Chapter Text
Matt
First day of school. Yet again. In the middle of the running term. Fucking great.
Matt sighed and stumped out his cigarette butt with an army-booted foot as the school bus - Number 666, what irony - pulled around the corner.
Yippie-yah-yeay, buttface, or however that one went.
As he clambered into the big, yellow monstrosity of a vehicle, everyone who sat alone slid over from window to aisle seat, defiantly, some sniggering. Not here, dude, not today. Nobody wants to be seen sitting with the new kid, with the weird hair and even weirder clothing. He was used to it by now, changing cities and schools and families as often as he did, but that didn't change the fact that bus drivers still got angry at people not sitting down, instead of at people refusing to let others sit.
Popular kids in the back row, outcasts and freshmen up front, the mass of shades-of-grey in-betweens spread between them.
The redhead knew the game by now, it was mostly the same in every goddamn place. Sometimes, a soft soul would take pity and grudgingly let him sit, other times he practically had to kock someone down to get a place in one of the closely guarded and defended seats.
"Sit down.", growled the rugged-looking driver, shooting him an annoyed look via the rearview mirror. And fuck you, too, good sir, Matt thought but didn't dare say it out loud. He didn't particularly fancy a walk in this shit weather, plus he has no clue where the school was exactly.
When he made his way to the only empty seat-pair in the bus, the guys in the back seat who had been sniggering the loudest at his predicament, called out to him.
"Yo, Bozo! Hey. Hey, ginger. That's Roger's seat, can't sit there.“, sneered an especially smug looking guy who only seconds before had had his tongue down the throat of a petite blonde, who now smirked at him viciously from the boy's lap.
Keeping his temper, can't pick a fight before school has even started, he figured, Matt smiled sweetly. "Well I've gotta sit somewhere, don't I?“
Highschool jocks. They were oh-so-evil. Why it was so much fun to pick on the new kid eluded Matt's brain, but he figured they were mostly like dogs, marking their territory.
"Not on that seat, though.“, chirped the girl, from whose head sprouted two tiny pigtails while the rest of her hair fell down past her shoulders, which she probably thought made her look 'unique' but only succeeded, in Matt's opinion, to make her look like a little girl dressed up in her mother's clothes.
„Fuckdamnit.“, he heard someone swear under their breath besides him. He looked to find an angry-looking blond kid, at first he thought it was a girl, but well, with that voice, probably unlikely while not impossible, he was most liekly male. Or had drunken acid for breakfast.
„Sit down, dumbass.“ The blonde shoved his bag violently down from the seat, glared at Matt and pushed his headphones against his ears, as if they would fall of if he didn‘t hold them there. The volume was cranked up so far that Matt could nearly understand the lyrics - but not quite. It sounded pretty angry, harsh and generally punk to him. At least he wasn't stuck next to some dudebro listening to hip hop.
Not a soft soul, he decided as he sat down, but probably very annoyed and not a good friend of the back-row crowd. So be it.
The rest of the drive was spent in silent brooding of both parties.
Mello
The new kid was visible even before he had entered the bus. Impossible to overlook, even, with his ridiculously red hair. That had to be dyed, right? Shouldn‘t it be impossible to have that shade of red on your head naturally? Maybe it wasn't, but what did he care if it was natural or not, as long as the authenticity of his own, very blond tresses was not questioned. Either way, the bright, glaring shade of red hurt his eyes and basically screamed 'HERE I AM!'.
Huge mistake.
Mello was pretty sure that he was the perfect fodder for Light and his crew, with his odd hair, pale complexion, ripped jeans, a well-worn, chunky and immensely furry vest over a ragged, striped shirt and a pair of... Well, they looked like swimming goggles, but with bright yellow lenses, around his neck.
The redhead looked slightly punkish, but not quite. Not in an intentional way, more in a I-have-no-other-choice-way.
His heavy boots banged on the floor with every step he went, farther towards the back, in search of a seat.
Those jocks lived for shit like this, a new, weird kid in the middle of the year, without friends or status or enough scary-don‘t-mess-with-me, bad-guy attitude to better avoid him. So be it.
Not his problem. So not.
The sniggering he could ignore. The angry bus driver, no problem.
Plus, as long as they picked on the new kid, and Mello didn‘t loose all of his bad-guy attitude, he was mostly safe and left alone.
And the blond was not particularly famous for his niceness anyways.
When Light and Misa started their quipping, though, it got too annoying, even through the roaring guitars, blasting drums and nearly-screamed lyrics of the Offspring blasting on full volume through his headphones. It was impossible to tune out their snappy comments and fake giggling. He knew there was only one way to make them shut up, or at least be a little less bloody loud and turn back to themselves and their popular-people gossip, and Mello chose the lesser of two evils.
So he muttered a „Fuckdamnit.“ and told the guy to sit the fuck down and tried to concentrate on his music.
At least weird firecracker didn‘t try to talk to him on the way to school and the blond was left in relative peace.