'Explain.'

Matt snorted. He hadn't looked up from the concrete floor since Mello had stormed in. He'd heard the boots clunking, the long coat swishing around the heavy steel door – he knew what he'd see if he looked: Mello's cold eyes, cut in half by sharp shadow, gritty fury under the rattling ceiling fan.

Mello drove his boot down on the armrest of the chair where Matt was tied, next to one of his numb and purple wrists. 'Explain.' He growled again.

'Was looking for you.'

There was a silence tighter than the crotch on Mello's pants. 'This isn't a fucking Arby's.' Mello finally ground out from behind his teeth. 'You can't just walk in.'

'No shit.' Matt could feel Mello's breath in his hair. He felt fidgety, but his arms were strapped down. Someone had taken his shoes away. His toes had fallen asleep ages ago. 'If you don't untie me I think I might lose some limbs.'

Mello's anger was tangible. It was a heady, hot smog. It could crash into a room like a tidal wave or seep under your skin like a parasite. 'Engel almost shot you.'

'Yeah. He wanted to.'

'It's his job.'

Matt had spent years tracking Mello. He'd thought his car would run out of gas, driving through empty land, past ghostly car dealerships and broad warehouses, trying to triangulte the location of the the Mafia base. When he'd found it, he'd waltzed in, put his hands up, asked for Mello, and then gotten clocked in the mouth by a guard with a gun the size of his arm. It had been an altogether miserable experience that had yet to stop being miserable.

Mello took a fistful of Matt's hair and made him look up into his face. Mello was very visibly older. He looked eclectic as shit. Matt had always suspected Mello's fashion sense went beyond baggy black jeans and undershirts, but never expected to see anyone pair a rosary with a vest that looked like it had been purchased in a sex shop.

'Hi.' He said, dumbly.

'You are such a piece of shit, Matt.' Mello answered, sounding resigned. He crouched down in one smooth motion, like looking into Matt's eyes had diffused whatever blood lust he'd been harbouring when he'd initially rocketed into the room, and sliced off the ropes with a switchblade.

Matt made an effort to stand up, but failed. Mello had to scoop him up under the arms like a sack of flour and hold him there while his legs tingled and burned back to life.

'How the fuck did you find me?' Mello asked, while they stood in that strange hug under the uneven orange glare of the factory light above the door.

'It was tough.'

'It's supposed to be impossible.'

'I haven't done anything but look for you since you left.'

Mello hefted him a little so he was holding him around the ribs, properly, like they were happy to see each other. Like Matt hadn't just been beaten and held captive in Mello's underground crime den by a bunch of Americans with assault rifles. 'Do you ever answer direct questions?'

Matt felt like he could stand, so he did. Mello didn't let go for just long enough to mean something good.

'It doesn't matter.' Mello said, when Matt didn't answer. 'Follow me. You can show me how you tracked us.'

They went upstairs, down hallways, past guards.

'You're only alive because Engel's smart enough to have guessed that I would want to question a lone, unarmed intruder. People don't just find us.'

'I'll thank him sometime.' Matt mumbled. The atmosphere in the Mafia base sucked. It made him nervous, and not only because he'd had his nose broken since arriving.

Mello stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like every other door and turned around. 'Don't embarass me.' He said, and then opened it.

There were a handful of bored looking men and three women inside. It looked like they'd abandoned a game of cards halfway through.

'He's with me.' Mello told the curious faces.

One of the men stood smoothly from where he'd been sitting in an armchair. 'Isn't that the kid that broke in?'

'Yes.' Mello answered drily. Everyone looked like they wanted to say something, but no one did. Mello stalked over to a long desk covered in computer monitors and pulled out the ugly chair that was tucked underneath. 'He's going to show us how he did it. And then he's going to fix it.'

Matt nodded and stepped forward. He wasn't thrilled to be sitting on his ass again, but the threadbare office chair was a step up from the hardbacked wooden one he'd been strapped to before. 'Uh, so... I started off -'

'Why was he looking for us?' A huge bald man asked from the couch.

'He was looking for me.' Mello told him. Matt was surprised by the honestly. 'We can trust him.'

He was even more surprised that everyone took Mello's word for it. There were enough guns in the room to make Matt pretty fucking nervous. He swallowed a lump in his throat and then continued, 'I started off with airport security cameras. And then cross-checked... like, passengers. To see which name was on the passport Mello was using. So - ' He looked at Mello periodically to gauge how much he was allowed to reveal, but Mello was looking at the bald man in the centre of the room with steely regularity.

'Everyone clear out.' The bald man said, cutting Matt off again. "Everyone" turned out to be about half the men and every woman. 'He's an old friend of yours.' He guessed when the door clicked shut.

'He is.' Mello nodded.

'Can I get a smoke? And a light?' Matt asked, a little annoyed that no one was actually listening to him. Someone tossed a pack of Camels and matches at Matt's chest. 'Thanks'

'He must be good.'

Mello nodded again. 'He's the best.'

'Q was supposed to be the best.'

Matt felt better now that he was smoking. 'There can only be one.' He interjected. 'Anyway, once I had the name I got the credit cards, but Mello was in New York, so I had to -'

'He's your responsibility.' The bald man told Mello casually.

'He's worth it. And he's loyal.'

The bald man waved at Matt as though he could continue – as though it had been Matt interrupting him, and not the other way around. 'Skip the jargon.'

'Right, so nailing down his location and making contact took ages. He was always changing his ID, cancelling his cards, and he didn't seem to live anywhere. So I was like, where's he sleeping? I found a vulnerability in some software I knew was running on his phone, if he had the Sprint which I was pretty sure he did... I mean I know what he likes. I got the records from the phone company and looked for fake names, 'cause that had to be Mello, got the email address, had to move to LA -'

'You're making me sound like the weakest link.' Mello mumbled, too quiet for anyone else to hear.

Matt took a drag to stall for a moment. 'Mello was the biggest challenge. From there it was no problem to get into all your people's phones. Found the common network. A whole ring of guys always using the same connexion, that had to be a workplace of some sort. It was registered to some company that had offices in Montana, but it was obviously somewhere out here. So I just thought I'd show up and see if Mello was in today. Wasn't expcting to get pistol whipped at the door.'

'You didn't know who we were?' The bald man asked.

'I suspected. Thought it was a face. Like, a legit company desk with something seedy behind it.'

'Why was he looking for Mello?' One of the men asked. He'd been shuffling closer ever since Matt started talking. Matt suspected he was their IT guy - Q. He looked suitably nerdy, despite the semi-automatic strapped casually to his thigh.

Mello licked his lips and shifted. 'Personal reasons. He's not a threat.'

Matt clacked aimlessly at the keys of the PC they'd sat him in front of. 'Do you guys ever order pizza?'

'No.' Mello growled. He leant up against Matt's ear. 'I'm putting my ass on the line right now, Matty. You had better start acting useful, instead of imbecilic, or someone will put a bullet through your skull.'

'I'll scan some ports.' Matt whispered placatingly, 'Real impressive hacker looking stuff.'

'Please do.'

The room emptied until it was just Matt bent like a sunflower towards the blue light off the monitors and Mello on the couch, relaxing with one earbud in. It was impossible to tell what time it was in the lounge, because it had no windows, but Mello had gotten up to lower the dimmer on the lights after a couple hours.

'Are you working?' Mello asked, sudden as a firecracker in grey smog.

'Yeah.' Matt said. He was tipping his chair back and forth, playing snake.

'I only ask because it doesn't fucking look like you are.'

'You're mistaken.'

Mello watched Matt tap his cigarette on the edge of the table – filthy. 'What do you think is going to happen next?' he asked.

Matt shrugged. Mello couldn't see his face, just the ritual fidgeting of his sickly fingers striking a match. He hadn't smoked when Mello had left him, that was new. 'I'm rolling with the punches.'

'That's so stupid.' Mello snapped. He was suddenly embrassed – he hadn't bickered like this in years, like a schoolboy with an anger problem. 'What do you expect?'

'To roll with the punches.' Matt mumbled, swivelling on his office chair.

'Smartass.' Mello sighed. He was tired, but he didn't want to fall asleep on the couches while Matt was still tapping away at the computers. It felt too nostalgic. 'It's late. Wrap up.'

'Gimme a minute.'

Matt finished his game of snake. Mello stood to hover behind him with his arms crossed.

'Ok.' Matt yawned when the computers were shut down. 'I've done nothing but sit in a chair for like a hundred hours, what are my other options?'

'Sit in a restaurant booth, because I'm hungry.' Mello answered.

'Oh, thank God. You should make it a policy to feed your guests arond here.' Matt followed close behind Mello while he put his floorlength feather coat on. 'Is it cold out?' He asked, 'I wouldn't know because I've been your prisoner since Tuesday.'

'It's only Thursday night.' Mello said, like it didn't matter.

Mello's restaurant was actually a Mafia run club that served them roasted vegetables on a big square plate and a bowl of spicy peanuts. Matt perched on the edge of his seat at the booth, wishing he had BBQ chicken instead of carrots, wondering when this had become Mello's scene.

Mello looked comfortable under the purple club lights, staring vaguely into the sparse crowd on the dance floor, relaxing to the beat of a trap remix. People shuffled nervously around them, like fish under the shadow of a cat.

'Come here often?' Matt asked, arond a mouthful of peanuts.

Mello flicked his narrow eyes at Matt, expression bored. He looked so dangerous. Matt had known him when he was a schoolyard bully with a gap toothed sneer and a healthy awareness of authority. 'Cute.' Mello said. 'This is a safe zone.'

'Tell that to my retinas.' Matt fiddled with the lenses of his goggles, which he'd pulled up over his eyes.

Mello ordered chocolate cake. He hadn't eaten anything else. His bare stomach was bright under the lights. The rest of him faded into the background, a vague darkness against the cushions.

'Do they have, like, french fries?'

'Maybe.' Mello said, dipping his fork into the cake, which had arrived so quickly it must have been anticipated.

'Can we get nachos?'

'You never told me why you came here.' Mello said.

'Now look who's avoiding questions.'

Mello's stomach shifted, like a snake's belly twisting. 'Matt?'

Matt shrugged. 'I told you. I felt like it.'

'Even after I left you? I didn't say goodbye. I made no attempt to contact you. Maybe I haven't thought of you in four years.'

''s got nothing to do with it.' Matt told Mello's stomach.

Mello was quiet. He probably knew everything he wanted to know: that Matt felt betrayed, had cried, had hated him, loved him and couldn't imagine not loving him, was too addicted to the adrenaline of being near Mello to forget him, felt like a shadow that couldn't exist without him, didn't care if Mello felt strongly about him or not, would be by his side anyway.

Matt used to say things like that out loud, when Mello pushed him enough, but he had changed, too. He was private, now. Without the isolated halls of Wammy's, he had grown like a weed in the sidewalk: determined, surviving without thriving.

He felt the wedge of their unvoiced old attachment between them, and left it there to fester.

'Can you use a gun?' Mello asked.

'Yeah.'

Mello looked surprised, and then bored again. 'Good. You'll have to show me. You don't move without my say so anymore.'

Matt nodded.

The club swelled with noise and people as they sat. It must have been arond 22.30, but Matt's sense of time had always been terrible. He fiddled with the strap on his goggles while Mello chipped away at the decorative chocolate that had been stuck into his cake.

Mello's free hand moved across the bit of booth seperating their thighs and then came to rest on Matt's waistband while the DJ played a deep R&B hit. They sat in bizarre silence, half of Mello chewing decadently, the other half feeling Matt's waist. The pads of his fingers were warm on Matt's ribs.

His hand went low. 'I think your people can see us.' Matt said smoothly. He was aware of the watchful eyes of attentive men who paced in front of their table like guard dogs at a fenceline.

'Of course they can.' Mello said. He bent to eat the last bite of his cake, which he'd scraped up against the rim of the plate.

'They probably know you're feeling up my crotch.'

'Probably.'

Matt shifted. 'I'd rather they didn't.'

Mello hummed, like it made no difference to him, and took his hand away.

'You could put – on my waist.' Matt said, just loud enough to be heard over the beating music.

'My people will see.' Mello said. 'Are you finished?' He pointed his chin at the untouched plate of vegetables and the peanuts.

Matt nodded.

'Then let's go. We have 7 hours to sleep.'

Mello drove a cherry red Agusta – one of the heavy looking ones, with a windshield.

'Nice bike.' Matt said, when Mello pushed the helmet into his chest. 'Aren't these radial valved?'

'Get on.' Mello said evenly.

Matt did. He had never ridden on a motorcycle before, and he liked it. Mello was a good driver.

They weaved on a flat, dry highway into the city. The sky was dark and empty, outshined by the bright windows on skyscrapers and billboards. They stopped under a streetlight that flooded a neon crusted street in a cluster of rundown apartments.

Mello led Matt up a metal staircase and into a lit hallway. There was a musty, heavy feeling in the apartment building, like the belly of a beast that was old and sleeping. Matt was suddenly groggy, now that his face wasn't being whipped by warm LA wind.

'Is this a safe house, too?' Matt asked, when they'd shuffled into one of the dark apartments - #32.

'It's mine.' Mello answered. He flicked on the light, and Matt was instantly reminded of their room at the orphanage. Mello was meticulously impersonal. There was no sign of life.

'You live here?' Matt wandered into the living room. It had a spectacular view of a dark street with a big green garbage bin on one wall, and a skyline with a crouching black crane on the other.

'So do you.' Mello said. 'I'll cut you a key.' He covered his mouth with his gloved hand, hiding a yawn. 'We have 6 hours, now.'

'Right.'

Mello led the way through a clean and empty kitchen with an espresso machine on the counter down a blank hallway and into a bedroom occupied singularly by a large bed wrapped in black linen. The windows had blackout curtains. Jesus was dying on the cross on a space of wall where Matt would have put a television, had he done the decorating, well in view of anyone lying against the square black pillows at the head of the bed.

Mello peeled his gloves off and tucked them into a drawer hidden behind a closet door. The rest of his ostentatious outfit quickly followed, carefully folded or hung on wire hangers.

Matt flopped onto the comforter in a bit of a daze, watching expensive leather jacket and diamond crusted belt disappear. Lying down was incredible. His muscles were sore. There were black bruises blooming where his shirt had pushed up around his wrists. He kicked his boots off onto the floor and resigned himself to sleeping in his clothes, too tired to remove them.

When he felt the bed dip beside him, he was already half asleep.

Working for Mello mostly meant sitting in the apartment alone. Mello would leave early in the morning, before Matt woke up, and then call him from the base to tell him how he could help.

Sometimes Matt was alone for days, sitting in his pile of wires and eating through the groceries without going out. He smoked out on the balcony and looked over the city when he needed a break, but he was busy enough with Mafia work that he never got bored.

Matt had been up all night and was still up when Mello left at 5am to do something about some kidnapping – he never told Matt anything specific about where he was or what he was doing. Mello frowned down at him where he was curled into the couch messing with his laptop and said, 'Go the fuck to bed, Matt,' and then kissed him the way he always did: furiously and unexpectedly, like he was trying to communicate something desperate to Matt with his mouth that he couldn't say with his voice.

'In a minute.' Matt had answered. 'I want to finish this.'

'I'll pick up something on my way home.' Mello said, moving away.

'Frozen pizza.'

Matt hadn't been surprised when Mello wasn't back when he woke up around dinner time. He'd smoked all night, looking at the city on the balcony in the LA heat with his laptop on the ugly glass table and a bottle of coke, and went to bed before sunrise. He did this every day for eight days, and then Mello came home with half his face melted off.

'What have you been eating?' Mello asked immediately after walking through the door, storming into the kitchen and opening the bare cupboards accusatorily, singed hair hanging over his face.

'I wish you'd called and told me you were hurt.' Matt said.

'Were you waiting for me to do your shopping?'

'Yeah. Mello, jesus -'

'Be more independent, Matt.' Mello chastised him. 'Shit happens in this job. I need to know I can trust you to take care of yourself if something happens to me.'

'Uh... yeah, right back at you.' Matt followed Mello back into the living room. 'How did you get out of the building you blew up?'

'I have people.' Mello answered. 'You know I have people.'

'I'm your people.' Matt felt like an ass, because he had been sitting around the apartment wondering when Mello would bring him food that wasn't skim milk and saltines instead of being worried about Mello and horrified because he'd fucking blown himself up, like he should have been.

'Have you ever even left?' Mello asked.

Matt shook his head. 'You said I move when you say so.'

'You can leave the apartment, Matt, Christ. Getting something to eat isn't a fucking move.'

Matt had run out of smokes two days prior and hadn't left to buy more, so he was going through withdrawal waiting for Mello, surviving only on weed. It had felt a little bit poetic. He had never thought to leave the apartment. 'Are you okay?' He asked, sitting next to Mello so he could peer at the scabbed swath of his face.

'Obviously.' Mello snapped.

Matt nodded. 'Shit happens.'

Mello took a bar of chocolate out of the deep pockets of his leather jacket, snapped it in half, and gave half of it to Matt. 'I gotta do what I gotta do.'

That was when Matt realised that Mello was going to let shit happen.

'I'm moving to New York for a while.' Mello said, touching the pads of his fingers to Matt's bare shoulder.

Matt had removed himself from Mello's arms moments earlier to light a cigarette, feeling pretty loose and comfortable under the black comforter in the blacked out bedroom. He'd been pleasantly surprised when Mello didn't kick him out of bed and remind to smoke outside, or start in about how much he hated smokers, or make some comment about his lungs. He was tipping his ashes into the bedside drawer, thinking that Mello wanted him too much to let him up, but now he realised that Mello had been buttering him up to tell him that he was leaving him again. 'What's in New York?'

'My photograph.' Mello explained.

'And Near.'

Mello sighed. His fingers kept moving, across Matt's collar bones, down his arm. He didn't explain himself.

'I'm coming with you.' Matt said heavily.

'Maybe.'

Matt snubbed his smoke out on the headboard, tosseed it into the drawer, and lay back down. 'I'm coming with you.' He repeated.

'What happened to moving when I tell you to?' Mello hummed, lips pressed to Matt's head, breath in his hair.

'You can't tell me shit if I'm here and you're in New York.'

Mello was more approachable when they were alone in the dark, together like this, touching. Just two people who wanted to be with each other. 'I promise I'll move you as soon as I can. As soon as it's safe.'

Matt didn't know whether it was safe or not because he never knew what was going on. It probably was, since Kira didn't know who Matt was, let alone care. Mello lied so he could do what he wanted to do. 'Ok.'

'We'll get an apartment in New York. It'll be just like this.'

'But it'll have a PS2.'

'When I have my photograph,' Mello said, 'you can have whatever the fuck you want in our new apartment.'

'I can't talk to anyone else the way I talk to you.' Mello said from Halle's couch in her luxury New York highrise. He ran his gloved fingers through Halle's choppy hair.

'Really?' She sounded skeptical. She wasn't an easy woman – not that Mello knew anything about women, he'd never been into them and wasn't into them now.

'Yes.'

'I'm sure that's flattering.'

Halle pulled away from him, a small smile curling up her lips, to turn a lamp on and the overhead light off, so they were sitting in pooling shadow and orange light. 'You're an intelligent woman, Halle.'

'And you like that?'

'I like that.'

'So I should trust you?'

Mello shook his head, chuckling. 'I wouldn't go that far.'

It was Matt who'd told him that the weakest part of any security system was the people – much of Matt's own job, to Mello's surprise, was calling people and convincing them to give him pieces of a key until he could open the figurative door. Social engineering. It sounded pretentious and a little bit too cool, like Matt was aloof from the rest of society, tinkering with it from the outside. But Matt always got what he wanted when he was hacking, so maybe he really was.

Halle had decided that Mello was equally as important to the Kira case as Near all on her own, which gave Mello an easy in. She had a theory that Mello and Near were bickering schoolmates who would learn to cooperate with adult supervision, something which made Mello feel condescended to but was also convienent for him because it meant he barely had to convince her to be his mole.

'You're honest, too.' Halle slipped the blazer off her shoulders and shucked her pants to the floor, so she stood in the centre of the chic white livingroom in only a light blue tank top and black panties.

Mello's thoughts were obsessively focused on the photograph. He wondered where Near was keeping it, if it was in his shirt pocket or a safe full of transformers and rare pokemon cards somewhere in the SPK Headquarters. Halle peeled her shirt off and stalked naked across the room to lock the front door, framed by the highrises of New York behind the thin curtains on the huge windows. Mello imagined burning the photo, and it put hunger in his eyes.

'Are you tired?' Halle asked. She was halfway down the hall towards the one bedroom, soaked in shadow, her bra straps pulled down over her shoulders. She never complained about doing most of the work, taking her own clothes off.

Mello stood fluidly from the couch. 'Not really.' He said lightly.

Halle disappeared completely down the hall to drape herself elegantly across her white bedspread, rounded thighs shining with silver moonlight, ice hair sharp on the pillow. Mello followed her like a fish on a hook, mirroring her body, settling on top of her.

He pictured Matt's thin fingers holding a smoky hoodie tight around his shoulders on the balcony in L.A., of the unfolding freckles on his stomach when he stood up from the bed to take a piss, his laughing face when Mello's hair brushed his hipbones. He hadn't expected to want Matt so much when he was fucking someone every day, but he did. It was sexier to think about Matt brushing his teeth than it was to fuck Halle, but he fucked her anyway. He might not have needed to. She might have helped him get his photograph without his pretend love for her. She might have helped him just because she believed it was the right thing to do.

'We'll have to make it look like I don't know you.' Halle said in the deep midnight, languidly stretching in the darkness.

Mello felt sterile on the outside and debauched on the inside. 'I'll bring you in at gunpoint.' He suggested.

'It's almost too easy.' Halle said. She smelt like cotton, and her sheets were Febreezed.

Mello was sure Near already knew about him. And obviously it was a stupid cover – if it had been as easy as putting a gun to Halle's head and making her bring him inside, he'd have done that instead and been done with it, insteaed of befriending her. Halle was a mole, and everyone in the SPK was going to know it when Mello strolled in at her side, no matter what story she tried to feed them. 'I'm a very convincing actor.' Mello said, stroking her bare shoulder.

Burning the photograph was like completing a very long, complex ritual. It started with Mello's birth, the creation of his identity and the unburnt young face. Then he set himself on fire, then he set the photograph on fire. There was something there that might be meaningful. Mello didn't care to think about it for long enough to find the metaphor.

Identify safely snuffed out, he took what little of himself he'd moved into Halle's barren apartment, packed it into a black duffle bag, and took a cab to the airport without saying goodbye.

He was homesick for the ugly L.A. apartment.

Matt was asleep on the couch when Mello unlocked the door and slipped in through the front door. There was a movie on the TV, which Mello flicked off. The apartment was grey when the lights were off in the middle of the day, dull and a bit depressing.

Mello moved Matt's legs so he could sit with them in his lap. He leant back into the couch cushions, leather sticky against his legs, rosary cold on his chest.

In the medium shadows, Matt's face was soft. His freckles were darker, his mouth an easy curve. He was attractive, and not just because Mello loved him. He was really, actually nice looking, with his shocking bright hair and his cat's green eyes, his symetrical cheeks. Sometimes Mello felt like he had stolen Matt from the rest of the world, and kept him selfishly, like a fish in the bowl of this horrible, reeking apartment. But it wasn't his fault. He'd let Matt go, and Matt had come back. And it only stank because Matt smoked three packs a day and had never once mopped.

Matt rolled over suddenly but slowly, opening his eyes in phases. 'Mello.' He said, 'Hey.'

'Hey.' Mello said. His fingers were gripping Matt's calves. 'Sorry for waking you.'

'I've been napping for a while.' Matt coughed into his arm for a second, and then looked back at Mello like a dying man looking at the painted face of Christ. It made Mello uncomfortable. His fingers tightened.

'I'm staying here for a couple days before we leave for New York.' Mello told Matt. 'I need a break.'

'Cool.' Matt closed his eyes again. 'We can nap together.'

'Yeah.'

But they didn't both fit on the couch, so after Matt slipped back to sleep, Mello went to bed.

It had been years since Mello had spent longer than 8 hours with Matt, and most of those hours were spent sleeping with the blackout curtains drawn over a sunny, cloudless L.A. sunshine, inches apart.

'I can't believe you woke me up to go grocery shopping.' Matt complained, slouching in the little metal chair he'd brought into the kitchen from the patio for the purpose of smoking inside while Mello had been in New York and unable to nag him.

Mello brought him a cup of cold coffee full of ice cubes and honey. 'Get over it.' He said. He was making eggs for himself. The day was orange outside; it looked sickly hot. 'I don't want to sit around in the apartment all day watching you give yourself lung cancer.

Matt lit up and took a deep drag. 'I'm gonna smoke in here because we're moving.'

'Very flawed logic.' Mello mumbled. He didn't like the smell of eggs cooking, but he liked the taste with a bit of salt. The cigarette smoke just made it smell worse. He opened a window and stood with his face next to the heavy hot air outside.

'Mm. How was New York?'

'I did what I needed to do. It wasn't a vacation.'

'So what you're saying is, you were there for months and never went to the Met?'

'Why the fuck would I go to the Met?' Mello poured his eggs onto a cracked blue plate. It looked like Matt had broken a few cups and put the pieces back in the cupboard, as if no one would notice. He had gone to Central Park with Halle, once, to drink lattes on a bench and get to know each other. It had been extremely civil. 'I don't like that shit.'

Matt drank his coffee with an upturned mouth, watching Mello like there was some joke, which there wasn't.

They sat across from each other, a pale imitation of lovers at a cafe. Mello salted his eggs while Matt alternated drags from a second cigarette and crunching bites of coffee soaked ice. Matt was wearing an old black t-shirt with a flaming devil on the front, one he'd worn at Wammy's. It was unnatural that it still fit him, when his teeth were going yellow and his slouch had become weary instead of lazy.

'Change before we go.' Mello said, over the clinking of his fork.

'Why?'

'Your shirt has a hole.'

Matt touched a little tear near the collar. 'So?'

'So change it.'

Matt sighed and shifted back in his chair. 'Whatever you say, boss.'

Mello cleared the table, threw the ashes from Matt's ashtray out of the window and down into the street. When he was finished, Matt came back from the bedroom fully dressed and with his boots on.

'Roll me that.' Matt said, throwing Mello a bag of weed and tabacco when they settled into Matt's car.

Mello could say with total honesty that he would have shot any other person through the ear if they put him through what Matt put him through. But Matt would probably have said the same thing about him. He rolled it, lit it, and placed it between Matt's teeth.

They settled into a familiar, chaotic sort of routine after moving to New York. Mello stayed out, Matt stayed in.

Mello delighted in the progress they made. He was so driven it was scary. The fire under his ass made him pace when he was home, ranting. He slept with his crosses all over him, cross at his wrist dangling, cross on his neck pulling him when he rolled over on the pillow, cross above the bed, cross on his gun within reach of his twitchy fingers. He prayed over his meals with desperate tradition.

'Are you Catholic?' Matt asked, once, while Mello was sitting at their new table and he was playing an FPS game on the couch.

'I was raised Catholic.' Mello said. He took an audible breath. They didn't talk about the past, much. They were busy with right now, always, busy not getting sniped or blown up or whatever else made Mello too paranoid to let Matt go out for more smokes without a hood and a glock. Matt knew Mello was Eastern European or Scandanavian or something, maybe Austrian, had been well-off and pretty happy, and he'd noticed that Mello tried to keep his childhood rituals with him in his sinful adulthood. Like how he always ate at the table.

'Do you believe in God?'

Mello twitched his face a bit. 'Kira kills people with a notebook. Do you believe in God?'

Matt shrugged.

'So shut up.'

'My real name was Mail Jeevas.' Matt said, conversationally.

'Why the Hell are you telling me that?' Mello snapped, knocking his fork agressively against his plate.

Matt shrugged.

'You're going to fucking die before this is over, you know that, Matt?'

'I don't think Kira gives a shit about me.'

'I don't think you give enough of a shit about him.' Mello retorted.

'Jeez. Chill.' Matt snorted. 'Let's just drop it.'

Mello came home one night with a plan. Matt was blowing smoke out the window, and startled when the door slammed.

'You're going to drive to this safehouse.' Mello said, once he'd herded Matt onto the couch and spread a map out on the coffee table.

'And where will you go?'

'I'll worry about myself.' Mello was talking in a rush. Matt suuspected this plan was just starting to form. Things were going fast with Kira.

'Then back to the apartment?'

Mello nodded. 'You'll come back around 1900 hours.'

'When will you be back?'

'You'll stay here until the end of the month, and then go back to L.A. The apartment there is paid up until the end of the year, so that's the new safehouse.'

'Sure.' Matt scratched his head. 'I keep my car?'

'No. You'll leave it here.' Mello pointed at another location. 'There's a Corolla waiting, I'll give you the keys tomorrow.'

'I hate Toyotas.' Matt groused. 'Can't I have something nice?'

'No.'

'Kinda big sacrifice just to catch Kira, having to drive a fucking Corolla.'

Mello glared at him, deadly. 'By the time the lease in L.A. is up, Kira should be dead. Near will finish it.'

'Oh. You're ok with that?'

'It's what we're doing.'

'Cool. Ok. I'll get a new car in L.A.'

'Get a new personality while you're at it.' Mello said, rolling up the maps. 'We'll talk more about this later.'

'Going to bed?'

'I'm exhausted.'

Matt had just woken up, but he went with Mello anyway, and played on his Gameboy while Mello snored under the cross, propped up on pillows, with Mello's cold feet on his leg. He felt a bit flustered by the pace of their lives. He couldn't imagine how Mello must feel. Strung out and stressed, by the looks of it. He slept like the dead.

On January 26th, Mello put a huge smoke gun in Matt's arms, and then Matt got into the driver's seat of his car. 'This is awesome.' He said. 'I think big guns suit me.'

'They don't.' Mello leant in through the window so Matt could kiss him.

'I'll see you at 1900 hours.'

Mello's face was a blank wall. He pulled back and moved towards his bike. Matt had never seen him look so calm, so resolved. It was pretty badass. He touched his rosary once, and then started his engine.

'I love you!' Matt shouted at him, but his voice was drowned by the sound of Mello's bike revving, and he didn't hear him.