.
PART TWO.
NEW YORK
Mello fell. Farther and farther into the earth's crust, deep into its gummy core. The air smelled like ash as it blew through his hair.
He never thought that it would take so long to fall from grace.
Thud.
His spine collided against the ground, electricity crackling in the back of his neck. He couldn't move. The sun was shining in the middle of the night, swivelling around the sky like an interrogation light. His head must have been bleeding.
He could die like this.
He was on the second floor, where the walls were lined with few explosives and the surveillance screens were empty. The police sirens were loud, gunning down the roads outside. There was someone singing hymns and praying to God over the sound of ruin.
That was himself. Telling him that he could die like this tonight.
He inhaled sharply, blood shooting down his veins. His breath was loud and mechanical through the gasmask. The cops were coming, and the NPA had guns. He'd heard his name spoken for the first time in a decade.
God, he could die like this.
The sirens grew in intensity, burrowing between his skull and his scalp. He gripped the surface below him and realized that his fingers could still move, and that he was lying on something soft.
He opened his eyes. He was looking at the marbling sky. A helicopter churned overhead, and something else was flying with it. A big black creature, winged and spiked, batlike as it flapped against the large moon.
It was an angel who had come to deliver him. It was time. His vision slipped. He was losing focus, losing vision, losing sight.
The angel's wings were loud in his ears, fluttering as it scraped the sky. The angel was waiting. It beckoned him to follow.
He didn't want to lose now. He didn't want to die yet.
He opened his eyes and tore his gasmask off of his face. The night air was cool on his skin. He could breathe again. He took a shuddering gasp, tasting ash clinging to his throat. Then he coughed. He kept coughing and coughing.
Rocks fell out of his mouth, knocking against his teeth and tongue. He wheezed, trying to keep his lungs from falling out too.
Another gasp. His legs were heavy, and his hands stung like they'd been skinned and burned, but he had to move. Somebody could find him. The wrong person could kill him.
He didn't want to die like this.
The black-winged angel above disappeared beneath the clouds, dimming like a fading star. A near-death hallucination, a hypoxic event. He couldn't keep staring at the sky. He had to move. He had to move.
He had to move or else he'd stop moving at all.
His arms were spread open. He lifted himself off of his shoulder, rocks falling out of his skin. It was cold. His shoulder felt wet. He kept pushing, rolling onto his side.
A mangled gasp tore from his throat. He'd burst through the amniotic sac at last.
He coughed spittle and dirt onto the grass blades by his face. He couldn't feel them against his skin at all. He kept pushing until gravity took pity on him. It flipped him onto his front, flat onto his belly. He took another heavy, shuddering breath.
Now he was alive. Now he had to crawl.
His body had landed halfway down a grassy plain, a gentle slope at the corner of the junk yard. He'd been tossed across the lot, away from the main road and the front entrance. He no longer saw buildings or people. Only a small ray of light in the near distance, glowing in the darkness, slicing down his optic nerve.
He squinted, his vision warbling.
It was a tunnel. It was a phonebooth. Somebody could save him now. As long as he remembered which numbers, he could leave this place.
He spread his arms out under him, a drowning dog threshing through dirt as he pulled himself down the hill. Behind him, something was breaking. Crashing and burning into the ground with fire and ash. Police sirens cried louder and louder and louder and louder in the night.
It was so fucking loud. He needed to get to the phonebooth.
He dragged himself farther down the hill, the weight of his body heavy on his chest. He must have broken something. Maybe a bone had stuck itself through his heart. He was wheezing and the spittle tasted like iron. But if he got to the phonebooth, he could make it out alive. He could make it out alive.
Shit sucked.
Seriously. Shit fucking blew. It'd been almost a week since Matt last shot you-know-what, and even though everybody always said that the withdrawal symptoms were the worst, Matt learned the hard way that everybody was fucking lying.
Six days, and shit still bombed. Six days and shit was absolutely not cash.
There was just no end in sight. His legs stopped twitching and he stopped having the shits, but fuck, he felt like God's punching bag, day in and day out. His body was too heavy, his brain was too loud. His joints felt like they needed to be greased, and fuck, there was nothing to do all day.
Time passed really fucking slow when you were sober.
Honestly, Matt had to face it: life was fucking miserable without [REDACTED]. He didn't want to actually say the sacred word. Saying it meant thinking about it. Thinking about it meant craving it. Craving it meant knowing he couldn't get it.
Knowing he couldn't get it meant getting his gun to blow his brains out.
So he kept his mind busy, lying on a damp spot on the couch, face squished against the Cheeto-dusted seat cushion and his PSP clasped in his sweaty palms. There was no other sound in his apartment but the sound of video game music, no light in his living room except for the feeds on his laptops.
Matt was playing Tetris.
It'd been two days straight of several-hours-long binges. He wasn't even speedrunning the levels — he just was playing on Marathon, trying to beat his high score from two hours ago, focusing on the blocks so that he didn't have to think about how shitty his body felt. Whenever he fucked up and filled the screen, he pressed Play Again.
Matt didn't even like Tetris.
He hadn't moved from his position on the couch since this afternoon. Eaten nothing but a slice of pizza and some cornflake crumbs and only gotten up once in the past twelve hours to piss.
It was now almost midnight.
Beep beep. The Z-shaped block popped out, and Matt switched it out of hold, slotting the I-block into the gap in the middle.
TETRIS!
The blocks flashed away, leaving only small holes from previous fuck ups. He glanced at the time in the corner.
20:52. Not bad. Two minutes until his record.
SINGLE!
An L-block flashed, dangling in the middle of nowhere on the screen. Matt switched to the block from hold, and the previous Z-block replaced it.
He moved it towards its spot and accidentally rotated it too much, leaving another gaping hole.
Fuck. The same thing happened two lines later, and then four lines later. His screen looked like a block of swiss cheese.
He gave up, dropping the blocks and ending the game. Final time: 21:42.
Matt sighed, blinking away the colorful blocks in his vision, and glanced over at the computers strewn across the coffee table idly to check on the feeds.
Hm. The screen looked weird. Everything was white and grey, floating patterns that looked like a cloud of smoke with some firecrackers popping around the lounge screens.
Matt's eyes must have been fucked from all the Tetris. He pulled up his goggles, rubbing his eyes. When he replaced them, the screens were still the same.
Strange. Matt frowned, snaking his arm out lazily to unmute the feed.
—pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Boom. BOOM.
… Wait, what the fuck?
Matt pushed himself off of the couch slowly, putting his PSP down. The blood rushed from his head as he sat up, his vision corrupting in the corners with purples and greens, and he hunched over to stare at the screens closer, shaking his head to clear his vision.
The smoke cleared up and heavy boots stomped across the length of the video stream, revealing a mosaic of bodies lying like two parallel L-blocks on the floor.
Matt's jaw dropped.
Snydar and Rod. They were still like mannequins, their eyes glazed as they stared up at the ceiling lights.
Oh fuck. Oh no.
Matt leaned forward and switched tabs, scanning through the feeds. Mello was nowhere to be seen.
"Motherfucker," he grumbled, moving his head from side to side as he switched tabs rapidly. "Where the fuck are you?"
There were men in riot gear, running around from camera to camera, their pants swishing. They were yelling at each other in Japanese. He's not here!
It felt like Matt had abandoned Tetris for another video game entirely. A shooter. Mafia. DLC: Your Childhood Best Friend.
Matt caught a glimpse of yellow hair at the corner of the surveillance room feed and stopped. There he was. Hunched over the desk, peering up at the screens of the control room. A dead body lay by his feet, sprawled on the floor like an S-block.
The SWAT team was heading up towards him quickly. Mello was trapped.
"Fuck," Matt mumbled, tearing his eyes away from the screen to look for his cell phone. It was somewhere underneath his fucking notebooks. Somewhere underneath that old bowl of cereal, where he'd left his empty cigarette boxes—there.
He grabbed it and flipped it open, about to dial Mello's number, when he glanced up at the screen and saw that Mello was typing something on his own cell phone. On cue, his burner vibrated with a text animation message.
Shittily encoded: Raid.
"No shit," Matt said, clapping it shut and looking back up at the laptop screen. The SWAT team had the surveillance room cornered. Mello whipped his head around, holding something in his hand. Something black and heavy, looking like a pipe bomb.
Matt's eyes widened.
Fuck. The bomb remote that Matt had rigged last month. The crazy bastard was going to blow his fucking way out of the base.
"Oh, fuck," Matt breathed. Mello had told him before: in urgent situations, like raids and accidents, Matt was his back-up. Matt was the emergency contact, the dude who cleaned up the mess.
God, Matt didn't think it'd actually happen.
Matt lifted himself off the couch, pacing around his living room. He grabbed his gun, his vest, his keys, his cigarettes. He slid on his vest, pushed his gun into his boot, pocketed the keys, lipped a cig, and left.
He ran down the stairs without catching his breath.
He really didn't think his Friday night would end up like this.
He was in his garage and sitting in his car before he knew it. His hands were shaking over his steering wheel. A block fell in place like a ghost in the corner of his vision as he turned the key in the ignition.
The engine roared to life.
Matt jerked the gear and reversed, nearly rear-ending the cars parked in the opposite lane. Tires screeching, he peeled down the road.
It was late and the road was empty. Matt weaved between parked cars anyway. The Tetris theme song was stuck in his head, getting faster and faster as he sped, and he didn't remember when he lit his cigarette.
Dunn-dada-dun-dada-dun...
Matt was halfway over the Los Angeles River when it happened.
Black smoke burst into the clouds, an orange spotlight burning itself into the purple sky. The rumble hit him half a second later, interrupting his brain's BGM.
Boom.
There were people walking on the streets. College kids. They stared up at the sky and screamed, running westbound. Matt's car windows shook as shockwaves travelled across Soto Street Junction towards the other end in LA.
In the deafening silence, Matt could hear his own heart thumping in his chest.
Fuck, Matt really wasn't cut out for this. He really didn't know how the fuck to unfuck this one up.
Matt tossed his cigarette butt out onto the road through a crack of his window, gunning down the street. In the distance, sirens started swelling up and wailing in the night, wee-wooing like a grieving widow.
Dunn-dada-dun-dada-dun-dada-dun-dada-dun-dada-dun-dun dun dun dunnn...
Matt's tires screeched into the lot.
The mansion was burning bright, a fire so vast that it made the sky almost look like day. The explosives had taken down most of the mansion, save for a back wall.
Matt took a breath, staring in horror, the flames flickering against the hood of the car. In his brain, the Tetris theme song sped up even more with his heartbeat.
Dunndadadundada the charred skeleton of the house looked dundada familiar, in a way that made Matt's heart ache and dundadadun his lungs deflate. The smell of jerky wafted into his car, cloying and vile.
Mello was dead. Mello died. No more retries. No health packs. Mello was dun-dada-dead.
Matt bit his lip, his fingers grasping at the wheel desperately. He didn't know what the fuck to do. The cops were coming in. So were the firefighters. Their lights were flashing red-and-yellow, and the glowing reflective tape on their uniforms was catching his tail lights. He was at the heart of a fucking crime scene, and he needed to go, stat, but he was frozen. His limbs wouldn't move.
Dundadadundadadundunn...
He inhaled. Exhaled. Just like the counsellors used to tell him. The police cars weewooed behind him. He heard voices speaking over the radio, the fire crackling in the air outside.
Dun, dun, dun, dunnnnnn —
A wall collapsed into dust, puffing smoke.
Matt's mind went blank. His ears started ringing.
He had to leave.
Suddenly his burner started ringing from his back pocket, making him jump out of his skin. It vibrated viciously against his ass, buzzing against his leather upholstery. Matt fished the phone from his pocket, holding it by his mouth as he breathed out shakily. "Yeah?"
"Matt."
Matt's eyes widened. "Holy shit," he gasped. "You're alive."
"Where are you?"
"The..." Matt trailed off, looking around the burning base, searching for a shadow. A moving figure. Yellow hair. A head. Anything. "The base. Are you okay?"
"Go behind. Overpass."
"Huh?" Matt gripped the leather of his wheel, turning around. The cops were getting out of the cruiser. "The junkyard?"
"Yes, hurry."
Mello hung up, and Matt dropped his cell phone, switching gears.
His stomach was twisting in his torso, doing jumping jacks against his will. Mello was alive. Mello made it alive somehow. Matt knew the overpass was nearby, in an area that was fenced off, hard to get to unless he drove over the dirt road.
Matt backed up, past the cop cars, and left. His brain started singing again. No rest for the wicked.
Dun-dada-dun-dada-dun-dada —
He arrived at the aforementioned meeting place less than a minute later. There was nobody else there. A phone booth stood proud by a row of expensive cars, its windows tagged over with red spray paint. A glowing I-block, the solitary light in the darkness.
Matt squinted. There he was. Mello was inside, past the scratched windows. Mello didn't see him.
Matt honked, throwing on his hazard lights.
Mello didn't move.
Another honk. More obvious this time. Hooooooonk. "Come on," Matt muttered to himself, tapping his fingers against the wheel.
Still, nothing.
Matt threw open the car door, disgruntled. The warm air pushed against his face. The smell of jerky was almost as strong as the smell of soot and flames, and Matt coughed into his elbow, frowning as he walked closer to the phone booth.
"Hey," he called out. "Mello. Get in."
Mello still stood there, unmoving, ignoring him.
"What the fuck?" Matt grumbled, hiding his nose behind his shirt sleeve to get away from the smell. He took a few steps closer, towards the sidewalk, and then saw what was inside the phonebooth.
Matt's mouth fell open behind his sleeves.
It wasn't red spray paint over the glass. It was blood.
Handprints, smears, long drips that ran down to the asphalt and spread out on the floor. There was a heavy, thick trail of dark blood — almost brown in the night — that led up the dirt road, where a small patch of grass separated the burning lot from the overpass.
A crushed gas mask lay on the hill. Blonde hairs were caught in the visor, the glass cracked.
Matt walked closer to the phonebooth, the nape of his neck breaking out into a cold sweat. Mello was leaning against the window, his arm ripped up to shreds, holding his face with the heel of his palm.
"Oh God oh fuck oh God," Matt whispered as he reached out to pry open the accordion door with a shaky, clammy hand. The door slid back, and tight, hot air inside of the phonebooth exploded into Matt's face.
Matt coughed violently, turning away.
Something came crashing down on him. Matt caught it blindly before it fell, almost toppling over with the weight.
It was heavy. Extremely warm.
Mello.
His bloody blonde hair was in Matt's face, his body smelling like meaty smoke and grime. Matt couldn't stop coughing, shaking Mello with every cough that he racked out of his chest, spittle spraying all over Mello's hair. His lungs were tight with smoke and horror.
Mello said something then, his breath warm against Matt's shoulder. "W-what?" Matt stuttered, coughing again.
"Sixth street," Mello rasped. "San Julian."
Matt swallowed, looking down. Mello was bleeding so much. All over Matt's shirt. It was warm against his skin. He could feel it on his chest, on his stomach.
"Now," Mello croaked.
Matt looked up, blinking as he snaked his arms around Mello's waist, holding him gingerly. He pushed the door back with his hip as he fished him out of the phonebooth, his biceps screaming.
Mello was heavy. His leg caught against the glass door, and Matt yanked him out, almost falling over when he freed him. Against his shoulder, Mello was breathing wetly, crackling from his throat.
It sounded like he was choking on his blood.
Matt panted as he dragged him onto the empty road, glancing back at the burning building, sparks flying into the dirty clouds. Matt pulled him over to the passenger side, leaning Mello against the side of his car as he opened the car door, breathing shakily.
He pushed Mello onto the leather upholstery and folded him in, slamming the car door shut. He jogged back over to the driver's side, coughing again, out of breath.
The wind against his soaked shirt made the blood cling to his skin. The smoke in the lot had become even thicker, and Matt was getting lightheaded and dizzy.
He pulled open the car door of the driver's seat and threw himself in, exhaling tightly. Mello was curled up on his side, choking and gargling, the heel of his hand still pressed against his eye.
Matt couldn't see.
His vision was blurring. He blinked, shaking his head. A vignette of green surrounded his dashboard. In his chest, his heart flipped and flopped. He wanted to puke.
"Go," Mello groaned from beside him.
Matt couldn't. He couldn't fucking breathe. His lungs weren't expanding enough. His heart was cagefighting inside his chest. He still couldn't get the goddamn Tetris theme song out of his head, and behind his eyelids, blocks were flashing and falling and disappearing.
SINGLE!
God, there was so much fucking blood. Nobody had told him that burn victims bled like that. Why did they bleed like that?
TETRIS!
"Go," Mello hissed again, his breaths thin and reedy in his throat. Suddenly, Matt saw a phrase flash up in his brain as an L-block fell into place, years after he'd first learned it in his Crime Scene Investigations class.
DEATH RATTLE!
Matt opened his eyes. There wasn't any time left.
Mello was dying.
Matt swallowed, taking another deep breath as he reached out to his GPS screen. His fingers wouldn't stop shaking when he keyed in the address, the Tetris song still dun-dada-duning in his head.
Sixth Stereet. Fuck. Sixht fuck. Sixth Street and St Jluai—
"Miku," Matt growled, giving up on his shitty fingers, wiping them on his shirt. The GPS screen flashed, listening. "Get me to Sixth Street and St Julian."
"Okay!" Miku chirped, calibrating a map. Matt watched as the route wrote itself, and waited for it to flash. "Estimated Time of Arrival... ten minutes!"
Matt jerked the gear back, pressing on the gas pedal. When his car was flying on the road, he glanced over at Mello, listening to his crackling breaths as they faded in frequency.
"Come on, man," Matt said softly, prodding at his shoulder with one hand. Mello's skin was scorching hot. "Don't sleep."
Mello made a low whale-like noise in response.
"You go to sleep and you won't wake up."
Mello pushed his hand away weakly. Matt frowned, shaking his shoulder. "Hey."
Mello used the last of his oxygen supply to rasp, "Don't touch me."
Matt drew back, putting his hands on the wheel again. "Fine," he mumbled, offended. "Just tryna help, dude."
Mello didn't respond, and Tetris filled the rest of Matt's thoughts.
Dun-dada-dun-dada-dun...
Exactly ten minutes later, Matt found himself at an auto repair shop. The frosted glass in the small garage door windows were tagged over with white graffiti, its dirty walls caked with scum and rain damage. In faded red-to-blue bubble letters straight from an 80's lettering catalogue, the wall above the garage read MARIO'S AUTO SHOP REPAIR.
Miku announced, "You've arrived at your destination!"
"What the fuck is this?" Matt whispered to himself, twisting his head to look at the sign. He couldn't breathe. Mello smelled like death on crack and he wasn't moving anymore.
Matt was prepared for the worst.
The garage door opened automatically in front of him as he pulled in, welcoming him into its pallidly lit dungeon of car tools and fluorescent lights. Nothing was inside except for a short, stocky Italian guy with a Hawaiian shirt. His hairy arms waved over his head like an inflatable balloon man.
The guy called out something inaudible when Matt rolled in, his voice drowned out by the roar of the garage doors. Matt frowned, rolling his window down. The oil and rubber smell of the autoshop mixed with Mello's suffocating sweet-sour rot as he leaned out and shouted, "What?"
Miku announced, "You've arrived at your destination!"
"You with M?" the guy yelled back.
"Yeah," Matt shouted.
The guy nodded, turning around to the back of the garage, pressing a button by the wall. The garage doors closed behind them with another deafening roar, and Matt turned to look over at Mello, terrifyingly blue in the garage lights.
Dun, dun, dunn…
GAME OVER!
Mello looked dead. His blood had gotten all over his upholstery, drained out of his body, dark and sticky against his gear shift.
Miku repeated, "You've arrived at your destination!"
"Miku, shut the fuck up," Matt snapped, turning off his car. He sighed deeply, trying to control his heart, and the guy returned, waddling over to extend his hand through the window.
"I'm Mario," he said. "I'm a doctor."
"Hinicetomeetyou," Matt responded quickly. "Mel—I mean, uh, M isn't breathing."
Mario went over to peer at Mello in the passenger side, and motioned for Matt to roll down the other window. Matt cranked it, and Mario leaned in, grabbing the car ledge.
Mello took a shuddering breath. First one in what seemed like minutes.
Matt sighed in relief.
"What is that, an explosion?" Mario asked, looking over.
Matt nodded.
"Enclosed space?"
Matt nodded again as Mario reached over to undo the car lock, pulling the door open. The doctor jerked his head.
"Get outta the car, kid. Come and help me."
Matt pushed open this side of the car door, walking over. Mario glanced back at Matt when he reached him, pointing down at Mello's bloody, blue body.
"He ain't lookin' too good," Mario noted.
"No, sir."
Mario crouched to look Mello in the eye. "M," the doc said, snapping his fingers. "You hear me?"
Mello groaned softly in response, his breaths hissing.
"Can ya tell me what happened?"
"Fuck off," Mello mumbled, rasping.
"He's lucid," Mario announced as if he'd just scored a goal, and pulled himself back up with the car door. He jogged over to an office, disappearing, and left Matt alone with Mello in the car.
Matt looked down, staring at the heap of Mello's limbs. Dried blood caked his fingers, while fresh blood spilled from his face.
"Don't die," Matt urged.
Mello didn't respond.
"You can't die, you still owe me that 70k."
Mello didn't laugh at his joke.
Wheels squeaked. Matt looked up as Mario reappeared with a rolling workbench, pushing it towards Matt's car. He edged past Matt and grabbed ahold of Mello's good armpit, pulling him up and out.
Riiiiiiip. Mello's skin tore audibly away from the upholstery, and Matt's mouth fell open.
Mello's skin left a thin crust of pus and flesh behind on the seat. Cheese scum off the bottom of the pizza box, mixed with tomato sauce blood.
"You gonna just stand there or what?" Mario snapped, holding Mello up against his shoulder.
Matt swallowed and shook his head weakly, taking hold of Mello's legs to pull him through the door. They hoisted Mello over the rolling workbench together with a hard thud.
Mello held onto his left eye desperately as Mario wheeled him away to one of the rooms, closing the door behind him. They left Matt in the garage on his own, staring silently at the plaque on the office door.
RESTRICTED AREA. EMPLOYEE ONLY. DO NOT ENTER.
Holy fuck, Mello wasn't going to make it out of there alive.
This was a nightmare. Matt had thought Sixth Street and San Julian was a hospital, not a fucking quack in a body shop. Mello was out of his goddamned mind to think this was going to go well.
Matt was going to have to do all the grunt work after this.
Notify the next of kin. Alright, done.
Plan the funeral, announce it to Mello's buddies. Hey, Mello's dead guys, here are invitations to the funeral! RSVP soon!
Matt hadn't gone to a funeral since he was a kid. His aunts arranged that one.
He didn't know how to fucking do any of this.
Matt moved and slammed his car door shut, staring at his feet like they'd tell him his next steps. His stomach was twisting, bubbling. Anxiety surged through his skin and wormed into his heart.
Oh fuck, he couldn't breathe again. Matt bent over, hands on his knees, and did the breathing trick. He closed his eyes and inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled.
A block shifted over behind his eyes and cleared. MELLO'S DEAD!
Yeah, that didn't help at all.
Matt swallowed, opening his eyes to an emergency door just on the other side of the garage, EXIT written backwards in red font on the stained glass. A stray brick was wedged in the doorway, keeping the door from closing completely.
Matt walked over and left.
He didn't want to deal with this. He didn't want to deal with Mello. He didn't want to be there when he died. Mario could take care of him tonight. Matt didn't ask for any of this.
On the other side of the emergency exit was a parking lot-turned-dumpster zone, large green containers opened big and wide. Matt only got halfway through the lot before the stench hit. The smell of decomposing bodies and burnt tires wafted into his nostrils, coating the tips of his nose hairs.
Matt saw something that looked like a piece of flesh on the ground, and his dinner came up and out his throat.
All over the sloping asphalt. Half-digested pizza and cornflakes, but mostly just bile. It splashed onto the dumpsters, getting all over his faux-Demonia boots.
Matt groaned, wiping his mouth. His body was shaking. The piece of flesh on the ground was just a half-eaten slice of pizza. Turned over, the cheese caked on the floor.
It looked like Mello's skin.
Matt swallowed, shaking his head. He couldn't fucking leave him behind. Something kept him tethered to the garage emergency door, like an invisible rope attached to his spine.
He fumbled with shaky fingers to his pocket, grabbing his pack of cigs.
He smoked, trying to clear his brain with the smoke in his lungs. No dice.
Sometime later, he went back inside.
The restricted door was still closed. He knocked, and Mario opened the door a second later, glaring at him through the crack of the doorway. "Where the fuck were you?" Mario grouched.
Matt wrung his hands. "I wanted to have a smoke," he mumbled back, and added as if it'd get him out of trouble, "I puked."
Mario rolled his eyes and threw the door back, letting Matt through. "Close the door behind you," he grumbled, waddling back inside.
Matt squeezed past, closing the door when he went in. They were in a tight little room with surgical equipment hung up by magnets on the walls, mixed in with car tools, almost impossible to tell apart from one another.
Matt took a few more hesitant steps forward until he saw Mello again, naked on the makeshift surgical table. His leather clothes lay limp on the floor, and Mario was back at his side, pumping a tube down Mello's throat and staring at a small screen.
Clearing the airways. Violently.
The whole room smelled like smoke. Matt bit his lip as he watched the tubes go deeper and deeper into Mello's mouth like a reverse magic trick. Mello himself looked like a corpse, strung up with wires and tubes. His burns were covered with towels from a bucket on the ground like he was at the spa.
Not a very relaxing one.
The mouth of the tube was probably touching Mello's asshole by the time Mario decided he was done. He dismantled his set up and grabbed a piece of medical tape from a repurposed lawn table, taping the tube down against Mello's cheek.
He pressed a few buttons on the ventilation machine. Beep. Mello was breathing again, deeply and robotically.
Matt took a few steps closer to see Mello more clearly. The one eye Mario had left exposed was closed, and his face was relaxed in a way Matt had never seen before.
He looked serene. Peaceful.
Huh.
"You know how much noise he made?" Mario suddenly asked. Matt looked up, turning around to see Mario lighting up a cigarette with a match by the sink. "M's a sharp shot, but he's a screamer. Couldn't get him to shut up 'til I knocked him out."
Mario blew out the flame, throwing the match onto the soiled concrete. On the wall behind him, there was a medical school diploma on the wall, framed with rusting metal.
Mario DiMatteo. Medical license dated back from 2002.
Matt frowned. "This is a smoking area?"
Mario shrugged. "I don't see no smoking signs."
Matt blinked and looked away. Quacks.
"Anyway. Uh." Matt licked his lips, clearing his throat. "Is M gonna be okay?"
"Maybe, maybe not," Mario answered vaguely.
That answer did absolutely jack shit to assuage Matt's pangs of anxiety. Mario pinched the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, exhaling a cloud of smoke, and walked over to the counter to grab a mug. In Comic Sans: Dad of the Year.
They fell into silence. Matt lifted a thumb into his mouth, sucking dried blood from the cuticles that he ripped off while he was detoxing. Anxious habit.
"So off the record," Mario spoke up, "What the hell happened?"
Matt looked over. Mario was leaning against the counter, staring at him.
"Set off a bomb, I think," Matt answered.
"No shit. Targeted?"
"Not that I know of."
Mario gave him an unsubtle once-over. "You two go back?"
Matt shrugged, biting off the skin. "Sorta."
"He told me he had a contact he could trust," Mario continued, tapping out his ash into his dad mug. "I knew M when he was in New York. Got me a shop over here in LA after they took my license."
Matt pretended to know what Mario was saying, sucking the blood from his thumb. "Oh yeah."
"Yeah. I owe him a few favors. Guess you do too."
A timer attached to the cupboards beeped, and Mario looked back, shutting it off quickly. He walked over to the sink to rinse his hands as Matt looked away, back at Mello.
Wait. Hold up.
Matt squinted, tilting his head, and let his hand fall to his side. There was an IV drip attached to Mello's arm, tucked into his elbow and secured by a thin layer of medical tape. Several IV bags hung above him, saline and solution and zinc and nutrients.
One of the labels in particular made Matt laugh bitterly, without even realizing it. In all caps, Helvetica font.
Morphine Sulfate.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Matt whispered to himself. The clear liquid dripped into the tube slowly, rolling down the plastic until it dribbled into Mello's veins. 1mg for 1mL.
Jealousy and desperation mixed together in the pit of Matt's stomach. He would fucking give anything to be where Mello was right now. Warm and cozy and floating on a little lotus flower where nothing could go wrong.
How fucking unfair. Mello got to close his eyes and enjoy shit. Matt had to stay awake and watch him have a good time.
"You okay, kid?"
Matt whipped around. Mario was staring at him funny, holding onto a bucket of medical supplies with both of his hairy arms. Matt shrugged, taking a step back.
"Sorry," Matt said, his thumb returning to his lips. "Was I in the way?"
"Eh," Mario answered indifferently, edging past Matt to dump the bucket onto the surgical table. Matt sighed to himself, watching as Mario removed the towel from Mello's face, revealing his burns.
Holy fucking shit.
Mello's face was half gone. His cheek was floppy, nothing more than white globs of skin failing to hold back meat that looked like lasagna, shiny brown patches that looked like deflated prune plums. If Matt hadn't already puked just now, he would have gone again. Mello's burns were glowing and weeping.
Mario dropped more of the towels as Matt stared on dumbly, littering them on the floor and exposing Mello's burns for all that they were. They traced jagged down the length of his neck, his shoulder, his waist, in unhuman colors like brown and pink and yellow and red, glistening and shining in the dim hanging light.
"Oh my god," Matt breathed. He didn't know what else to say.
Mario looked back, smirking. "Yeah, right?" He grabbed a scalpel off the surgical table, aiming it at a fluid-filled boil, and cut it open. Clear liquid gushed out of the boils, dribbling onto the floor. "Imagine how he's feeling."
Well, that was easy. Mello wasn't feeling anything at all. He was fucking high.