Chapter Text
Mello wakes to the sound of his alarm going off at 9:00 AM, the mid-morning sun throwing stripes of light across his bedsheets as it peeks through the gaps in his blinds. His hand gropes towards the clock on his nightstand, clumsily seeking out the off button as he blinks sleep from his eyes. The beeping ceases and Mello sighs, sagging backwards against his pillows again. He can’t recall what he dreamt about, though from the lingering wistfulness clouding his mind and weighing down his limbs, he could make an educated guess.
His apartment is quiet; he’s alone. Every single morning since he moved to LA, he’s woken up alone. The sole exception was a little over a month ago now, but that wasn’t in this city or this apartment or this bed, which he supposes he should be grateful for. It would have been worse if Mello had seen his face in this light, his cheek resting against this pillow, the curve of his shoulder peeking out from these sheets. In the quiet of the empty room, his own minuscule movements seem loud, as does his breath. Most of the time it doesn’t bother him, but some days it’s more noticeable than others, and today is evidently one of them.
After soaking in dilute, nebulous angst for a few minutes more, Mello forces himself to get out of bed and go to the kitchen, puts on a pot of coffee and sets about making breakfast. The window over his sink faces a busier street than the one in his bedroom, so the silence is thinner here, miscellaneous sounds leaking through the old glass. It helps ground him a little. He’d picked this apartment specifically for its soundproofing, because the last several ones he lived in all had paper-thin walls, while the brick construction here means he doesn’t hear his neighbors fucking or people on the sidewalk below shouting at each other.
Obviously he prefers it that way, but silence feels foreign after so many years of living in an orphanage teeming with other noisy children and another solid year and a half after that spent either sleeping on the streets or in run-down shitholes. A few weeks after moving into this place, Mello briefly entertained the idea of adopting a cat, mostly so he would have something living and moving around in the same space as him, but it seemed selfish to bring a fragile creature into the kind of life he leads.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from trying, once. Not with a cat, but with—
His coffee starts to brew, mercifully interrupting his train of thought before it could go off the rails. As he cracks an egg into a hot, buttered pan, Mello calculates what time he’ll need to leave to make his flight. The simple act of picturing his day cut into little chunks is somewhat soothing to Mello; in three hours, he’ll be boarding a plane to New York, and in six more, he’ll have landed at JFK. The sun will have set on the east coast by then, and by the time he gets to his hotel, he should be about ready to sleep. Dreamlessly, if he’s lucky.
Mello has been short on that particular sort of luck, lately.
His fried egg turns out almost-perfect, as does his toast. The butter and jammy yolk mix nicely with the sourdough he bought earlier in the week, and a sprinkling of salt and cracked black pepper act as the finishing touches. Cooking isn’t something he’s extensively skilled at, but he’s proficient enough to make a few things he likes. The coffee is just fine. Mello has never gotten very good at making it, but he doesn’t drink it for the flavor anyway; if he wanted it to taste good, he’d buy an espresso machine or some shit. Instead he drinks his bitter, faintly burnt brew fast and without milk or sugar and then brushes his teeth to banish the sour aftertaste.
Packing doesn’t take long once he gets started. He’ll only be in New York for two nights if negotiations go the way they’re all hoping, so it isn’t as if he needs to bring much. He packs enough for three just in case, stuffing everything into a duffel bag and grabbing his flight info and ID before stepping out into the hall of his building. As he’s locking up, Mello gets a nagging feeling that he’s forgetting something and automatically pats his hip to feel for his gun, which he of course doesn’t have since he’s going to the fucking airport.
The sense of wrongness nevertheless follows him down the stairs and out the front door; it’s rare for him to move through the world unarmed anymore, though he won’t remain unarmed for long. Their contact in NYC will have something for him to carry while he’s there. It won’t be the same as his Beretta, but it’ll be adequate for short-term use, probably the same model he had the last time he was in town. That visit hadn’t been for business, strictly speaking, but Rod’s guy had still picked him up from JFK and outfitted him with what he needed. Mello never actually fired the gun, but— well. He’d never really intended to, either.
(He keeps wondering if maybe he should’ve, then becomes nauseous at the very thought of it, which pisses him off enough to start the cycle again. It’s becoming harder and harder to bear, living like this, and Mello thinks he must be approaching the limit of what any one person can withstand, but he’s yet to find a way to dig himself out of this rut, so he stays in it, miserable.)
Mello takes a cab to LAX, alone. Rod and two other guys will be part of the negotiations, too, but Mello won’t see them until tomorrow— everyone travels and lodges separately whenever they go anywhere outside their sphere of influence. It’s a pragmatic move, a matter of minimizing the risk of more than one of them getting busted or killed, but privately Mello appreciates the policy for his own selfish reasons as well. Strangers, in his experience, aren’t often inclined to strike up a conversation with him, but they’re relatively pleasant in the off chance that they do. The same cannot be said for any of his men.
Getting through check-in and security goes smoothly. It always does. His drivers’ license identifies him as one Michael Reed, born July 8th, 1987, and bears an image of a man who looks passably similar to him. When Mello flies (an occurrence that is neither commonplace nor exceptionally rare), he tends to dress in the same sort of way he does to run errands. Black jeans, black shirt, black combat boots. In some of the more precious parts of Los Angeles, that earns him about as many stares as the leather does, but in his neighborhood and LAX, he blends in just fine.
That’s something he likes about airports in general— there’s this sense of impermanence and anonymity that makes him feel pleasantly unremarkable, a feeling he seldom experiences these days. The wide-eyed couple with the matching backpacks, the harried young mother holding her toddler’s hand, the fucking yuppies with their pressed suits and lattes— none of them know a goddamn thing about Mello, and they never will. When they look at him, they don’t see the blood on his hands or the ghosts looming over his shoulder; they probably see a college kid, or maybe a graduate student, since he usually gets read as older than nineteen. It’s not like Rod or any of his men know much about Mello either— that’s both the way it has to be and the way he wants it— but they know the sort of shit he’s capable of.
He doesn’t regret anything, really, that he’s done to get to where he is. All of it was necessary, unavoidable, even, and he gave up on trying to be good a long time ago anyway. Usually he doesn’t spend much time thinking about it, doesn’t let it bother him, but five and a half weeks ago he made a grave error in judgement and he’s been catastrophically fucked-up in all kinds of ways since. Emotionally disturbed, he thinks, smiling in mild amusement as he picks out an overpriced chocolate bar from one of those airport kiosks and pays for it. Those two words had been the highlight of the assessment of Mello’s mental status back when he was ten and beat the shit out of the new kid for picking on— someone. He wasn’t meant to read the file, of course, but keeping things under lock and key never deterred Mello a whole lot. It was the late nineties, then, and psychiatry was probably a little worse than it is now, though he’s not so sure Roger would’ve been able to pick out a good one no matter the year and he’s even less sure that any psych could do him much good anyway, then or now. Whatever’s wrong with Mello, it’s bone-deep, steeped into his soul. He harbors a rottenness that can’t be washed away, not by therapy or medicine or religion or any of the other shit he’s tried.
It’s fine. Mello’s known that for ages. He’s known since well before anyone psychoanalyzed him; the difference is that now he accepts it instead of uselessly trying to fight it. The choices he’s made, the things he’s broken and the people he’s hurt and killed to get here— he wouldn’t take any of it back. Had he continued working in Winchester, hiding away behind a computer screen and digging for scraps of evidence while keeping his soul shiny-clean, he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, let alone this far. Yeah, he’s got blood on his hands, but going head-to-head with an enemy like Kira calls for some desperate fucking measures, and Mello isn’t about to apologize for doing what had to be done.
He arrives at his gate with a good thirty minutes to spare before boarding and checks to see if he’s missed any calls or gotten any text messages since he left home. There’s nothing. Mello bounces his leg up and down, biting the inside of his cheek as he contemplates how to best pass the time. All things considered, he’s doing pretty well today— better than yesterday, certainly, and probably better than the day before that, too. It would be a shame to let that be ruined by leaving his mind unoccupied. He’s got a book, and his iPod, but he’s inclined to postpone using either for as long as possible given how long his flight is going to be.
In the end, he decides to stroll around, buys a fashion magazine from one of the stupid little news stores and gets a subpar salad that he eats all of despite the mediocrity. By the time he’s finished with it, there are five minutes left until boarding begins, and by the time he gets back to his gate, people are lining up.
Inside the plane, he winds up with an empty spot between himself and the woman in the aisle seat. The extra space is nice. In theory, he could afford to spring for business class or something, but it seems like such a waste to him to spend so much for what’s ultimately only a few hours of his life. When they come around with the drink cart, though, Mello does spring for a jack and coke before settling in for the long haul.
To his relief, everything goes smoothly. He reads from the book he brought, flips through Vogue, listens to music, has another drink, and doesn’t think about anything he shouldn’t. At JFK he walks straight past baggage claim, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder as he rings Rod’s contact, Phil, who lets him know that he’s nearly at arrivals. Spotting Phil’s car isn’t hard; it’s one of those massive SUVs, black with heavily tinted windows. They idly chat on the way to Mello’s hotel in midtown, making the sort of amicable conversation that one makes with an almost-stranger, stuff about the weather and how traffic is such a fucking bitch.
Traffic notwithstanding, Mello gets there. He gets his gun and some ammo and then checks in. His room number is 825. It’s right across from 824. He doesn’t let himself look at the digits for more than a few seconds.
The door swings shut behind him, and Mello drops his bag and collapses face-first onto the bed without even taking off his boots. Exhaustion has seeped through his whole body and left him wrung-out. Traveling usually does that to him, but it’s especially pronounced right now, and he can’t fight off the twinge of annoyance that he’s so tired after a day of doing nothing but sit around. Still, he allows himself a few minutes of luxurious motionlessness before making himself get up and call for room service. All he fucking wants is to crawl under the covers and pass out for the next nine hours, but he seriously does need to eat something first.
Once his order is put in, Mello attempts to get himself to shower. Multiple times he even manages to stand up, but immediately gets hit by a wave of overpowering ambivalence and succumbs to gravity, falling back onto the bed. It’s not like he has to shower tonight; he just feels like he ought to. The mild grime of travel sits on his skin like a thin film, and he hates it, but ultimately he hates the idea of having to stand for long enough to bathe a lot more, so the grime remains.
A plate of lukewarm pasta is delivered to his room. Mello sits at the desk and eats it slowly, finding that he can barely stand the taste about halfway through. Unable to choke down the rest of it, he shoves what he can’t finish into the room’s fridge and strips down to his underwear before flicking off the lights and getting into bed, ready to leave the conscious world behind. Eyes shut, he listens to the hum of the room’s heating unit, trying to tune out the other sounds of the hotel. That works— mostly, anyway— but sleep still doesn’t come easily. It never really does.
There are, Mello thinks, a lot of benefits to having a strong, vivid memory. It comes in handy almost constantly. He’s able to keep track of the finer details of various events for long periods of time, which helps with both basic deductions and with calling people out on minor inconsistencies in their stories during interrogations. It’s also occasionally useful for charming people; remembering small things about someone’s life gives the impression that he’s attentive and invested in them as a person, when in reality he stores information like that whether he gives a shit about them or not.
He’s grateful for all that— really— but sometimes he does resent his brain’s propensity to cling onto things. There are moments he wants to forget, or at least not relive, that he can’t clear from his head, fragments in time that come back to him over and over and over no matter how hard he tries to avoid thinking of them. Mello is usually fine during the day so long as he’s careful, but nighttime is another story. Laying in the dark with nothing to occupy himself with means that his mind has free reign to fuck with him in whichever way it pleases, and of course that means he ends up thinking of Near.
There’s always plenty to think about, after all. Time marches on, and so does Mello, but sometimes it feels like all he ever fucking does is look back.
When he was ten and Near was eight, the orphanage accepted a new kid. Thomas. Thomas decided to push Near around, possibly just because he thought he could get away with it. Mello has never had any memory of attacking Thomas, but he remembers the fury he felt when he found out, and the aftermath, too. Blood on his own knuckles, smeared under the older boy’s busted nose, and a few small drips on the floor. He was reprimanded, punished with extra chores and reduced privileges, and forced to apologize, though in truth Mello felt no regret or remorse for it. Shame only arrived a few days after, when Near— ungrateful little brat that he was— had the nerve to scold him for losing his temper. Humiliation burned at his cheeks while rage boiled his blood, the two emotions warring with each other. Embarrassment made Mello feel weak, and anger didn’t, so he latched onto that, throwing Near up against a wall and snarling at him, so upset he was shaking. It was the first time Mello ever laid hands on him, and at the moment, he told himself it would be the last. Two months later, though, Near was placed in the successor program, and from then on, things like that became commonplace.
When he was thirteen and Near was eleven, Roger started making the two of them sit in silence for an hour with their pinkies linked together every time they failed to get along. Ironically, this only intensified Mello’s poor treatment of Near; he got angrier, meaner, picked on the younger boy more often. Sometimes he wonders if that— the fact that, by hurting Near, he could keep him close— is where his proverbial wires got crossed. He’s never really been able to pinpoint exactly when his feelings for Near developed into more than possessive hatred, so it’s hard to say, really. For all he knows, it might’ve already been too late for anything to change by then; their fates may have been sealed long before he was sitting pinkie-in-pinkie with Near in the library four times a week, listening to him breathe and sneaking peeks at him out of the corner of his eye, pretending even to himself that he wasn’t doing it.
When he was fourteen and Near was twelve, Mello tricked Near into following him into the mostly-empty gardening shed behind Wammy’s. It was notoriously known as a spot older kids went to fool around, but Near wasn’t privy to that sort of information because no one liked him enough to tell him things like that, let alone bring him there. Mello cornered him in the dusty dark and grabbed a fistful of that pretty white hair to keep him still. Near’s eyes squeezed shut like he was bracing for an attack, then flew open when Mello kissed him on the mouth, hard and clumsy and excited. The most vividly memorable moment from that day has always been the instant after he bit Near’s bottom lip, too-harsh. It was a product of his own inexperience, an accident, but he liked the small, weird sound Near made, and that Near tasted a little like blood afterwards. For all the shitty things he’d ever done to Near, that kiss was the first time Mello made him bleed. Maybe that should’ve been enough of a warning. Neither of them saw it as one.
Seven months later, L died, and Mello cried so hard he made himself sick. The thing he remembers most clearly from that blur of nauseous grief is Near, his cool fingers holding Mello’s hair back as he threw up. They were inseparable after that.
(Until they weren’t.)
It wasn’t like things suddenly got easy— if anything, they got harder, but it did suddenly matter a lot more for them to try to understand each other, because who the fuck else could be expected to stop Kira, to avenge L? They chipped away at the case, fought tooth and nail for every sliver of information, and that was enough.
(Until it wasn’t.)
They made it work for close to two years, but then, for five wretched months, they made almost no progress at all, and with every passing day Mello became more and more certain that their methods were fundamentally inadequate for what they were up against. He told Near as much, and Near asked what he thought they should do instead. Mello was honest— he told Near they needed to ally with a criminal organization, a well-connected and well-funded network of people for whom Kira was an existential threat and who could, in turn, act as an existential threat to Kira. Near immediately shot the idea down, insisting that they only needed a little more evidence before going to the US government for help, which Mello thought was fucking idiotic. Governments and law enforcement agencies, he pointed out, had fewer reasons to want Kira out of the picture than people whose heads were constantly on the bastard’s chopping block. Near held firm. They fought for two weeks, and when it became clear that Near wasn’t willing to trust him, wasn’t willing to come with him, Mello realized he had no choice but to leave on his own.
So when Mello was almost-seventeen and Near was fifteen, he left Near behind in Winchester. Near watched him pack with cold eyes and a tense expression. He didn’t cry, didn’t beg him to stay, and never kissed him goodbye— Near’s parting message was simply please be safe. Those words, said in that barely-strained monotone, have echoed around in Mello’s head since. He often wishes he would’ve told Near to fuck off instead of swallowing around the lump in his throat and nodding, but then he wishes a lot of things were different, and his wishes don’t change a goddamn thing.
It doesn’t change a goddamn thing that he remembers all this shit, either. It’s meaningless— he can’t repeat the past no matter how many times he’s forced to relive it, and even if he could do it all again, Mello isn’t sure anything would change. He and Near, once whole, have long since shattered. There isn’t a way to fix something this broken. He’d be a fucking fool to even try.
When he visited Near almost a month and a half ago, he wasn’t trying to repair anything. Ill-advised as the trip was, Mello wasn’t completely delusional. Healing was the furthest thing from his mind. Optimistically, his aim was closure, but if he couldn’t get that, he thought he could at least find some sort of catharsis. Maybe screaming at Near and scaring him and fucking up his headquarters wouldn’t fix Mello, but it would at least make sure that Near stayed broken, and that was enough. So, on Near’s birthday he flew to New York and borrowed a gun from Phil and, using information passed to him by Ratt, broke into Near’s headquarters after his staff had left for the day. Mello found him in his on-site suite, sitting in the bathtub surrounded by bubbles and humming off-key to himself.
He’d caught Near by surprise; his eyes were shut when Mello entered the room, and they didn’t open until he kicked the tub. The sight of Mello standing there with a gun and a dark look on his face should have been enough to frighten Near on its own, but it didn’t appear to. He was relieved, actually, and even after Mello had been yelling at him for close to ten minutes, he seemed entirely unfazed, so Mello grabbed him by the hair with one hand and shoved his gun in his face with the other, forcing him to stand up and step out of the tub.
Mello hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Near was completely nude, though it wasn’t exactly surprising given the setting, nor had he been expecting Near to be visibly aroused from getting shouted at and manhandled, which was surprising, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. Impulse control never was Mello’s strong suit, and Near always had a way of making him weaker, so even though he knew it was a terrible idea, Mello barely put up a fight against his desire. Thirty minutes after dragging Near out of the bath with the intent of roughing him up, Mello was sucking on his neck and taking his virginity.
Unfortunately, fucking Near wasn’t the worst mistake he made that night— after he came, Mello stayed. He curled his body around Near’s and held him close, palm pressed flat to the younger boy’s chest, feeling the movement of his heart underneath. As Mello laid there in the dark, he felt like he’d unearthed some sort of lost treasure and also like he’d been stabbed in the chest somewhere along the way. He drifted off wondering if he would always feel like that, like he couldn’t live with Near but couldn’t live without him, either. Whatever he found there, Mello knew it sure as hell wasn’t closure.
Waking up beside Near as the first rays of sunlight hit the younger boy’s sleeping face twisted the knife, took the gaping wound that Mello had been walking around with since they last saw each other and made it double in size. Panic crawled into his lungs as he laid there and watched Near breathing deep and even, alive and angelic and awful. He was gone before Near ever stirred, leaving behind nothing save for a scrawled-out message (upgrade your fucking security, dipshit) and taking nothing with him save for the phone number to the SPK’s main office. Mello had the sense to regret writing it down before he hit the end of the block, so he threw out the scrap of paper, keenly aware that it was too little, too late. He’d already memorized it.
The digits are still at the back of Mello’s mind. He isn’t going to do anything with them. Yes, he’s in New York again. Yes, Near is approximately seven blocks and one phone call away. It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow Mello will get up and shower and dress in head-to-toe leather and meet with a small group of men from a New York gang, men that have a Yakuza connection. He’ll strike a deal, whatever it takes, and within a week he should have the director of the NPA in his custody. With that bargaining chip, he’ll force the Japanese police to hand over the notebook, and then—
Well, then he’ll be using the note to kill off a good portion of Near’s team, since he can’t have Near figuring out that Ratt was his spy. Near will doubtlessly have figured out that Mello is behind the NPA director’s kidnapping even before the notebook changes hands, and there isn’t a chance in hell he’ll fail to connect Mello to the massacre in his headquarters. After that stunt, Near will never want anything to do with him again.
That’s a good thing. He doesn’t fully trust himself to stay away from Near, so the fact that screwing him over will sever their connection is inarguably a benefit. It doesn’t feel much like one, though, not when the memory of Near’s stuttering breaths against his ear is still fresh enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Knowing that this trip is his last-ever opportunity to see Near again isn’t helping matters, because at the back of his mind, a traitorous voice keeps asking— why not? You already fucked it up once. What’s one more mistake, really?
One more mistake, he has to remind himself, would have real consequences. Fucking Near again could translate into months and months of sick misery, and no matter how good the sex is, it can’t be worth extending the agony he’s been going through since late August. So no matter how tempting it might be, he won’t go see Near.
(He won’t.)
(He won’t.)
A door opens somewhere down the hall, jolting Mello out of his thoughts. He glances at the clock; the little red digits read 11:57 PM. Throwing his hands over his face, Mello groans. All day, he held it together— he didn’t even let Near’s name cross his mind— and now he’s spent over an hour making himself miserable over the freak. He hates himself for it, but he hates Near even more for doing this to him, making him weak like this. Mello’s whole life he got by without anyone giving a shit about him, and in the grand scheme of things, the amount of time he spent in pathetic puppy love with Near was a blip. It’s nothing.
(At the time, it was everything.)
Mello doesn’t need a goddamn thing in this world except himself; that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it always will be. He’d do well to remember that and move the fuck on, and— and he will.
(He will.)
(He will.)