, and paying Mello back for each one hasn't slipped his mind just yet-- he'd just like to be able to walk without swaying, first.

[virucide]

The blond's head tilts imperceptibly, one delicate brow arched, arms folded tight over his chest and fingers fisted, tucked at the corners of his elbows like he's trying to hold back another hit--he hasn't even taken his jacket off, and it's warmer in the apartment, a thin film of sweat gathering along the nape of his neck, the shallow dips of his throat.

"Am I," he chews the words out, guttural and stale-tasting. "Yeah? Says the dumb motherfucker who asked for it?"

He leans against the counter, hips against the sharp edge, shaking the hair from his eyes. He knows Matt's put thought in what he's saying, but it's the absolute lack of common sense that frustrates him; you don't say things like that to Mello and expect him just to roll with it.

"Whatever." In one rock of motion, Mello pushes his body away from the counter, begins peeling off his jacket, shirt, fingers idly working at the sleek leather belt on his way to the bathroom. He winds it around his hand, tosses the black coil in the general direction of the closet in passing.