Matt's POV
"You put these in the back, under F shelf"
I hand Harry the box and point to the back room. He nods and does as I tell him to, but I watch him warily. He's ok if you tell him what he should be doing, but he doesn't know a thing about video games to help people to different genres, or types. He keeps getting Xbox and Xbox 360 mixed up, I mean how is that possible!
I take out my phone and send Mello a quick text out of boredom; he doesn't reply but I don't expect one anyways. Work goes slower than usual, and I keep catching Harry on his phone, so I remind him (like a hypocrite) we're not supposed to use them unless we're on our break.
He gives me a rebellious look but pockets his phone. He irks me even further when half way through the day he decides he has to leave, some sort of emergency, and disappears! He even asks if I'll be ok on my own, which is bloody ridiculous because I'll be more than fine without him than I am with him. My shift finishes about an hour later, but it was the most satisfying hour I've had since the dork-head had arrived.
When I get home, the cat's on the fire escape waiting to be let in, so I let it in and give it some water before making myself a cuppa and firing up a cigarette. I know Mello will notice when he comes in after work, but I want one and his work habits are starting to annoy me again. It was like this before, he'd over work himself to the brink and I'd bring him down again. But Mello loves his work, so he always gets caught up in it.
But it begins to stress me out too and I find myself wondering how I'd gotten to this point. Mello is the stability I've never had. The security I'd not felt for a long while and the love that I'd forgotten that I could feel. And there's no way to tell him this without him thinking I'm going to leave him or drop dead or something. So I keep mulling it over in my head; one day I'll tell him.
The phone rings and I'm jolted out of my thoughts. The cat looks up expectantly and I find the phone under a wad of Mello's work papers. I pick it up.
"Matt?" It's Mel.
"Hey" I hear the smile in my voice and feel like an idiot.
"I got caught up in something, I'm sorry – I'm gonna be working late tonight…." A million thoughts flashed through my head. That he's overworking himself again. That work's becoming a priority. That he probably won't come home till the early hours of the morning and the bed will be cold.
The thought that maybe work was just a cover up was disturbing. I trust Mello, I do, so having thoughts about his faithfulness to me are usually nonexistent, but you have to be suspicious when it's all the time.
"So you won't be back for tea?" Is the only thing that comes out of my mouth. "OK" For some reason, I decide there's nothing more to talk about and hang up on him. The phone is tossed back onto the table and I lean against it with an apathy I hadn't felt for a while. I need something to do.
I glance at the cat and decide to make it some food. After that, I debate calling Kayla and asking if she's doing anything, but knowing her, she'll probably be sleeping off last night's hangover. I think over my small list of friends, a few names coming to mind that I hadn't talked to in a while. Set on that, I pick up the phone and ring the number I hadn't yet forgotten.
Every now and then the phone beeps as another call tries to get through to me, but I ignore it. Talking to Roo again was slightly nostalgic if anything, but it certainly cheered me up. He told me what he'd been doing recently and where he and Neave had been visiting, it makes me smile and my mood is brighter.
We talk for at least an hour before I ask where he's staying now, and if he's local. He's about a fifteen minute drive away, I find out, and he asks if I'd like to come over sometime. I say yes, but we both know the day I do will be the day something isn't right.
We teeter around it and make vague plans, who'll make dinner and what we'll do, where we'll go with Neave. It's a good distraction, but it's only that – a distraction.
He tells me he's being forced to make fairy-pink cupcakes and has to go. I tell him he's a pushover and that he used to be a better man. He challenges me, that it isn't true and that if I saw Neave now, I'd know why. He tells me to forget the past, and that it's easier but he then apologises for it. I tell him not to. He's right. We say our goodbyes and hang up. I realise I didn't speak to Neave, but something in the back of my mind tells me it's better that way.
The cat has let itself out so I close the window to the fire escape and go into the living room. I set up my PS3 and play until it's dark and ridiculously late at night. The lack of another person in the apartment has me feeling cold, bored and lonely, so I'm slightly suspicious but eager when the phone rings again.
"I thought you'd be in bed" There's no need for Mel to ask who it is because usually I'm the only one in the apartment. And no house guest would go to answer their host's phone.
"Nope, playing on the PS3" I tell him, glancing at the 'paused' screen. "You coming back yet?" His silence tells me all I need to know. I'm sure my silence tells him all he needs to know as well; I'm getting annoyed with him.
"You hung up on me before"
"There wasn't anything else to say. Why explain? It's not going to make either of us feel any better" I roll my eyes and lightly run my knuckles along the edge of the small phone table. "What's up, then?"
"Hm?" He quips.
"Why did you call?" I clarify.
"I…I need another favour" He says awkwardly.
"Research?"
"I guess" He shuffles some papers around on the other end and sighs. "We've hit a dead end"
"What happened to the links?" I remember. "The ones that were supposed to help?"
"They do help" He says. "It's like having lots of little pieces of string. Then tying all the pieces together to make one big string, and then trying to find out what the string is capable of doing – only there's no context, so it isn't going very well"
"Come home" I tell him. "You sound tired"
"I've slept" He chuckles. "I bet you haven't"
"Meh" I roll my eyes. "So what do you want me to do?"
"I'm emailing you the details and some of the main files. If you can't get much from them, then I'll bring the rest home with me and we can go over it together tomorrow"
"Ok…I'll let you know if I get anything" We say goodbye and hang up and I head for the Playstation. I play it till saving point and then turn on the computer, heading for my emails and opening the attached files that belong to Mello's email.
As the documents open, one by one by one by one, my eyes widen, my chest clutches painfully and my blood runs cold through my quickly chilling body.
He's progressed a lot further than the last time I'd had a peek. He'd found the name that I didn't get for him – one of the links, I presume – and was really close to making the connections to the larger picture. He was so close…
I close the documents slowly. One by one, taking a few seconds to look over each of them. Some are scripts of interviews or recorded conversations, others are images of people in connection and some are just thoughts in diagrams.
The final page to close is a picture of a symbol I hadn't seen for nearly five years. It's the same symbol in many different places around the city, all photographs; a Gang-crest for sure, but it's only that because I know it is.
It has none of the typical attributes that associate with Tags or Crests, it doesn't have any type or outline, no box or circle to keep the insides intact. It's a squiggle to any other eyes, any normal people walking past who have normal, average lives. A random pattern or marking, that's all.
Mello or any of his friends or workers wouldn't know it. It's something linked with the lower half of society, my half, Mello's half see's nothing but that squiggle, and that explains the handwritten question mark on the scan of the image. He doesn't know.
But the tag itself is worrisome, if anything. The gang it belongs to has been disbanded for years now, mostly because they were all dead.
Daring to raise their symbol again to put the fear back on the streets is scaremongering. It's clearly not a random squiggle because the same squiggle appears in the photo's, the same ups and downs and the same proportions. If it was random, they'd be different.
Mello's notes suggest it could mean something, he's onto the fact that it might be a message or a code or something. He needs to figure this out for himself. I can't help him with this one.
I shut the computer down but find that my memory is still imprinting the images on the blank screen. I spend the next hour with my knuckles pressed against my eyes, trying to get rid of them.