Sketching by sstwins. 0.2k words, complete. Naomi x Rem (F/F). Quite lighthearted, Rem felt very in character too! No warnings.
Metronome by sstwins. 0.1k words, complete. A little bit of L's dread. No warnings.
T
This Is How I Disappear by TzviaAriella. 26k words, complete. Light Yagami's execution. Absolutely AMAZING, I am fully convinced this is the best Death Note fanfiction there is. Major Character Death.
Ghosts In The Fog by avaricelyrie. 67k words, incomplete. Meronia (M/M) casefic, canon compliant for most of the main series except Mello lived! Very compelling. No Warnings
M
Twisted Fate by TwilightMaster15. 114k words, incomplete. Minor Lawlight (M/M). Shuichi Aizawa as Kira! Major Character Death and domestic abuse.
Imperfections by emopressofthewind. 0.8k words, complete. Matt x Light (M/M). No warnings, also there's no Kira or Wammy's House.
something stronger than the drinks in the bar by neallo. 2.3k words, complete. Matt x Halle (M/F). Very cute! No warnings.
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one and the same by neallo. 3.5k words, complete. Some domestic Mello x Near (M/M) PWP, I also really found the idea of Mello being Eraldo Coil interesting. No Warnings.
Cicatrix. 0.8k words, complete. Some Mello x Matt (M/M) PWP, and a little bit of hurt/comfort in there too.
obedience training by neallo. 0.9k words, complete. Mello x Near (M/F), very cute! No warnings.
Dandelion Milk by etorphine. 9k words, complete. Mello x Matt. Honestly really got me in my feels! Hopeful ending (unusual for Mellodramattic).
i think it'd be funny if growing up at wammy's matt didn't like near either and thought he was weird and annoying but like that's about it (so in mello's defense there is some tenuous basis for assuming his experience of being obsessed with that freak is universal) he didn't bully him he wasn't obsessed with him matt was just like ewwwww. a weird bug. anywayyyy. non threatening low empathy king. halle lidner finds this horrifyingly attractive about him and nobody likes that or can understand it. but it's because even agent lidner is not immune to near's boyking magnetism that makes spk lowkey worship his ass and she hates that it works on her but she can't help it. that is HER tyrannical child emperor she would die for and HE asked for no pickles. and then matt who is fine it's fine don't worry about it he's around matt is like oh yeah that's just a weird bug i grew up with. and halle is like: (tripping on her gun holster because she can't get her clothes off fast enough) matthew you are ten years younger than me and also so fucking stupid
Halle: Ugh, this bastard. He's charming in his own clutzy way, sure, but I'm an experienced CIA agent and spy, is "clutzy charm" all it takes? I've lived an incredibly impressive life already, and I'm not even 35 yet, played a crucial role in taking down a supernatural secret dictator with a maniacal cult, and what, I'm getting seduced by a guy whose greatest accomplishments are, in his words, "surviving getting shot up like a bitchboy for a little felony" and "the best damn Pokémon Nuzlocke speedruns you've ever seen, and the proper hard games too"??!! This is ridiculous, this is disgusting. Sure, he has the most disproportionately beautiful eyes a human being has ever had, but that's not an excuse to forego all the other requirements for a partner. Sure, he's harmless in the short-term, when we're just talking and fucking and nothing's setious but he's no long-term partner material, and as a woman of planning I need to be thinking practically and far into the future, like those hideous goggles won't let him. I don't even know his real name, but I can only assume it's something stupid. Ugh, he's so annoying in his earnesty and prettyness, maybe if I make out with him that will shut him up and calm me down and prove that he's not that great with his bumbling hotness and awkward enthusiasm. This will certainly not prolong our weird 'situationship' as he refers to it because he's a terminally online-"
Matt: halle :D
anon i'm handing you my whole entire actual heart. and also this snippet that i think i've probably posted before, but which maybe (?!) you won't have seen yet, and which is nebulously set in that universe. happy valentine's day!!
Halle just purses her lips.
"Hey, it's not like I'm sleeping on the streets or anything," Matt says. "I've just been— couch surfing."
Matt, she realizes, looks substantially more tired than the last time she saw him. Her concern spikes a touch further, and without letting herself think about it for more than a few seconds, she makes a decision.
"Stay here for a while," she says without preamble, neutral and bland.
Matt laughs. "You don't have to put me up, Halle. I'm doing fine, really."
She takes a sip of her coffee. "It would be nice to have some company," she continues, as if he hadn't spoken. "It can be lonely, sometimes even frightening, living as a single woman in a city like New York."
"Like you couldn't kick my ass any day of the week," Matt drawls.
"It would be nice to have someone here when I get home," she says, continuing to ignore him. "To see a friendly face when I walk through the door."
"Aw," says Matt, "you want me to be your housewife until I get my own place?"
Halle smiles. "You don't have the work ethic to be a housewife," she says. "You'd be more like a pet."
Nothing happens at an expensive pub in South London. The lights are low, dark wood and frosted glass. Vermouth distilled in the 80s. Loafers and calf leather Oxfords.
Matt’s chilled lager sweats in his hand.
Halle stares out the window. Another odd Tuesday. They’re both three drinks in.
It’s fine company.
—
Thing is, Matt has always been taken by vicious blondes. Call it a character flaw, a rule of his life. Since Mary in the first grade. Linda, Mello. Maybe the Amane chick was a bit of a departure, not so vicious, but just barely. A change of pace but not of theme.
And really, who could blame Matt’s blue balls, six months in a one-room with Mello. Lockdown, for the detox and even more for the mission, for fancying Amane’s pigtails and perky tits.
Halle is another beast altogether. Matt’s learned about her three older brothers. Military father, granddaughter of a minister. All-girl’s finishing school in Massachusetts, Oxford, Cambridge, UN, Interpol. Matt imagines she’s the type to wear vintage La Perla under her pantsuits. He knows her heels have red under soles, and that her perfume is worth more than his two year lease in Covent Garden.
She hasn’t let him verify the panties hunch. But to be fair, he hasn’t tried and hasn’t asked. They get along. Every elephant in the room can be shut out with booze, or blow, or chatting about this case or the weather in Nairobi, the coups in Bolivia, the semiconductor shortages, the latest episode of Doctor Who.
—
Nothing happens at the bar. Amongst the suits and the highballers, they talk. It's difficult to find someone else who's been through the same shit as you, these days. They're all dead.
Halle knew Mello. Matt knew Mello. Halle's beautiful. Matt's got a tender spot for beauty, being a mediocre creature of god surrounded by chosen ones and manmade smiles.
Something does change when Halle offers to take him running. Him. Running.
Asthmatic kid on the playground. Five years out from a coma and a collapsed lung and a bullet dug out of his thigh.
She says she'll go easy. He imagines she just wants to see him in pain.
So be it. His doctor tells him he needs to exercise. He's entered the latter half of his twenties. Things stick out, and his skin folds where it didn't used to. Which is great. But the Ritalin work the same anymore, and he's tired all the time.
Mainly, he just wants to watch Halle run in front of him. What is he without someone like that—running ahead, egging him on, prodding him or leading him until he's blue in the face. Blood on his tongue. Her firm ass far below eye level.
She smiles, and they set the date for Sunday. 9 AM. The devil's hour!
Matt, his beat up trainers, ratty gym shorts from the charity shop, long-sleeved T-shirt, Hyde Park.
Halle, gym shorts, hair in a tight ponytail, sports bra, no tank top.
It is August. It's also London—overcast, sky considering an afternoon shower.
At 9 AM, it's cool enough to bother with a shirt if she’d chosen to.
So Halle's first one-uppance is her abs. Matt hasn't had abs since he was wasting away in a hospital bed in Tokyo, still blissfully unaware that his friend-lover-boss had died. And still, those were coma abs. But Halle has her tanned skin in England. She smiles at him. He studies a freckle on the back of his hand.
"One lap. If you stop, I'm throwing you in the pond, Jeevas."
The case of the month involves a series of bodies washed up on the banks of the Thames. A rare one close to home. Matt's on standby—they don't need tech work for this, and he has a contract that says he doesn't have to do anything in the field. If Near doesn't dare venture out of his tower, why should he? He’s bored. Bodies in the Thames—what else is new?
The momentary crack of sunlight is oppressive. Halle's pace is punishing. The doctors in Japan had done a great job, so his English doctors said, at repairing the muscle in his inner thigh. They'd also told him, he, “wouldn't be running any marathons any time soon."
Halle knows. She's a bit of a cunt, Matt's learned.
He trots along.
If there's one thing two years semi-sober have taught him, it's that pain offers no worthy gain. It just sucks—but the alternative is what? Admitting defeat.
Matt’s been waving a white flag since he was twelve. This is supposed to be his second chance. A life. Standing in the presence of someone undeniably better, but still standing.
Ten meters before the end of the lab, he doubles over and hurls into a flowerbed, turns, and smiles up at her.
"Happy, you fucking übermensch?"
"I don't speak German." As though übermensch isn’t a loan word.
"You went to grade school there." Matt knows the gist of her story—military family. Childhood all over the world, and the dead sister. From an old German family that came to the U.S. at the dawn of World War Two.
"You don't speak Japanese." She counters. She knows he spent some time there. It’s not in his need-to-know file, but most of the group knows the outline of how he ended up working with Near five years after the end of the Kira case.
"I was only there for, like, a month. おはよう."
"Also, I went to grade school in the states."
"You can’t be German and work for the C.I.A," Matt quips. She’s American.
"I had noncitizen coworkers."
"Like, spies and defectors?"
"Yeah. If you can talk, you can run, Jeevas. We're going around again."
—
It happens, inevitably, when Matt’s still weak in the knees. He’s just taken a shower at Halle’s place—a beautiful loft with a waterfront view—and he’s sitting awkwardly on the edge of her bed wearing her—“my old boyfriend’s clothes.”
Her old boyfriend was clearly at least half a foot taller than Matt. His loungewear does not fit, but it’s clothes, and she offered a shower and clean towels.
When she gets out of the shower, she hasn’t changed.
He gives her the once-over.
“Man, you can just ask.”
“Good boys don’t talk back, Jeevas.”
“You didn’t say any—”
She drops the towel and smiles. “Aw, you’re still shaking from our run.”
He offers a lopsided smile, and stares at her breasts. They’re better without the fitted blouse, he decides. Her abs, still damp, are fun, too.
“So, what’s the safeword?” He asks, on the verge of reaching out to touch.
Halle looks about to slap his hand away. Instead, she smiles. Her K-9s are sharp. No surprise.
“My dog is well trained, no?” She reaches for his face, instead. Unchipped French nails gentle at his cheek.
“You decide.”
And that’s that.
—
Through their three month (and no longer) tryst, Matt learns that he likes being choked—of all the things, Mello never choked him. That the post-runner’s jitters—the endorphins—collide with the sex endorphins and leave him just plain happy. Halle makes fun of how much he smiles during scenes. When she’s choking him, when she’s on top of him, setting the pace, giving him nothing.
The best time is in Monaco. Matt tagged along on one of her assignments. Intel—it’s always intel. For a week, they look like the wet dream of a young couple on holiday. She picks out his clothes, dresses him like a fucking douchebag. Sends him to get a haircut.
They don’t go to any races. They only visit one casino, and that’s strictly business. The only place to take a jog in Monaco is the hotel’s luxury sports center. They pick side by side treadmills. She isn’t able to reach over to up his tempo. But she does give him a withering look when he slows. He doesn’t mind.
After dinners at hotel steakhouses or casino bars, they retire to their room. There is no being tied to bedframes or hot candle wax. Halle never uses anything besides her two hands. Long nails. Soft fingers, pressure points. Give and take.
They're both clever enough to know it can never last, but that's the fun part.
hehehe thank you for the ask!! this one is matthalle in. to no one's fucking surprise. the universe of it's you and me, that's my whole world. because idk when ill finish this one im just gonna post most of what i have lol
Matt knows she's lucky to be alive.
She felt the blood seeping from her body, pooling on the pavement beneath her, felt the tight pain bloom in her chest whenever she tried to breathe, felt herself slipping from consciousness and thought— so this is it.
The doctors and nurses keep reminding her how lucky she is. She doesn't begrudge them that— they've taken good fucking care of her they've and been terribly patient with her piss-poor Japanese, her mediocre skills worsened by fatigue and all the drugs they have her on. Some of those drugs she's pretty sure they're not supposed to have— she wasn't allowed to bring Adderall into the country, so she'd be surprised if oxy was considered totally kosher— but she doesn't mention it. She appreciates not being in immense amounts of pain, and besides, her last comment on the laws here was met with a shower of bullets.
Come on, since when were the Japanese allowed to carry such big guns?
It's Matt's suspicion that she has Near's team to thank for her reduced suffering, and for the fact that she hasn't been dragged off to jail. Another thing she's fucking lucky for— luck, luck, more luck. Except after a few days of sitting alone in a cold, weird-smelling room, discomfort and isolation start to wear on her. Even the good shit only goes so far when it comes to managing pain, and she's got a good five gunshot wounds and a collapsed lung, and she's alone all day except when she has to shower, which is the one time she *wants* to be alone, and fuck, it gets harder and harder to stay grateful and not grouchy.
During the five days she spends in the hospital, Matt's irritability builds to something of a fever pitch. She gets exactly one visitor on day three, and it isn't even Mello or Near; it's one of Near's agents, a beefy blonde man who comes bearing a care package and gives his name as Rester. She jokingly asks if she can bum a cig, and he stiffly tells her he doesn't think smoking with a collapsed lung is wise. All further efforts at sparkling banter are promptly abandoned.
By the time she's finally deemed stable enough to discharge, Matt is itching to leave. The doctors take out her IV, give her instructions on how to proceed with her recovery, stick her in a wheelchair and tell her to wait. Her ride is meant to arrive soon, she's told.
So Matt waits. She waits ten, twenty, forty minutes, getting more and more pissed-off as the time ticks by. When the door to her room finally opens after almost an hour of waiting, she's full-on glowering, but the expression is instantaneously wiped out when she sees the woman in the doorway.
“You’re not the guy from before,” Matt blurts.
The woman smiles thinly, stepping forward and stooping slightly to offer her hand to Matt, who thankfully has the presence of mind to shake said hand instead of pressing her lips to the woman's knuckles like a fucking weirdo.
“Halle,” she says. “Forgive me for being late. Traffic was a mess.”
Matt had frankly already forgiven her the moment she walked through the door, and would forgive her in the span of a few seconds even if Halle reared back and kicked her in the stomach right now.
Matt has been walking along I-70 for well over an hour, her thumb stuck out for every passing car to see and ignore, when someone finally pulls onto the shoulder to stop.
--
for @dnrarepairweek, day 7 (free day)
Nothing happens at the bar. Amongst the suits & the highballers, they talk. It's difficult to find someone else who's been through the same shit as you, these days. They're all dead.
Halle knew Mello. Matt knew Mello. Halle's beautiful. Matt's got a tender spot for beauty.
Something does change when Halle offers to take him running. Him. Running.
Asthmatic kid on the playground. Five years out from a coma and a collapsed lung and a bullet dug out of his thigh.
She says she'll go easy. He imagines she just wants to see him in pain.
So be it. His doctor tells him he needs to exercise. He's entered the latter half of his twenties. Things stick out, and his skin folds where it didn't used to. Which is great. But the Ritalin doesn't hit the same anymore, and he's tired all the time.
Mainly, he just wants to watch Halle run in front of him. What is he without someone like that--running ahead, egging him on, prodding him or leading him until he's blue in the face. Blood on his tongue.
She smiles, and they set the date for Sunday. 9 AM. The devil's hour!
