Disclaimer: I do not own or make money from Death Note or any of its characters.
To Measure a Life in Cups of Coffee
Mello stepped out into the small kitchen of their apartment, the faint smell of coffee still lingering in the air. He let out a sigh, all but tired of the scent. It seemed to follow him everywhere, an invisible presence in his life. Yet he yawned and grabbed a mug from the cupboard next to the sink and brought it to the table where the nearly empty coffee pot sat. He picked it up absentmindedly, noticing the Post-It Note stuck to the glass of the carafe almost as an afterthought:
"Sorry if it's cold. Be back later," written in Matt's cramped handwriting stood out to him on the yellow Post-It. He peeled it off and crumpled it up in the palm of his hand, dropping it to the tabletop. The coffee always seemed cold now.
He poured the remainder of the coffee left in the bottom of the carafe into his mug—just barely enough for a cup—and placed it in the microwave, setting it for one minute. He pressed start and the little light in the microwave illuminated the interior, and he watched with tired eyes as the glass plate under the coffee mug turned lazily, mirroring his own apathy.
It was a feeling he'd grown accustomed to, but listening to the low hum of the microwave, he knew it was a relatively new development. There was a time of first dates in coffee shops where he had been excited, a time where everything in his life seemed so new, so fresh. Now it all seemed stale.
He could remember their first date. A mutual friend had set them up on a blind date, and, to his own surprise, he had gone along with it. It had been wretchedly cold that day, but he still dragged himself out of his apartment and to that little coffee shop on the corner of Main and Barton. He passed the coffee shop all the time on his way to work but had never gone inside before, had never seen the need to; he didn't even really like coffee. But stumbling in, out of the cold through the door to meet his date, the little bell chiming above him, he found himself thankful for the warm little room with its eclectic grouping of tables cluttering the small space. He had ordered a mocha latte—something he hoped would thoroughly mask the bitter taste of the espresso—and had taken a seat at one of the empty tables.
Thirty minutes later, he was still sitting alone, and the latte was half gone. He had just about decided to go back home when a redheaded man forced the door open against the wind and stepped in, out of breath. Mello eyed him suspiciously; the man certainly fit the description his friend had given him, but being thirty minutes late, Mello was no longer so sure he wanted to give him a chance.
The redhead looked around and seemed relieved when he spotted Mello. He walked over to Mello's table, still working on catching his breath, and shrugged off his thick winter coat. "Are you Mello?" he asked, already sitting down even before receiving a response.
"Yeah," he said curtly, annoyed at having been kept waiting. He had known agreeing to a blind date would be a mistake.
"I'm Matt. Sorry I'm late. I couldn't get my car started…" he trailed off, and when Mello didn't respond, he looked around the coffee shop, trying to find inspiration for something to talk about. "Fucking cold weather we're having…" he tried, settling on the frozen scene outside the window.
"Really? I hadn't noticed," Mello responded dryly, looking down at his cup, swirling the remainder of his latte around the bottom. He heard Matt laugh and looked up in surprise.
"Kinda hard to miss, don'tcha think? Well…unless you're an Eskimo."
A small half-smile came to Mello's lips. "You don't know. Maybe I am."
"Well, I'm gonna go get something to drink, and then you can tell me all about your life as an Eskimo, alright? You want anything else?" he asked, looking to the cup Mello held.
"Maybe later," he said and watched as Matt walked up to the counter to order.
For being so hesitant to order a drink with coffee in it, he found that he really did like his latte as he talked with Matt, and, an hour or so later, he'd ended up ordering another. They had stayed until closing time, and after being kicked out, they stood out on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, making plans to meet again before finally going their separate ways.
That little coffee shop on the corner of Main and Barton became a staple in their relationship. It started as a warm place to get out of the cold and turned into a place to cool off as the summer came around. Hot lattes turned into iced drinks, and, as time went on, Matt encouraged him to break out of his comfort zone and try more of the coffee shop's extensive menu, which he was clearly already very familiar with. It became their place, and, for someone who had started out not liking coffee, Mello grew to love that coffee shop.
Despite his sudden love for coffee, he saw no reason to get a coffee maker for his apartment, not until that first night he'd spent at Matt's apartment. He'd woken up the next morning, a cup of coffee already awaiting him. "I tried to make it as close to those lattes you order as possible," Matt had told him, sipping the cup of black coffee he'd prepared for himself as he stood in front of the stove in only his plaid boxers, making scrambled eggs and bacon for the two of them. "It's just about all milk and sugar," he added with a laugh, and Mello smiled at the taste of the sweet makeshift latte. It wasn't what he was used to, but he loved its welcoming warmth all the same.
Two weeks later, he had bought his own coffee maker, wondering how he'd ever lived without one in the past.
He gradually grew used to the bitter taste, slowly reducing the amounts of milk and sugar he added to his coffee in the morning. It wasn't a conscious effort but, rather, an accidental change that he discovered one day when he noticed he was only adding half an inch of milk instead of three. By the time he moved in with Matt, he could almost understand how the redhead could drink his coffee black.
Mello got rid of the cheap coffee maker he had bought for himself; they wouldn't need two if they would be living together, and Matt's was of a much higher quality. It was what made sense.
They had coffee together every day before work, just like that morning after the first time Mello had spent the night with Matt. It was constant and unchanging and became a sort of tradition. Their kitchen became the coffee shop on the corner of Main and Barton, and Mello was okay with that; it was just the natural evolution of things.
As was the eventual break in their routine, Mello had to assume, though that didn't make it feel any less lonely sitting there at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee by himself. But he was sure it was a one-time thing, the exception to the rule; Matt wouldn't have to go into work early every morning, just that once.
Their routine returned the next day, and that one day was forgotten. It wasn't important. One day out of many hardly seemed noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. But one day came again and again, starting out as the product of outstanding circumstances and turning into a waning effort on both of their parts. It snuck up on them like Mello's love for coffee had and so neither of them saw it as a cause for alarm. They saw each other every day; their tradition wasn't a necessity, not with their busy lives, and it became a rarity.
The coffee pot was left out, half-full, on a regular basis. They each got to it whenever they did, reheating cups of cold coffee in the microwave, despite the fact that reheated coffee seemed to acquire a tainted flavor. It wasn't bad, per se, and it wasn't unbearable. It was simply the nature of things. It was simply how their relationship was.
The microwave beeped, alerting Mello that his reheated coffee was ready. He opened the microwave and took the mug out, adding a bit of milk and sugar before bringing it to his lips. He swallowed halfheartedly. It seemed so bland, a stale version of what it should be. He looked down at the light brown liquid in his cup. This wasn't how it was supposed to be—this wasn't what it had once been. He'd told himself all along that things changed with time, that it was normal and to be expected, but this wasn't. This was the product of them becoming lazy, of prioritizing other things above their relationship.
Mello let out a sigh and started to bring the cup up to his lips again, stopping short. This wasn't what he wanted. They had both stopped putting forth the effort a long time ago. He couldn't pretend like everything was fine anymore. He lowered the cup, and without a second though, dumped it down the kitchen sink.
He slumped into one of the chairs at the table, the weight of his decision hanging over him, and the empty coffee pot and the crumpled yellow Post-It lying next to it caught his eye. He would be sad to see it go, but Matt could keep the coffee maker when he moved out.
He'd never liked coffee to begin with anyway.