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Crush.

Timeline

BACKSTORY

PART ONE: LOS ANGELES

PART TWO: NEW YORK

PART THREE: JAPAN

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crush extra scenes may be purchased through the bookstore
as a digital add-on or printed in the crush book

Deleted Scenes

Chapter 18
Matt reflects over a "half-dead handy from a half-dead friend."Chapter 27
Matt makes an arms deal with Dominic at the Pressman Hotel.Chapter 28
Mello meets Ken for the first time in Japan. Matt takes the train, and misses his stop.Chapter 32
Matt takes Mello out for ramen for his birthday.Chapter 33
In Kyoto, Matt channel surfs and ponders the big question: is he, like, into Mello?

Backstories

Honeymoon - Matt Backstory
On a Sunday morning drive through the desert, Matt finds himself at the Grand Canyon until an accident forces him southbound. In a diner in Flagstaff, Arizona, he meets a girl named Amy.NSFW Closer than Ever (2/2) - Mello Backstory
Brooklyn, 2006.
15-year-old Mello, drug-dealing Jobriath, deaf sweetheart Jamiroquai, and glamorous bartender Histoire prepare for a Friday night at Club Escape. A night full of drugs, dancing and debauchery - and Mello meets the boy of his dreams.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

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PART ONE: LOS ANGELES

Welcome to a Behind-The-Scenes look at Crush where we take a deeper dive into the locations and settings that make up all three parts. Crush is completely faithful to the original Death Note manga, with lots of research done not just for the realism and immersion, but also so that it would track 100% with the source text. In that way, the behind the scenes also doubles as a meta for some parts in locating significant locations for Mello in Death Note.While there is much, much more to get into, these are the locations that I had most fun learning about. I hope you will, too.

Matt's Apartment

From the outside, Matt's apartment looks similar to this:

Matt usually parks his car in the garage by the front door, and walks up the steps of the apartment.In Chapter 10, Mello is parked in the area near the staircase, staring up at his god-awful boarded windows, like so:

Later in the evening, Mello found himself parked outside of Matt’s apartment, his bike idling in the driveway beside rows of garage doors tagged with graffiti and murals. The streetlights tangled with the ferns on the trees, casting jagged, unmoving shadows on the pavement. There was a light on in one of the windows of Matt’s second floor apartment, and he could see a dim warm color through slats that suggested Venetian blinds.Since his living room windows were boarded up for God knows what reason, Mello surmised that it was coming from his bedroom.He held onto his handlebars tightly as if they’d ground him. His headlights were shining against the green garage doors, and Matt was inside. There was a copy of his key under the musty-looking welcome mat in front of his apartment door that most likely belonged to a past tenant, and Mello just had to unlock the door. He just had to walk inside.

When you first walk into Matt's apartment, you'll immediately knock into the grey olefin couch to your immediate right. In Chapter 11, this following scene occurs right where you see that door, that couch and that coffee table full of laptops.

Matt was sprawled on the hardwood floor against the arm of his fabric sofa, goggles askew and mouth dangling open like a corpse.Mello had had enough. He needed to shut him up first, but this was unfinished business.He stepped over Matt’s body and trained his Beretta onto his face, onto the reddened spot where the barrel had pressed into his skin. The safety was still off. If he pulled the trigger, he’d splatter the hardwood tile with thick globs of Matt’s brain matter. Strands of his blood, flecks of his skull. Bone-white and cherry-red against the dusty grey olefin.

And here we are introducing his living area, where he spends most of his time shooting up, nodding off, and gaming. Those are the laptops that he used to watch over Mello's associates in the mafia. Those boxes are where he hid most of his heroin balloons -- as well as that lamp over there, beside the couch. Cozy!

Turning around, we'll see his kitchenette, where Matt spends minimal amount of time and does not wash the dishes, and where Mello is seen stomping around trying to find Tylenol after he recovers from the explosion. On the other side of that wall, in the corner, is the bedroom, which is a character in and of itself in Part 1. Matt's bedroom, the site of a lot of breaking and healing.

Matt's bedroom was Frankensteined together from listings posted of apartments in Los Angeles in around 2019, when I was first writing Part One. Some things I noted from LA and California apartments were the prevalence of mirrored sliding closet doors and Venetian blinds, both of which had made their way into Matt's apartment.One of the most iconic scenes, the "glovesuck" scene of final chapter of Part One, takes place while Matt is withdrawing in his bedroom. The very first image, top left, would be Mello's exact POV of this following Chapter 14 scene:

Mello’s frown deepened as he walked towards it slowly, muting his footsteps as much as he could. He pushed the door open wider, and as he did, he felt the temperature around him rise.The room smelled like sickness and sweat, and the air was muggy. Just to the left, there was the sound of heavy, deep breathing, labored, almost struggling.It was difficult to see. The room was lit up only by the sepia warmth of the street behind the Venetian blinds, and the glow of the tv screen that leaked through the crack of the door. Mello’s large and lopsided shadow fell over the bedspread, over the shivering lump underneath the thin comforter. Pale legs and a mop of messy brown hair, head down.There he was. Alive, but barely.

Matt's bedroom, characteristically, is barren. He has one mattress on the floor that he sleeps on, and one bedside table that he stores his things in/on/around. His room is overflowing with boxes, chargers and cables. But otherwise, that's it.But, even with its lack of furniture or character or personal belongings, Matt's room ends up becoming a really pivotal, significant place in Part One for him emotionally as well as physically. I view it as a representative location of Part One of Crush, to equal footing as Mello's mafia base, or Travis Barker's mansion, where Mello set up the bugs.Even though regrettably we don't get to see Matt's apartment after Part One, I think it represents Matt to a perfect tee: messy, hollow, bare-bones, torn-down. But something quaint and complacent about it, too.

Mafia Hideout

There are two mafia hideouts that are defined in both Crush and the original manga: the first hideout, which is an industrial underground bunker located in Skid Row in Los Angeles, and a second destitute mansion in the middle of an industrial area far away from the downtown core.Finding a place in Los Angeles that could theoretically hold a mansion's structure in an industrial part of town, I decided on an industrial part of Los Angeles with hardly any foot traffic and lots of factories and warehouses named Soto Street Junction.I'd taken the liberty of interpreting their bunkers: the first one (L) is an old underground war bunker leftover from decades past, and the second (R) one is a mansion belonging to an old mob man, Travis Barker, who had died years before the beginning of Crush.

While DTLA and the first half of Part One was defined by a trashy-glitzy image of neon lights, dark alleyways, and bar lighting, the second half of Part One (when Matt and Mello begin working together) is lined with sand, dust and plenty of trucks. DTLA starts us off strong, but Soto Street Junction is the heart and soul of Part One's industrial desert imagery. Chain-link fences, junked cars, dusty gravel and warehouses became the image that drove Part One forward on Mello's side of the story.One of the places that is noted significantly in Mello's narration is the overpass (R), which exists a ways away from the base, down the slope. This is the place where Mello finds the phone booth (which is located under the underpass, near the slope) after he crawls away from the crime scene during the explosion.

Atwater Village (The Bar)

The infamous bar in the "meeting scene" where Mello first invites Matt to join him on his mission to catch Kira actually does exist, and was named in the first draft, although the name was later taken out. Matt implied which bar it was heavily, though, so I wanted to keep it up to imagination (or inference, for people native to Los Angeles).

They decided to meet at a bar — Matt’s choice. So he picked a dive in Atwater Village. One of those places where hardly anybody was there and the bartenders didn’t give a shit about you.[...]Ten minutes was too eager; he sat in the car as it idled, his car lights still on and shining beams on the brick wall of the building in front of him. The sign above him glowed brightly, piss-yellow against the dark brown sky, and shone off of the hood of his Camaro. There were a few other cars in the parking lot with him, and he wasn’t sure if Mello had gotten there yet, but he also didn’t want to know at all.

In real life, the bar they meet as is a dive in Atwater village called Club Tee Gee, a historic place in LA with a reputation of being a well-known, local hole-in-the-wall. The sign is exactly as Matt describes it -- piss yellow -- and the table tents and lamps on the table are as they are in the picture above.Tee Gee, with its gross neon lights and its overexposed lamps and mirrors, felt like the perfect, most cinematic place for Matt and Mello to have their second reunion. To date, this is one of my favourite scenes in the novel.

"7051 Fifth Ave."

One location that is mentioned again and again in Crush (especially in Matt's POV) is a place that never existed: 7051 Fifth Ave., the address that Mello scrawls on a piece of paper which takes Matt, unawares, to somewhere in Van Nuys.Even though 7051 Fifth Ave. does not exist, the road that Matt had found himself driving on in fact did. Including the house that he'd eventually accosted - all of it is part of a street that does happen to have a location in our real world.

The heat was pummelling down on his hands against the steering wheel, and he was trying to focus on the numbers on the homes as they ticked forward down 5th Ave. He needed a 7051 — he was in a residential neighborhood with quaint pastel duplexes, and then he made a right towards a Hispanic church that looked like it was inside a trailer park, and then he missed his destination.

Incidentally, said baby blue church is one of my favourite parts of this small square of Van Nuys, and feels so particular and culturally unique to me that I had to include in Crush.A significant part of Matt's story was trying to tie his everyman relationship to the world and to California vis-a-vis his absorption of the different cultures and demographics present in the urban spaces of LA, so I was glad to have Matt trawl places that Mello would never have any reason to be otherwise.

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PART TWO: NEW YORK

Centurion Hotel

The Centurion Hotel that Mello and Matt stay at is, in fact, a very real, very well-known landmark in New York City. It is based off of the Millennium Hotel in New York City Downtown, located right across from the financial district and where the Twin Towers and the WTC used to stand. Following Death Note tradition, I've taken the liberty of renaming it for no particular reason (I doubt they'll sue me for namedropping).

This is absolutely not where Matt and Mello should be, being undercover and everything, and Matt does very well comment on the fact that this is the worst place to lay low. In the original series, however, Mello is shown to be within sight of the SPK building when the raids begin, which meant that they logically would have to be in a hotel nearby. (There were no other buildings that Mello could camp out in in the SPK's immediate vicinity, as far as I could see.)The Centurion Hotel, much like the Millennium, is very fancy. The lobby is made of full wood furnishing, and the elevators are shiny and bright. All of these descriptions are, in fact, based off of the in-real-life Millennium Hotel.

Matt walked up the shallow steps and pushed through the revolving door with his shoulder, emerging on the other side and almost macking with a business man that had criss-crossed right in front of him. He armed his duffel bags before him like shields and walked briskly like he had a purpose to be there, turning away from the picture-perfect front desk clerks smiling like Stepford wives and turning to the elevators.They were glittering gold, separated in the floor’s sections. FOR FLOOR 40, 41, 42, 43, 44,...Fuck, this hotel was glitzy.Matt pushed the rest of the way towards the elevator that had the number “12” in the hallway sign, his boots leaving unsubtle faux-Demonia prints on the clean grey carpet. Every head he passed by was coiffed and every suit he knocked shoulders with was well-fitted, and well, again. Matt stuck out like a sore fucking thumb.Inside the hallway, Matt pressed the elevator up button. An empty one sitting at the ground floor dinged open just beside him. Matt walked over and got in to close the doors, pressing Floor 12.The reflective doors closed silently and he jetted upstream in the shaft, watching the digital numbers toll up top. Elevator music. Beneath it was a nice little sign: Elevator under periodic surveillance. Big Brother was watching.

Inside the Centurion Hotel, following a sexually tense withdrawal (?) followed by a sexually fraught amnesiac over-the-pants handjob (?), Matt and Mello are not on good terms. The hotel itself at the Centurion is stuffy, small, a little bit claustrophobic.Hotels renovate their interiors quite often, so looking for period-accurate hotel images was hard for the real-life Millennium Hotel. I managed to narrow some down to the specific time period - the early 2010's - which gives us a distinctly dated look, as well as that distinct smell of cigarette-soaked, fuzzy carpeting and stained dark couches. (Matt also smokes indoors at the Centurion despite that being absolutely illegal by 2009.)

Mello sits at that desk, burning the photo that Near had given to him from Wammy's House. The white sheets are also where Danny Spingola, the soft-hearted Italian mobster-in-training, is executed that fateful night.

The boy collapsed into a heap against Matt’s bed face-down, his white undershirt colored red. Blood flecked the TV screen. Some on the wall, dripping down the wallpaper.

Just imagine the blood splatter, the red stains on the carpet, brain flecks on the comforter and Mello's shoes squelching on the soaking floor for the ultimate cinematic experience.

SPK Headquarters

Among all of the things that I was obsessed with figuring out in the frustrating journey of writing Part Two was the location and building of the SPK Headquarters, especially before the raid. Obata had clearly used drawing references of New York City for his backgrounds, so it was a matter of trying to figure out exactly which building he was pulling from.Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful. I believe that Obata had, in fact, conglomerated a bunch of different buildings together (some which are not at all in New York) that suggested an intelligence building, such as the FBI or the CIA headquarters.The SPK was then placed in a government building on Maiden Lane in Manhattan, which looks the closest to what it looks like in the original series, where the fictional "Nick Station" would correspond to the real-life Fulton Station. This makes most sense to me as well as the chapters where the NPA are led by Mello to New York, as it looks like the downtown core of New York City.

The day that Matt has to listen into the 6-person conference call with Mello, Near and the NPA, he is sitting in his car on a street by Maiden Lane beside a cafe, playing QWOP and looking at hot chicks jog by. Here is the view.

The NPA guys had left the square sometime around 3 PM and had moved to the cafe across the street from Matt’s car, sitting by the window with coffee cups in their hands, looking bored. He wasn’t sure if they were supposed to do that, but they were still on the call. People had needs, he supposed.[...]A blonde chick jogged past with a tracksuit that had the word JUICY dancing over her ass, her hair swinging to-and-fro as she ran through the square. A tourist lumbered past his car with sunglasses on, horking down a relish-covered hot dog. Some college-aged chick with a pin-covered backpack walked across the street, texting vigorously on her Blackberry without looking up for traffic.

During the raid itself, Mello is shown to be in a place with a big glass window. Matt is stuck downstairs in the eye of the storm, and being shuffled along with the mob, which lead him down the street to a flower shop and a nail salon until he meets Danny Spingola.

New York City Chase Route

In Chapter 24, the chase route was painstakingly charted, mapped and choreographed against a real map of Manhattan, so that all of its twists, turns and tunnels corresponded with actual, physical locations that you would find in downtown New York City. This means if you drove this exact route, you could absolutely recreate this high-speed car chase between you and some New York mafiosi if you so pleased.

Please bear with me as I provide a play-by-play via Google Earth.Mello first gets out of the Centurion Hotel through a backdoor, where he spots both Matt and an unknown car waiting for him by the park, shrouded by trees.

The emergency exit was at the side of the hotel. Mello spotted Matt’s car idling across the street, waiting for him, the headlights shining bright in the night.Mello stopped.There was another car parked in the distance further along the street. Mello couldn’t see the make clearly, but he could see enough.Black and sleek. It was a mob car.Mello didn’t let it out of his sight as he crossed the street. It didn’t move, still idle.He opened the passenger door, throwing Matt’s duffel bag onto the mat. Matt looked over, his face tense, a lit cigarette clenched between his teeth.“Drive,” Mello barked.“What the fuck happened?”“No time,” Mello answered, peering back. The mob car’s headlights flashed on, illuminating the foliage ahead of it. “Shit. Go.”

Seeing this, Matt first heads off from the Centurion Hotel northbound. Completely in the dark about the streets of New York, he really is pulling in the first direction he sees.He heads up Fulton, and on Mello's command of finding a "main road," keeps pushing west until he hits the NY-9A.

“Get on a main road,” Mello said.“I don’t fucking know my way around here,” Matt responded irritably, turning on his blinker.Mello squinted at the black car. The passenger window rolled down slowly.Mello ducked. A bullet sailed through the rear window, cracking the glass.

At this point in 2009, NY-9A is full of construction. The entire median between the two north/sound lanes are torn apart, divided by concrete and blocked off by tow trucks and cement trucks.This makes it a lot harder to find a place to U-turn, especially since the mob is gaining steadily on Matt. Even with Mello's good aim - they need a Plan B.Ahead, Mello spots a break in the concrete median (more of a pedestrian crossing than anything) that can fit Matt's car a lot more easily than it would the mafia's.Mello shoots out the tires of one of the cars, making them crash into a streetlight by the median. The other, however, is able to follow closely behind at the turn.

There. A small break in the concrete median ahead of them. They could lose the tails that way.“Do a U-turn up there,” Mello said, pointing over.Matt nodded, cutting through the lanes to inch up to the median. It was right ahead of them when Matt jerked the gear back and twisted the wheel at full tilt, tires squealing.[...]The car swerved, smoke bursting. It missed the opening in the median and skirted along the concrete, the tires sparking in the darkness of night.

After the U-turn, Matt starts heading back south. No real direction in mind - just dead-set on getting rid of the guys behind them. As he speeds down the state highway, there's a merge point that leads to basically every highway in the New York state.Matt, under Mello's direction, heads for the Battery Park Underpass, which dips and leads to FDR Drive: a much bigger, spacious highway to escape on.

The wind stopped whipping through the windows. A hush fell over the car.They were in the tunnel.Matt threaded between the traffic, his speed constant. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple, his neck glinting in the white lights.They were fast, but not too fast. Matt pushed his sleeves up over his elbows, his knuckles white over the steering wheel. He drove like he was playing a video game on the easiest setting.No fear at all.The tunnel exit was up ahead. The highway opened up to two lanes, wider than the tunnel. There weren’t any cars in front of them for another long while, and Matt stepped on the gas pedal, accelerating.

The tunnel ride is quiet as the tunnel is far too small and cramped to do much shooting at one another. It becomes a kind of "safe house" for Mello as he checks his mags and reloads.As they exit the underpass, they hit the FDR which expands outwards. Matt can speed up as much as he want here: it's his playground.

Matt increases speed, but they're still very close behind. Matt spots a ramp towards Brooklyn Bridge, and decides to exit on it. Mello thinks he's crazy - but Matt has a plan.

At the Brooklyn Bridge, the lane again begins to tighten and Matt and Mello become wedged between tour buses and the mob car. But - Matt's idea is to keep the huge tour bus as a bottleneck to the offramp that he backs out of, effectively pushing the mob car towards Brooklyn Bridge and trapping them there.This part is a little hard to imagine, and very hard to describe through a narration and just words, so I'm hoping that some visuals may do the trick.This is the Brooklyn Bridge and the entrance towards it. There are many ramps that lead to it - and Matt, having been no stranger to Hot Wheels in his youth, is immediately inspired by the layout.

The Brooklyn Bridge loomed beside them, the on-ramp speeding away from its iron supports to turn and merge with the lanes running through its center. The heavy bricks and high arches of the bridge towered over the car.Matt squeezed along the median, accelerating until they were sandwiched between two large, colorful tour busses. The tour busses moved slowly, adhering to the speed limit.Through the window, Mello saw sleeping faces, their heads leaning against the window. Further down, somebody stared down at them, awake and frowning.Matt pushed harder. The mob car was gaining on them again, close behind one of the tour busses. The entrance to the bridge was getting closer up ahead.

If you go just farther up ahead, there is another ramp that heads up right as the entranceway starts to curve towards the main bridge structure. This is where Matt aims for, and where Matt decides to go backwards on. It's barely noticeable from the main road, and Mello himself doesn't even notice it.

“Hold tight,” Matt said gruffly, and turned his head back, lounging his arm over the back of the seat. He jerked the gear shift.Suddenly, the car flew backwards.

With the tour bus blocking the way, the mob cars are forced to continue in a traffic-jam towards Brooklyn, and Matt and Mello land on their back tires on the main road, and go straight into a lane that has a "no entrance" sign. Hey, while we're breaking the law, right?

They landed on the back wheel, the car jerking as it skidded onto the main road. Cars slowed and honked as Matt shifted gears again, gripping the wheel tight.Their tires squealed as Matt drifted. They flew through a red light ahead to another barrage of honks and swears.

They head towards that little gated area in the small street which looks much more discreet than it is in the blazing sunlight. For one, this area in 2009 is under construction.

Mello pushed himself back upright, breathing hard. The street led them to a small underpass directly underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Closed for Construction.Matt ignored the sign and headed into the site, turning into a parking lot of junked cars and debris. There was nobody else there. Matt looked back again and shifted gears, slowing to a crawl as he pulled in beside a transport truck, its white trailer scrawled over with graffiti.The area bordered the East River, closed to the public.

Now we reach the underpass under the Brooklyn Bridge that they just left, finally, and they rest there for a few moments to catch their breath, and to confirm that the mobsters haven't caught up to them. Right here - these graffiti-scrawled trailers, and these junked cars that Mello describes.

A little history as they take a breather. This underpass is sometimes open to the public and sometimes not. At this point in Crush, it's very much shuttled off, though in summer months when the tide is low people are known to take jogs and walks by the beach.Fun fact: this area also happens to be in the intro of the 1989 film Black Rain, featuring a New York City biker gang.

Standing beside the river on a strip of sand by the riverside. Mello heard him zip his fly up before he lit another cigarette, his hair so dark in the night it looked black.Mello crawled over the median, jumping off onto the sand. His shoes sank with every step he took towards Matt until they were side by side.They stared at nothing but the water, rippling quietly in the cool night. Alone. Just the two of them for miles in all directions.On the Brooklyn Bridge above them, sirens wailed. The cars were heavy and loud as they drove over the underpass, rocking against the brick.

Twenty years later in 2009, the underbelly of the Brooklyn Bridge is significantly less welcoming and for some reason has become a resting place for junked cars and graffiti. But, there still remains a quaint, peaceful quality that made me fall in love with it as the final resting scene for the high-adrenaline chase in Chapter 24, and especially for Matt and Mello, who seem to gravitate towards these urban spaces.In the moonlight, by the beach and overlooking Brooklyn on the other side, Matt and Mello experience their first moment as if really seeing each other, in the nether regions of this iconic landmark, cars in a state of disrepair.

Jericho, NY

Following the chase, Mello has Matt drive further and further eastbound until they hit Jericho the next morning. Matt and Mello fan fiction has always been so based in small-town, suburban American towns, driving, and long stretches of road. Jericho is, aside from being necessary for the two of them to evade the mafia that is out to get Mello in a hostile place, a way for me to honour that quintessentially Matt/Mello trope.Jericho is a suburban town. A little sleepy, but definitely with its share of charm and charisma. Matt and Mello do a pitstop at a Chinese diner on the Jericho Turnpike, which happens to be the only place open at that time in the morning. One of those grubby fast-food Chinese places in small-town America with all local charm.

After they make a pitstop at the Chinese food place, they settle on a motel close to the turnpike for truckers.

They pulled up to a shady little motel at the corner of the Jericho Turnpike, the outer walls painted a garish orangey-pink. Matt stopped the car at a parking spot, joining only a few other cars in the whole lot, and got out with one of the duffel bags.[...]The garishly patterned blankets looked inviting as long as he didn’t think about what and who had been on there before his check-in. There was a dank, musty smell that lingered in the air, too, but Matt didn’t want to investigate.

It's in that barren parking lot that Matt parked his bullet-ridden El Camino, and it's on those stinky motor lodge beds that Matt has a fleeting dream about living in Arizona again and then they wake up to watching the news about Danny Spingola's murder (though, in my mind's eye, the TV is much more an old-school bulky cathode ray tube than a flat-screen mounted on the wall).Important to note are the ugly paintings and the ironing board. Off-camera, Matt absolutely tries and fails to "iron" his shirt.

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PART THREE: JAPAN

Matt & Mello's Hideouts

The very first chapter of Part Three (Chapter 27) begins after a small time skip of one week as Matt and Mello both regain their bearings in Los Angeles. These are the parts that we see them interacting the most in the main series - the infamous "Matt, watch from here, I'll follow him" panel, for example - but I figured that retelling the plot of the main story would be much less effective than going to a significant portion in Matt and Mello's narratives, in-medias-res.Part Three does indeed start off very much in the middle of things. In the main series, Mello is inexplicably in a place with a lot of desiccated curtains (?). It looks like an abandoned hotel that's been burned down.Here's my take.

Mello's Hideout
The Pressman Hotel

In my mind, Mello has relocated to the Pressman Hotel, where Rod had preexisting connections and they had a room just for "mafia dealings." This room is completely trashed over the years but just nobody goes in there to clean it up. Mello stays in this hotel room to surveil Misa, since coincidentally, this is also the hotel where she is staying. He also has his meeting with Dominic Cadena here as well.The Pressman Hotel is, as the Centurion Hotel is, based off of the real-life, famous Millennium Biltmore Hotel located in DTLA. The Biltmore Hotel is a historic, hundred-year-old haunted hotel and you've most definitely seen it in movies and TV shows before. I called it the Pressman as an homage to Fight Club, where the "banquet hall" scenes are filmed in the same hotel, and named the Pressman HotelI didn't pick this hotel on a whim. Misa is shown in the manga to be staying at a very fancy, frilly hotel in DTLA, where the rest of the NPA are currently conducting their investigation into Mello and Near. I was looking for an exact furniture and curtain match in Los Angeles as most luxury hotels in California are not usually Renaissance in their decor, especially in 2009.However, I did find a match in the "Millennium Suite" which Misa lives in alone with Mogi.

Matt kept walking through the huge suite, passing ornate chairs, wide tables, tall windows bearing the view of a glistening DTLA. On every table was more magazines. Japanese magazines, American magazines, TV magazines, hairstyling magazines.Matt looked away, heading to the fireplace at the corner of the room by the TV shelf. If he were Harry Sachz, a concierge of the Pressman Hotel who did fire checks, that would be the first place he’d check.

In the first scene of Chapter 27, Matt wears the uniform that he'd stolen off of Danny Spingola at the Centurion Hotel to pass for some sort of valet-cum-concierge-cum-electrician at the Pressman while Mogi gets stuck downstairs during a food supply run. Misa is none the wiser, kicking her legs on that very grey couch while Matt installs bugs in the fire grate of the fireplace directly across from her.

Underneath her tiny black skirt was black, frilly underwear. Her ass was small, pert and soft, and curved like two gentle peaches over her milky thighs. Every kick of her foot against the back of the couch made her buttcheeks wobble like jelly, shuddering over the fabric of her panties.

Let your imaginations run wild.Downstairs, in the bar-lounge in the main lobby, Mello is having drinks with Dominic Cadena, the new head of the California mafia. They share a Napa Valley Cakebread in the historic Cognac Room.

Down in the mezzanine, in a gold room with arched ceilings and tinkling chandeliers, Mello was sitting under a painting of two women singing on flower petals.

There, under the fresco is where Mello and Dominic have their meeting (with Dominic sitting in the couch seats, of course). In Crush, there is an additional red curtain that is draped between their room and the rest of the hall, where Mello suspects the barkeep, Armand, of lacing his wine with cyanide.The exact focus to detail at the Pressman Hotel was completely disproportionate to its role in the story, as it only appears in two scenes in the first chapter of Part Three. However, since every scene is ridiculously true to life (including a deleted scene where Matt meets Dominic to arrange the arms trade), I'll let you see the complete and utter mania with which I pursued this hotel's floorplans (of which only the original, 1923 blueprints were available online).

Matt's Hideout
Rented Apartment

Meanwhile, Matt is spying on the NPA - namely, Aizawa and Mogi - who are seen in and around the Pressman Hotel (where Light is conducting meetings). Obata has drawn Matt to be in an inexplicably cubic apartment with an uncomfortable bench and a host of differently draped things (beds? dining tables?) which also happens to be in the line of sight with one of the most historic buildings in Los Angeles.Due to the lack of coherence in this mise-en-scene, I took it upon myself to recreate his hideout in an interior design program just so I can try to begin to understand what the hell is going on, and why the hell he's here.

It's still not terribly clear what sort of living space that Matt has found himself in, but the only thing that makes sense is that it's the space that he never leaves, with all of his junk, beer cans and wires on the floor. His furniture also looks to be haphazard - did he steal the bench from off the street? - so, that suggests that it's a place that's furnished on a small budget, and is not his usual Los Angeles home.So Matt does find a cheap apartment in DTLA right across from the Pressman somehow, and those cameras look directly onto at least two exits (assuming he has the blind spots manned with cameras set at different vantage points). It's not ideal, it's also kind of random, but according to the source text, Matt and Mello just somehow have a sizable roster of strange, unintelligible and centrally located places to hide out in.In a deleted snippet, Matt does describe this apartment with a bit more detail.

He was back in LA. Home sweet home. A tiny rented place with shitty second-hand furniture and a shittier little cathode ray tube from 1998. It’d been advertised as a “fully furnished studio” for $550.What it really was was a shithole with some hard blocks of cement to sit on.

At least Mello pays for this one. It's a month-to-month lease.

MaidLovin' Cafe

Another fun thing I had to wrestle with in the source text is where the hell Mello is staying in Japan. It's barely shown in the manga except for this one panel in a flashback, and it is implied to be the same place from the anime scenes where Matt and Mello are sitting in the same room (although there are some continuity issues about where they are, etc. - I ignored those since Crush is not based on the anime.)

The notable things here are the state of disarray, the draped-over pieces of furniture, the black and white tiled floor and the inexplicable mannequins that are strewn around and broken.Now, I do understand symbolism to a certain extent, and I do realise that the broken mannequins symbolise Mello's defeat. But as a writer who's faithful to the original series, it's hard to come up with a solid conclusion as to what the fuck is going on.Working backwards, I had always thought that Matt and Mello would be headquartered in Kabukicho, and surmised that Mello must know the yakuza in Japan, and would be using their resources in order to lay low while in enemy territory. The yakuza in Japan does have their hands in some of the nightlife industry - concept cafes, host clubs, cabaret clubs, snack bars, and some live houses - so a few ideas that locked into place were a small concert venue that they'd remodelled as an apartment, or some sort of repurposed cafe.Then I found this image of a maid cafe in Hachioji and suddenly it made sense.

The floor is a dead-ringer. The couches, too, bear some resemblance to the couch that Mello is seen sitting on in the phone conversation with Halle. The mannequins, depending on whatever the maid cafe's concept was, absolutely would have a reason to be there. Personally, I always saw it as a vampire-themed maid cafe and the mannequins were always sat the back as their "victims."We spend so much time in this maid cafe - crudely named Maidlovin', based off of the real-life chain Maidreamin' in Japan - that I needed to draft out a floorplan of the area. Part Three is almost entirely in this oppressive, dusty space. it becomes a character in and of itself.

It was dark, lit only by a lamp in the middle of the room behind a sofa and an armchair. There were windows, but all of them were boarded up with cardboard, leaking only a perimeter of sunlight.Black and white checkerboard tiles stretched over the wide expanse of floor like a shitty dive in East Berlin.The place was fully furnished, if you could call it that — the aforementioned seating plan, a coffee table, and a lamp, facing a small, dusty stage, complete with a TV nailed to the wall. The whole place smelled like dust and acrylic, ambiance from their next-door nail salon neighbors.

The maid cafe ended up being a really fun space to stage a lot of the scenes. The red couch is Mello's main throne, while Matt sleeps and does most of his work on the grey couch beside him. The stage in the corner of the plans becomes a place for Matt to lounge in the latter part of Part Three (around New Year's) when he gets bored of being on the couch all the time.My favourite area of the maid cafe is the bar counter, which flanks the kitchen (an industrial kitchen with a small door) and has a tall bar shelf. This is the place where the first-night blowjob happens, as well as where Matt stands to tell that agonizingly long ping-pong joke.The floors are dynamic, too. The overdose scene as well as their fistfight scene are made so much more exciting with the clashing colours, the bright sensory overload of anime on the TV screens, the dark shrouded red lamp, and the ominous tarped furniture that shrouds the whole scene. It's a really fun, visual and memorable space to set Matt and Mello in.

Kabuki-cho

Kabuki-cho is the red-light district in Tokyo as well as where the yakuza are often most likely to do their affairs. Matt and Mello being situated in Kabuki-cho made most sense to me, as Shinjuku is often full of tourists that they won't stick out nearly as much in a crowd, and they would be close to their business associates.The first night where the yakuza welcome Matt and Mello to Japan in Chapter 28 was a real delight to set, arrange and write. It's the first taste of Japan that both Matt and Mello truly get, and it's so different from what their counterparts (the task force and the SPK) are going through simply because of who they are and what their positions are in the criminal underworld.

In front of him were flashing billboards of girls with light brown hair and made-up eyes. They grinned hollowly back at him, posing beside flashing light bulbs.
[...]Everywhere he looked, Matt saw phone numbers and slanting Japanese fonts. In the far distance, a half-naked girl flashed with her body covered in soap suds. In big golden text below her, emblazoned over the black awning. SOAPLAND.

Kabuki-cho is bright and overwhelming. Faces upon faces upon faces flash at you from the red light district, and there's almost too much to look at even in the middle of the night. Matt is definitely feeling the fatigue and the sensory overload, mixed with a boyish excitement in seeing all these lights in the city. Mello on the other hand is mostly nonplussed by the change in scenery, a man on a mission.In keeping with Crush's tradition in honouring hotels and changing their names, the Kairo Hotel is an existing hotel in East Shinjuku named the Keio Plaza Hotel. It's a modest four-star hotel with a golden lobby, where Mello sits at, looking deceptively handsome.

Matt headed back to the waiting area, where Mello sat next to a big Christmas tree. He had his sunglasses on, wearing a studded leather jacket and leather gloves. He looked like a rockstar — waiting for his VIP Guest, dodging fans in this upscale joint.

Heading upstairs, Matt and Mello meet the yakuza in a teppanyaki restaurant on the top floor of the hotel. This is really the most luxurious and fancy event that Matt's ever been invited to, and so he gets drunk off his ass at the table, naturally.

The fun however only begins once they're in the cabaret club that's owned by the yakuza - a completely god-awful, gold-plated, trashy place located underground. Karaoke, smokes and microwavable food.This is also where Matt meets Rin-chan, and where Mello finally completes his arms trade, which is what he was there to do all along.

Much later in the night, they relocated to a cabaret club, hidden underground. It was in a small private room, where walls were papered with cheap gold curtains, stapled into place with large golden mirrors and flat-screen TVs.The yakuza were loud, red faces burping and singing poorly along to old Japanese showtunes. The cabaret girls beside them wore beaded dresses, with big hair and eyelashes like caterpillars.

After retching, it is time to head home. Matt and Mello's maid cafe is located on the 8th floor of a general-use entertainment building that looks like this. They're dropped off by a yakuza lackey, who leaves them with their car that Matt dubs the "yak mobile".Welcome home!

Daikoku Futo

Daikoku Futo, a wharf in Kanagawa, is around a half hour drive away from the central Tokyo area. Matt and Mello go here twice - once to pick up Matt's Camaro in the middle of a car meet-up and the second time Mello comes here alone, reflecting on the mission that's to come.Daikoku Futo, along with the warehouses that stretch along that side of town, are in my opinion the most representative of Part Three in Crush, despite the amount of colour and noise that's present in the earlier chapters. The simplicity, silence and emptiness of these wharfs and late-night cargo trucks in Japan feel quintessentially Matt and Mello, especially in the part of their relationship where they feel certainly doomed.

Daikoku Futo was a pier by a glittering river, factories stacked beside huge transport ships that glowed in the night. According to Ken, Matt’s Camaro was in transit, left in Tokyo for the night as a layover.[...]Miku led them to the pier on highways that had them driving in circles like Hot Wheels, emerging on the other end of the bridge across the water. Chain-link fences held the narrow streets in as they descended on a ramp, leading into the parking lot.

Afterwards, they find the Camaro in the car meet and move elsewhere to confirm that they've gotten the full amount of cash that they needed to bring over. They park in a place that's around ten minutes away from the Daikoku Futo area, in a warehouse that's closed for the night.At this time of night, they're completely alone, with just their two cars - the Toyota Tercel, and the Camaro, parked nose-to-nose.

They were the only cars there, parked nose-to-nose away from the sole dull yellow streetlight blinking in the middle of the parking lot.[...]
The factory they were parked beside was huge, a tire manufacturer or something. Big, dark red Chinese characters were written over the rusty garage doors, surrounded by trees and tall, stringy powerlines cutting through the dusty sky like razor blades. On the wall, rain running down the cement like tear-streaked mascara stains:For a safer tomorrow.

Later on in the second-last chapter of Crush, the second time Mello goes to Daikoku Futo feels entirely different, almost quotidian. A sense of "life moves on, with or without you." Mello stands by the pier, watching the handymen work, and it really does feel like a moment of peace while looking out to the water's edge.

The wind whipped cool over his leather jacket. The roads were narrow. An inferior ride in comparison to the wide streets of Los Angeles. But Mello had missed the rumble of the engine, thrumming in his core. The drag of the wheels, and the sensitivity of the handlebars.He drove from Shibuya to Daikoku Futo. It took twenty minutes, as he’d thought. Mello parked a ways away from the parking lot he’d visited at the ship loading dock, beside a long line of factories dotting the pier.The parking lot was farther along, across a long stretch of road, and barely visible from his position.Mello had taken off his helmet, leaning against the side of his motorcycle as he looked around him. In the daytime, Daikoku Futo looked like a different place. The cloudless skies made the sloping highway tracks shine like playground slides, and the sea glittered in front of him, shining in the cold afternoon sun.A Yamano Transport truck was farther along the parking lot, sitting by an unmarked factory. Its backdoors were open, and uniformed men were loading boxes in the trunk, shouting to each other in the distance.

Incidentally, the Yellow Box Warehouse where Light is set to meet the SPK two days later is also on Daikoku Futo - one of the warehouses on the wharf, though Matt and Mello don't know this.But, Daikoku Futo is where Mello takes the transport truck when he kidnaps Takada as well, and where he drives from towards Karuizawa, Nagano. It's fitting that this is one of the last places that Mello goes to in his life, the last real stop that he made before the abandoned church, because I think that the wharf has the same sense of strandedness that Mello does.

Although far from expansive, this behind-the-scenes highlights some of my favourite locations and research that I've done for the entirety of Crush. With every location featured and every place mentioned, the bottom line is just to make sure that Crush could exist in our universe, and we could live these lives that Matt and Mello had led a whole thirteen years ago.I hope this convinces you of that realism, or teaches you some things you hadn't known before.I too hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed compiling the resources and sharing the beautiful things that I'd found.

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Crush.

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If you still want more, here's a fun little "face claim" casting list of actors or models who remind me of the characters in Crush.Characters →

Crush.

Characters

Matt

Mello

Jamie

Danny

Amy

Misa

Halle

Rin

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01/15/10 — 01:05

Matt slammed Mello against the wall the second they got in.There was no hesitation. No second guesses. Mello was pent up, ready to meet him head-on, hands flying into Matt’s hair, pulling the goggles off like he’d been waiting for years to do it.Heads tilted. Tongue-to-tongue combat. Hissing, grunting, grinding.The front door swung shut, decapitating the hallway light. Matt’s goggles clattered on the linoleum tile. It went dark in the apartment. Pitch black.Matt couldn’t see shit, but he could feel Mello against him. Kissing him desperately, pressing against his crotch through two pairs of pants.And fuck, it turned Matt on like insane.Matt grunted as he pressed Mello’s shoulders against the wall, fusing their mouths closer together. Mello tasted like chocolate, his lips sweet. They kissed like they’d never kissed before.This time, Matt wanted to do it right.He trailed his hands down Mello’s shoulders, down the leather of his vest, the O-ring zipper clicking as he went lower. He grabbed Mello’s hips, pushing their crotches closer together.Mello moaned breathlessly in response, the noise barrelling down Matt’s throat and into his stomach.Matt wanted more. He shoved his clumsy gloves off onto the floor, freeing his hands to tuck in between Mello and the wall. His hands met Mello’s ass, soft and warm under his palms.Matt grabbed and squeezed. Mello arched his back, twisting with another long, heavy groan.Fuck, Mello was responsive. Squirming against him like a dog in heat. Matt had to meet him halfway. Grabbing his ass into two fists, squeezing his cheeks hard as he sucked on Mello’s tongue.Mello moaned again, his fingers leaving Matt’s hair, running down his back to grab his ass right back. Matt gasped sharply as Mello pushed him forward, their hard-ons grinding together, hard and hot and sweaty.Matt broke the kiss, panting into the air. No, this was it. That was the point of no return.They were going all the way tonight.Matt gave Mello one last squeeze before he slipped out from under Mello’s back, and circled forward to cup Mello’s dick.A desperate noise left Mello’s mouth, like a cat screeching. Mello forced their lips together again, sucking Matt’s lower lip into his mouth hungrily, and Matt let him eat him up as he squeezed his groin, feeling Mello’s knees buckle with the pressure.“Ah,” Mello breathed against Matt’s mouth, sagging into Matt’s touch. “Jesus.”Matt swallowed Mello’s s’s and j’s as he lifted his hand over the bulge in Mello’s pants, hooking his fingers into the cross-stitched laces. Matt tugged at them, feeling the heat of Mello’s boner through a thin layer of leather, reacting to him like he was something to react to.Matt tried to untie the laces blind as he heard the zipper of his vest unzip, feeling it running down in little vibrations as Mello freed him. Mello shoved the vest off, threading it through his arm-holes, letting it fall to the floor like a carcass.Mello slid his hands underneath Matt’s shirt, warm like a heat pad, a hug from within. His palms pressed flat against him, pushing his shirt up, up, up.Matt unglued their lips just in time for Mello to push the shirt over Matt’s head, pulling the collar angrily over his ears. Matt’s shoulders felt cold and naked in the middle of the living room.Mello tossed the shirt into the shadows where it disappeared. His hands came back, running his fingers into the dips of Matt’s ribcage.Mello’s hands were really, really fucking warm.Matt shuddered as Mello’s hands sailed all over his skin, from stomach to ribs to chest to collarbone. Touching him places that had never even been looked at before, making him feel hot and cold all over.Matt finally got the laces undone, loosened. Without any warning, he shoved his hand into the tiny space inside the waistband.His hand only made it halfway, squished tight. He was expecting underwear. A little bit of a middle-ground, a landing strip for him to prepare for the fall.All Matt got was hairless dick. Mello was rock hard, moist, and hot to touch.“Christ,” Mello gasped, throwing his head back against the wall as he gripped Matt’s waist under his fingers. “Fuck.”Christ, fuck indeed. Mello’s hips writhed under his touch, fluid and hasty, and Matt swallowed, pushing his face back into Mello’s bared neck to suck on his throat.Down below, Matt widened his hand, pushing Mello’s waistband loose, and closed his fist around Mello’s sweltering, pulsing dick.“God,” Mello moaned, like Matt was doing something utterly insane, his vocal chords vibrating under Matt’s tongue.Matt had never been with someone this responsive before. It sent a huge bolt of lightning down his hips, turning everything waist-down into molten lava. Matt pushed himself closer to Mello’s neck, gnawing at any piece of skin he could find, his hand stroking him between their hips.His hand started going faster. Fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap. Mello moaned louder, breathlessly, his hips twitching.Then, Matt felt Mello’s hands moving down his hips to unbuckle Matt’s belt buckle, return the favor.Matt’s hand sped up even faster. He trailed his lips up Mello’s jaw, unhinging his mouth to stick his tongue into Mello’s ear canal. Mello’s fingers slackened as Matt dug another noise out of Mello’s throat, trembling like paint splatter.“Ahhh, fuck—“Beneath them, Matt’s belt popped open.Matt breathed hotly into Mello’s ear as he unzipped Matt’s fly. His fingers dug through Matt’s boxers, and went straight for his dick.Mello’s touch felt intense, burning his foreskin. Hot and so sweet it was almost sour.“Ah,” Matt breathed, pressing his forehead into Mello’s hair, moaning into Mello’s ear. Mello twisted, getting a better grip of his dick, and started stroking him back.Matt shook his head, bracing himself against the wall with his free arm, leaning into Mello’s fist.Mello went faster. Matt went faster.Matt closed his eyes. He could feel Mello still watching him, his body shaking with every stroke.Matt’s hips tensed, Mello’s quick strokes on his dick floating his orgasm tight in his balls already. “You’re gonna make me,” Matt breathed, into Mello’s ear. “I’m gonna—”His dick went cold as Mello let go. Fucking torture.“No,” Matt groaned, his hips jerking at the absence. He didn’t want it stop right now, fuck, they were almost there, come on—Mello pulled his hand out with a jingle of Matt’s fly, casting him in abandonment. “Not yet,” he muttered.Mello detached himself from Matt’s body, slipping away.Matt opened his eyes again, shifting his forehead over his arm as he squinted, His eyes adjusted, roaming for Mello’s shape in the dark.There he was, by the door. A fuzzy, blurry blob of blonde hair and popped-open leather pants.He was trying to find his fucking keys.Jesus, now of all times? The jingle of his keys as he found them made Matt mad. Made his hard-on pulse, his balls clench, like he was being orphaned all over again.Matt shoved himself off the wall and stomped over, his hand grabbing the back of Mello’s neck for another kiss.Mello let go of the key, stuck inside the doorknob, and caught his kiss like a baseball mitt.Their lips met like melted cheese. Mello tilted his head, opening up wide as he slid his tongue deep into Matt’s mouth again. The door lay forgotten beside the two of them as Matt grabbed onto Mello’s neck, gripping tight.Mello’s hands came back, flexing around Matt’s waist, pulling him in.They kissed like stupid. Kissed like mad. Mello’s mouth opened wide, tongue lolling, as Matt licked the roof of his mouth, pressing himself flush against Mello’s body.Their bulges met again, and Mello broke apart first with a sharp gasp. “In bed,” he grunted, his voice rough.Matt ignored him, sucking Mello’s lip back into his mouth. He let go of Mello’s neck, hand trailing down from Mello’s shoulder, back to the popped-open pants to rummage around for his dick.He found it, holding on. Mello moaned, and the sound tumbled into Matt’s mouth.Matt started stroking him again, watching Mello twist and throw his head back. God, he was so fucking sensitive, and so fucking desperate. Everything Matt did made him act like a fourteen year old virgin, fucked for the first time.Matt’s hand sped up until Mello pushed him away again.“What?” Matt asked, overlapping with another one of Mello’s, “In bed.” Matt shook his head, refusing to let go.“No,” Matt responded.Mello grabbed a hold of Matt’s wrist, shoving him off. “Bed,” he whispered, one last time. “I’ll blow you.”Matt swallowed at the frankness of his words, throat going dry. He let go.Mello slipped away, back to the door.Matt followed. He came back like a yoyo, pressing himself tight up against Mello’s backside. His hard-on flush against Mello’s ass.His ass was soft. Asscheeks like cream. Matt’s arm snaked over to grab Mello’s dick, pushing his hips into Mello’s ass, grinding against him.Mello held in his noises like punishment as he fiddled with the key in the dark.Matt dug his hand into Mello’s pants again, touching his dick, the friction of Mello’s soft ass absolutely devastating. “Hurry up,” he mumbled, palming lazily.Mello responded with a short, quiet moan as his doorknob clicked, finally.Fucking finally.Mello eased himself through. The lights came on, blinding.Matt let go of Mello without meaning to, squeezing his eyes shut. “Jesus…”Before Matt could readjust, Mello dug his finger through Matt’s belt loop, tugging him along into the room. Matt was squinting, barely seeing shit, when Mello yanked him into the bed.Matt stumbled behind him, eyes still shut, until he hit the bedframe. “Shit.”Mello pulled Matt on top of him. They landed on soft red sheets, body-to-body.Matt pushed himself up as Mello settled down, blinking blearily. He could feel Mello’s hands, hot, cozy, setting Matt’s spine alight with fuzzy tingles that burrowed into his hips.Matt focused his eyes, seeing Mello underneath him, staring up at him. His hair fanned out, his eyes half-lidded, a barely-there smile on his lips. Underneath Matt’s shadow, his head blocking out the light.Matt’s mouth went dry, staring down at him, half-naked and hard underneath him.Holy shit.This was really happening.Mello’s smile widened like he could read Matt’s mind. He responded by pulling him down for another wet, sloppy kiss.Matt’s brain went back offline, kissing him back like instinct.Mello was all sharp angles underneath him, but he moved like he was water, fluid and everywhere at once. His hands coasted from Matt’s back to the hem of his jeans, holding them up by the thumbs as Mello’s tongue came in between his lips again, aggressive and intense.Matt opened his mouth wide, letting Mello take all he wanted from him. His fingers pushed Matt’s jeans over his ass, boxers in tow. He slapped his ass lightly, more of a command, like a teacher trying to get their student to stand straight.“Take these off,” Mello mumbled against Matt’s mouth, his voice harsh and low.The way he said it made Matt’s dick literally feel like it was going to explode. Matt nodded quickly, shifting off the bed and onto his weak, buckling legs.Matt turned around, pushing down his jeans and boxers hastily, stopping at his boots. Fuck, his boots.“Gimme a sec,” Matt mumbled, bending down to unzip his faux-Demonias as quickly as he could.Two down. Matt kicked them off, sending them flying across Mello’s office-room, and then pushed his jeans off where they pooled on the floor. He leapt from his leg holes, hopping around with just his socks on, and turned back around.Matt froze.Mello had undressed, too.His dick was pulled out of his pants fully, his leather scrunching up at his knees. He was cut, almost perfectly straight, and sitting slumped against the wall, staring at Matt like he was waiting for something.The way he looked at him was almost a question. What are you going to do now?Matt wasn’t sure how to answer. He’d never slept with a guy before. But he supposed it was time for him to give back.So Matt copied what Mello did the other night, and sank slowly down on his knees.Mello’s eyes grew dark and hazy as he followed Matt’s descent onto the ground. He didn’t stop him. The linoleum tile was so cold it felt like a knife against Matt’s shins. Matt scooted closer, swallowing his spit as Mello’s dick hovered inches away from his face.Mello shifted towards the end of the bed generously, his hand rustling the red bedsheets. Matt rolled his eyes up quickly, once, to see Mello lick his lips again, stare down at him with anticipation.Matt reached out to touch Mello’s dick. Mello exhaled softly, his chest falling.Matt closed the distance, and licked up the shaft.Mello groaned as Matt dragged his tongue up his dick. It was hard, warm, and veiny. He glanced up again, checking Mello’s reaction.Mello was watching him like he was performing a miracle, entranced and blissed.Matt opened his mouth over the tip of Mello’s dick. Mello’s mouth dropped at that, his eyes brimming with dark, heady desire.Matt continued, taking it a step further, putting his lips gently over Mello’s head. From above him, he heard Mello moan.“God,” Mello breathed, quietly. “Matt.”Matt hummed, drawing another sound out of Mello’s throat as he went lower, trying to learn on the fly. Matt liked it when girls used their tongue flat up against the head, like a warm blanket over his whole dick.Matt tried it, gluing himself to the tip of Mello’s dick. Mello groaned, readjusting, the bedsheets rustling.Matt felt his hand on his head, gently. More like guidance.Matt pushed himself further down, until Mello’s dick filled out his mouth.Mello moaned again, a long, drawn out sound in the hum of the silent room, and lifted his hand a little bit. Go up. Matt did, following his palm, his tongue trying its best to stick to Mello’s dick even as it shifted out of his mouth.Mello exhaled, “Matt…”Matt pushed himself back up, sticking to a rhythm. Up to the head, down to the middle of the shaft. Slowly at first, and then faster, until Mello’s sounds filled the room.Mello’s hand shifted on Matt’s hair, touching the base of his skull like he was holding him there. Matt sucked the best he could, looking up at Mello again for feedback.Mello wasn’t looking at him anymore. His head was rolled back against the wall, his eyes closed, mouth open. Soft moans falling from his lips, laid out for Matt to see.It was hot. Hot enough for Matt to want to do more, push Mello’s dick in deeper, rile Mello up, too. The tip of his head touched Matt’s tonsils, and then Matt’s stomach lurched.Fuck.Matt reeled back, pulling Mello’s dick out of his mouth before he got fried chicken throw-up everywhere. “Shit,” Matt mumbled, pausing. “Sorry.”Matt came back after his gag reflex settled, but Mello stopped him, stilling his head before he got any closer. Matt looked up, their eyes meeting.Mello’s expression was soft. Open, warm, and curious. His eyes deep and blue, but not piercing. Inviting.It made Matt go completely fucking speechless.Mello beckoned him closer with a nod of his head.Matt pulled himself up off the floor obediently without another word. He didn’t know what else to do but crawl over top of Mello.Mello’s bare skin was warm, toasty. Matt lowered himself on the bed, and their bodies thrummed together in their heat.Mello’s hand came back, raking through Matt’s hair as he pressed their lips together. His tongue eased itself comfortably back into Matt’s mouth, his fingers trailing down from his neck, over Matt’s shoulder.Matt kissed back, hooking his leg around Mello’s hips, pressing his hard-on against Mello’s thigh. Like a little chihuahua begging for attention. My turn now.Mello grunted at that, his hand moving from Matt’s shoulder to his chest, rubbing his nipple lightly. Matt exhaled before Mello kept going, his nails ticklish as he ghosted over Matt’s ribcage, over Matt’s stomach, over his bellybutton.His hand reached its destination, curling around Matt’s dick. Matt groaned, sensitive after being neglected for so long.Mello stopped again. Matt exhaled, detaching their lips with a soft smack. “What now?”“Get up on your knees,” Mello said.

Matt frowned, pushing himself up on his knees on the bed, even if it meant leaving Mello’s warmth. “Like this?” Matt asked, straddling Mello’s hips.Mello nodded once, shifting up against the wall, grabbing a red pillow to slip behind his back to get comfortable. He raised his arms, gripping Matt’s hips atop him, and pulled him closer.Matt licked his lips as he shuffled over on his knees, propping a hand up against the wall for balance. Mello’s right hand drifted from his hip, cupping his balls.“Ah,” Matt exhaled, curling his hand into a fist.Mello’s black nails moved from Matt’s balls, hooking his fingers around the base of Matt’s dick. He stroked him slowly before pulling Matt closer, sliding down on his back until he was between his legs, and Matt was almost sitting on his face.Matt shifted, trying to see, when he felt a wet warmth over his inner thigh. His hips bucked, feeling Mello’s nose tickling his taint, his breaths hot.“Shit,” Matt whispered, closing his eyes as Mello’s tongue moved, lapping a spot by his ballsack. “Fuck. That feels good.”Mello’s other hand moved, cupping Matt’s asscheek. Like an oily snake, his tongue crawled around places that nobody had ever been before. Breaths against his balls, his taint, his inner thighs, his pubes, his ass—“Ah!” Matt‘s voice hitched, as Mello spread him apart, his tongue nudging into Matt’s asshole. “Oh, fuck—”Mello made a small huh noise as his tongue stayed there, his head held tight between Matt’s thighs. He tongued him, circling the ring. Enjoying his stay in Matt’s watering hole.The feeling was short and sharp, so intense that it shot up Matt’s spine, making his toes curl. He hissed, shaking his head. “Stop,” he mumbled quietly.It was too much.Mello gave him one last lick before he shifted away, unleashing Matt’s asscheek. He ducked back out from between Matt’s legs, his strawlike hair messy and tousled, and tucked himself back into position under Matt against his pillow.Mello looked up at him in a way that made Matt’s heart catch in his chest. This weird, almost unfitting openness giving way to submission.Matt swallowed, glancing down quickly to his twice-neglected dick.Mello smiled a little, unconsciously, taking ahold of it. He slid down lower, pulling Matt close again, and opened his mouth to take him in.Matt watched as Mello’s shiny, pink lips wrapped themselves around his dick, forming a ring around his shaft. Slick, wet warmth engulfed Matt completely.Matt’s mouth fell open, his bones melting as he closed his eyes. Mello’s mouth felt like what ice cream on a hot summer day felt like. But in reverse.Mello took him deep into his mouth, halfway and then some; deeper than Matt thought he would. The warmth kept coming, soaking his entire shaft, pulling Matt closer and closer.Mello’s lips brushed against Matt’s balls, his breaths falling over Matt’s pubes. Matt leaned against the wall, looking down, and saw Mello shifting, still going like a clown pulling balloons out of his throat. But in reverse.“Fuck,” Matt mumbled, closing his eyes again, losing himself in the sensation. Mello hollowed out his cheeks as he took Matt even deeper, sucking him up like a vacuum cleaner. His hands shifted, moving off Matt’s dick, and set themselves on Matt’s hips again.Mello took a second to collect himself, inhaling. Matt panted, watching with bated breath.Then, Mello pulled Matt all the way down into his throat.The moan that came from Matt’s chest felt like it was punched out of him. He could feel his dick follow the curve of Mello’s throat, his palate nestling the tip like a cocoon. Doing the impossible, deepthroating him even after all the girls he’d slept with swore they couldn’t.Mello gagged, his throat tightening over Matt’s head, sending another sloppy shock into Matt’s system.“Holy fuck,” Matt gasped, his eyelids fluttering open.That felt really, really fucking good.Mello pulled him back, his fingers digging into Matt’s hips. He pushed him back deep inside his mouth, gurgling as Matt burrowed inside of his throat.“Ah,” Matt moaned breathily, another hooked out of his chest. “Shit, ah—”Mello kept coming, building up a rhythm. Every time Matt eased back in, his dick felt caressed anew, wrapped in a tight hug, the rest of his shaft in a wet, sloppy space blanket.It felt so fucking good. Matt’s entire system went offline. He was way beyond a BSOD.“Fuck,” Matt moaned, embarrassingly loud. “Ah, ah, yeah, ah—”Mello bobbed his head like he was fighting for his life, his spit shining over Matt’s shaft. His eyes were cloudy. Focused. Bringing his entire face and throat and mouth into Matt’s control.Matt almost blew his load right then and there. But he couldn’t. Because he couldn’t let this end this fucking soon.“God,” Matt groaned, his hand gripping Mello’s hair before he could help it. He sped up, thrusting himself into Mello’s throat, listening to it contract with a squelch. “Fuck, yeah, yeah—”Mello’s eyes fluttered shut. Suddenly Matt felt wetness on his balls as Mello started tonguing him. Matt short circuited, moaning louder.“Yeah, that’s—”He wanted more. Jesus Christ, somehow, he still wanted more. He leaned both of his hands up on the wall, adjusting his knees until his hips hovered above Mello’s face. Mello followed him instinctively, his throat stuck around his dick like a fish on a hook.Matt held himself against the wall, thrusting his hips downwards. Trying to fuck his throat, slowly at first. Making sure Mello didn’t gag.Mello didn’t. He breathed sharply underneath him, careful, balanced, and gave Matt his throat to fuck.Matt’s breath hitched as his hands settled over Mello’s head, balling his hands into fists, tight like reins on a horse. Mello liked that, smiling a little with his opened mouth.It was cute. Made Matt exhale a little bit. He kept his hands on Mello’s head for leverage, holding him in place as he humped, faster and faster.A noise rattled up Mello’s diaphragm, vibrating against Matt’s dick.“Shit,” Matt gasped, watching as Mello’s brows furrowed in concentration, his eyelids squeezed shut. It felt like his dick fit perfectly down Mello’s esophagus, nestled in a home it never knew it could have. Brushing against Mello’s palate, their bodies fused like they were stitched together.Mello’s tongue on Matt’s balls felt like an afterthought. That was how good it all felt.“Yeah,” Matt groaned, babbling. “Fuck, that’s good, that’s good, that’s good.”Everything was white. Everything was blinding. Matt wanted to keep watching Mello, keep seeing him struggle to take him down, but he couldn’t keep his fucking eyes open, couldn’t keep himself from bursting apart at the seams.“God, shit,” Matt moaned, half-gasp, half-bellow. “I’m, fuck, gonna, shit, yeah, yeah, yeah—”Matt had almost forgotten that an orgasm came at the end of sex until his balls clenched up against Mello’s tongue. His load rushed through Mello’s mouth without another warning. He didn’t even have time to stop, didn’t even have time to pull out, as his cum emptied itself out deep inside Mello’s throat.Mello gagged.Matt couldn’t stop. He kept cumming. Toes curled, thrusting weakly into Mello’s mouth, his arms and legs suddenly aching as he drained himself inside Mello. Mello gagged again, and Matt finally slipped out, his dick slobbered all over with thick, gushy spit.God, Jesus fucking Christ.Matt was panting, lightheaded. He came directly inside of Mello’s stomach, like a cream pie, but in reverse. And Jesus fucking Christ, that was—He felt a warmth on his inner thigh suddenly as he was reeling, coming back online slowly. Matt looked down, seeing a splash of cum running down his knee, globbing onto Mello’s shoved-off red bedsheets.Mello’s cum. He’d fucking cum, too, and Matt didn’t even notice him touching himself.His semen darkened the red fabric, sitting clear and white on the bedspread.Matt resisted the urge to lick it off. He didn’t know why he wanted to do it, and after cumming, it felt like the wrong thing to do. So he got off Mello, sitting his ass down on the other end of the bed with trembling hips, his entire body glowing from the best fucking orgasm he’d ever had.By the wall, Mello was sweating, coughing to himself as he sat himself back up inelegantly. His hair was matted around his face, his eyes sunken and wet.Matt shifted. He should probably pat Mello’s back or something. Get him water or something.He did neither. “Uh,” he said, and then cleared his throat. His voice felt hoarse. “You okay?”Mello nodded, swallowing. “Fine,” he rasped.“Good,” Matt mumbled back, shifting, careful not to accidentally sit on Mello’s cumstain. “Uh, that was…”Amazing? Magnificent? Fucking-stellar-epic-pwnage-crazy-insane-sexy-cool?“… hot,” Matt finished ineloquently. “Where the fuck did you learn to do that?”Mello exhaled a laugh. He didn’t answer, and Matt didn’t press it, looking away.On second thought, maybe it was better that he didn’t know.