Maybe together we can get somewhere. Any place is better. Starting from zero, you got nothing to lose. Maybe we'll make something, but me, myself, I got nothing to prove.
Matt's smoker's voice rasps along with the song on the radio as Mello leans his head on the passenger and pretends to sleep. He's never admitted it, but he's always found Matt's singing voice pleasant and a little sexy. Matt's gloves are off as he taps his fingers on the steering wheel, one elbow out the window, cigarette smoke trailing from calloused fingers. He whistles along to the guitar and Mello knows that if he hears this song again, it will feel horribly lacking without the rise and fall of those hoarse notes.
Mello wonders how Matt can still find it in him to sing, this close to damnation.
We won't have to drive too far – just cross the border and into the city. You and I can both get jobs and finally see what it means to be living.
Matt sees Mello shift out of the corner of his eyes and knows his friend isn't asleep. The urge to reach over and brush fingers over the ruined skin is strong, but Matt just turns back to the road, watching the neon lights and their reflections in the puddles flash by. Mello had come back to the apartment earlier that day, saying they were going on a drive. What for, Matt still hasn't found out, but he does know this is one of those times where it's simply about the ride and not the destination. And so Tokyo just passes them by.
("Las Vegas is only a few hours by air from New York." Chains clink as a body settles onto a bed.
"I can card count."
"Dummkopf. You'd get yourself arrested."
"I win online card tournaments, too."
"Where did you even learn to card count?"
"Hey, I think Misa's leaving.")
He wonders if he can summon the courage to ask Mello if they can't just give up now and start over. Hand the job to someone else and move to Nevada, where Matt's always wanted to live, and have lives something close to normal. He wants to ask Mello why it has to be him, why it can't be some other punk on the motorbike tomorrow. Because he'll follow Mello to the gates of hell, yeah, but that doesn't mean he wants Mello to go there.
The car revs to 60 on the empty streets, almost drowning out Matt's singing. Almost.
My mama went off and left him. She wanted more from life than he could give. I said somebody's got to take care of him, so I quit school and that's what I did.
Mello. Mihael Keehl. Mello's aware that Matt knows his real name, but Matt's never given his. Matt knows that Mello arrived at Wammy's at the age of 6, after his family had been gunned down in cold blood while he'd been in school. Mello doesn't know that Matt came to Wammy's so late in his life because his mother ran off with his dad's friend and his dad became a drunkard who could barely stand, let alone take care of a young boy, but Matt had dropped everything to work in the back streets, doing whatever he could for small-time criminal organizations, until he'd come home to his dad dead in a puddle of his own vomit.
Mello's asked him time and again why he's willing to smoke cigarette after damned cigarette and shoot every drug known to man into his veins, but he won't let any alcohol touch his lips. Matt's just shrugged it off every time, not admitting that for every bottle he sees, there are a dozen more in his mind, strewn across a stained wood floor, a trail leading up to the first dead body he'd seen in his life.
You got a fast car, but is it fast enough so we can fly away? You got to make a decision: we leave tonight or live and die this way.
Mello would rather kiss the barrel of his gun than admit it out loud, but every second that ticks away is a second he becomes more and more confused about what's to come. If there wasn't a rosary clinking against the zipper of his shrink-wrap leather, reminding him of the reward for his sacrifice, his sanity might have unraveled by now. It's hanging by a thread as it is, gossamer and taut, but the drive and Matt's throaty singing are spinning more threads, tying him to reason. Though Matt's voice is tying Mello to something else as well, something Mello doesn't want to be tied to, because if he gives a name to the warmth Matt's singing is inciting in him, Mello's resolve will crack. He's willing to forfeit his ambitions, his future and even his life in order to take down Kira, but if it clicks that he's forfeiting Matt, too – Matt, who's stayed by his side so loyally ever since he caught the gamer outside the gates of Wammy's, leather and chains facing stripes and goggles – if he realizes he's giving up much more than an ally, well, that would break him. He's willing to lose anything but that, and so he pretends to sleep, ignoring it so he won't have anything to lose in the first place.
The cigarette between them only makes Matt's lips look more tempting, but to kiss now would mean making Mello human when he needs to play at the level of gods.
The car tears through the remnants of this afternoon's rain, and Mello knows that tonight is pivotal. Tonight he still has a chance to make Matt drive on and on, to somewhere safe, to some place where he can kiss Matt and hold him in ways he's only allowed himself to dreamof. Tonight he can still choose not to die; he can choose life and Matt over an anonymous death.
They drive on.
I remember we were driving, driving in your car. Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk. City lights lay out before us and your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder.
Mello remembered the first time he'd seen this car. Cherry red with chrome hubcaps. Matt had hotwired it right in the parking lot of some Mafia hot-shot's apartment, revving off without a second thought. He'd gone back for the keys three days later. Mello had never found out what Matt had done to make sure he wasn't chased down and killed for stealing the car, just as he'd never found out Matt's real name or the color of his eyes. Mello had always been the aggressive one between the two, the one throwing screaming fits and pointing the barrel of his gun everywhere and clomping around in his steel-toed boots, but Matt was the one with the secrets.
(Matt coming out of the shower, towel wrapped dangerously just under his hips. Mello had nearly come in his pants at the sight, despite his best efforts not to see Matt as something worth pursuing. But he'd been stunned by the multitude of scars crisscrossing his friend's body, spanning large parts of his back and shoulders, white on white and beautiful. Scarred and dripping wet from the shower, or high on smack and incoherent, Matt had always been a work of art.
"Where are those from?"
Stripes going over wounds, cigarette being lit. The sound of a door closing was the only reply he got.)
Mello could still remember the time before the car, when all they had was Mello's motorbike from his Mafia days. Matt's arms, always so tight around his waist, and smoky exhales, and the wind whipping at them as he pushed speeds that were anything but legal – a better high than anything he'd swallowed, sniffed or shot, and he would swear to that.
And Mello knows that even if he can still choose tonight, he won't be backing down. This is something that needs to be done – this is something he's been working his life to. Even if it means never hearing Matt sing again, if it means handing over his end of the reins to Near, if it means dying with only a handful of people knowing what his death had been for, Mello will do it. It's the only way he knows how to atone for everything he's done – everything, culminating in leading the one person who loves him and whom he just might love to his grave.
I'd always hoped for better. Thought maybe together, you and me would find it. I ain't got no plans, I ain't going nowhere. So take your fast car and keep on driving.
Because yes, Matt does love him, and Matt knows that Mello knows. Matt knows that Mello's noticed the lingering glances, the added affection in touches, the gentleness with which Matt places Mello on the bed after he's worked himself to near-unconsciousness. And Mello suspects that Matt's seen him restraining himself from lashing out at Matt in anger, that Matt's heard the softness in his voice as he prods Matt to finish his surveillance shift and go to bed – and maybe Matt's even noticed the concern in his eyes whenever he catches the smoker coughing his lungs out. Mello doesn't know if he loves Matt, but he really doesn't want to find out.
Matt deserves better than someone like Mello.
("Do you think L could get married?"
"Maybe he's married to Watari and we just don't know it."
"Ew."
Silence in an orphanage attic.
"When you become L, I'll be your Watari, right?"
"Of course, scheisskopf."
"Heh." Moonlight on amber goggles. "I hope Near dies in dodge ball tomorrow.")
A few tears leak out, but Mello manages to turn his choked sob into a strange chuckle, and almost immediately a pristine white hanky lands on his lap. Mello looks up, but Matt's eyes are on the road as he takes a drag from his cigarette. The hanky smells faintly of smoke and cup noodles and that cheap cologne Matt likes to use. Mello can't read Matt's expression from behind the goggles but he's grateful all the same.
Just like Mello needs to die without having kissed Matt even once, he needs to die without seeing Matt's eyes. It's just easier, that way.
Matt's still singing, raspy voice soothing Mello's fraying nerves and heart.
You've got a fast car. Is it fast enough so we can fly away? You got to make a decision: we leave tonight or live and die this way.
Matt's whistling on.
xxxxxxxxxx
A/N Just a little something I wrote while listening to the song Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Italics in () parenthesis indicate memories; the others are lines from the song.
I thought I'd try writing them this way, on the brink of a love that might be the saving of them both if they would only reach out and take it. It's the night before they die, and they don't get one night together. They don't get any kisses or professions of love or last-minute miracles. They just get a car ride, one car ride, and Matt singing.