Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note or any of its characters.

One Art

Prologue: Photograph

"This place is a fucking pigsty, O'Malley."

"Don't care, Ari..."

"Why don't you ever clean up? Or at least hire someone else to-it's not like you can't afford it, for god's sake. Gah-what is that?"

O'Malley didn't bother getting off the couch, didn't bother to go look and see what it was Arianna was banging on about. So what if his apartment was a complete wreck? He had more important things on his mind, and 'domestic duties' didn't even make the bottom of the list. Besides, he didn't like the idea of some stranger coming in here and touching his stuff. Especially his photos.

"I don't want some stranger in here touching my stuff," O'Malley muttered from his slumped position on the couch, echoing the words inside his own head. With effort, he slid forward and grabbed a bottle of Jack from the coffee table and poured a healthy dose of it into a cup of coke.

Ari swiveled her head at the sound. "Jesus, O'Malley-it's not even one o'clock yet!"

"Don't judge, Ari," said O'Malley, drinking from the cup. He made a face and stared at it. The coke had gotten too warm.

"Someone needs to-" said Ari darkly.

"-I have the whole Christian right for that," O'Malley interjected.

"Oh, I'm not talking about that," said Ari, jabbing her finger towards the couch. "I'm talking about your 'lifestyle' choices here-"

"-It's either a 'bottle in front of me' or a 'frontal lobotomy,' Ari. So get over it," O'Malley had slumped back down in the couch, and he knew that Ari couldn't even see the top of his head from her position behind the architect's drafting table by the wall, the table which served as his work space.

"You are a walking, talking cliche of a drunken Irishman, you know that?" said Ari from across the room.

"You forgot 'bad-tempered,'" added O'Malley with a smirk. Against his better judgement, he took another swig of the Jack and coke. And promptly made another face.

O'Malley lifted his cup high enough in the air so Ari could see it over the back of the couch. "Be a love and get me some ice, will you?"

"I'm not your fucking Jeeves, O'Malley. Get it yourself."

O'Malley twisted around and gazed over the back of the couch toward the stern-faced brunette with the silver nose-piercing standing beside the drafting table. "You're a cold, hard woman, Ari."

"Why? Just because I don't coddle you like everyone else?" said Ari. But the cruelty of her words was softened by a slight smile. "C'mon-we're running out of time here. We have to pick the photos for your next book. Make some final decisions. Soon. The editor's breathing down my neck."

"An artist doesn't care about deadlines," murmured O'Malley, his eyes closed and his head lolling back.

"You'll care when they sue the bejezus out of us. C'mon!" Ari picked up a large glossy photo depicting two naked men, one pale and one dark, their bodies curved around one another, creating the illusion of a yin-yang symbol. "What about this one?" asked Ari.

"Eastern religion at its finest," said O'Malley, barely glancing over at his own work.

"What about this one?" said Ari, holding up another black-and-white. This time the picture was of a single nude man, shot from the back, lying across a grand piano, it's high, glossy surface contrasting beautifully with the pale matte of his skin. The sculpted muscles of his back had been painted with guitar strings, turning him into a second musical instrument.

O'Malley reluctantly craned his head. "Oh, that was supposed to be a sort of tribute to Man Ray," he said absently.

"Yes, I can see that," huffed Ari impatiently. "But do you want it in the book? C'mon, O'Malley, I could use a little feedback here. These are your pictures, after all."

O'Malley could hear the scratching sound of photo paper being lifted, shifted. His head was killing him, and while he appreciated Ari's dedication-she was the best agent/adviser/handler that a deviant, alcoholic photographer could ever ask for-he found himself wishing that she would just go away. Go away and just leave him alone. He didn't feel like dealing with his own work today. His mood was decidedly too black.

"Oh, wow..." He heard Ari exclaim from the drafting table. Then: "When did you do this?"

"Do what?" muttered O'Malley, who reluctantly turned around to see what Ari was talking about. He gripped the back of the couch and squinted over it at the large black-and-white photograph that Ari held up in her hands.

The picture was of a young man with long, blond hair, his sinuous form draped, supine, across what looked to be the top of a bar. The photo had been shot from the side, placing the subject in profile. He was clothed from head to toe in shiny, tight black leather and he was blindfolded. A dark, beaded rosary glinted on his chest. A tattoo of a snake slithered its way up the side of his neck, stretching up toward a bright, shiny apple the young man held between his lips. The biblical symbolism was clear. And, more than that, it was dark, edgy, erotic, and-

"-Totally hot!" proclaimed Ari with an evil Cheshire cat's grin. "Classic O'Malley. Like the stuff you did back in your younger days; the stuff the Right used to burn you down for. Back when they christened you the Gothic Mapplethorpe, the Ansel Adams of bondage. Oh, I'm definitely putting this one in-"

"-No,no,no,no,no!" yelled O'Malley, scrambling over the back of the couch, almost falling face first onto the floor. He reached the drafting table and snatched the photo out of Ari's hands. "You can't put that one in," he said in an almost panicked tone.

"Geez, what the fuck, O'Malley?" said Ari, gazing down at her now empty hands.

"I'm not supposed to have that," he said cryptically. He took the photo and shoved it inside one of the binders shelved above the drafting table. "And I promised not to show it to anybody," he muttered to himself, rubbing his face with both hands.

Ari stared at him as if he'd turned lunatic. Her eyes raked him critically. Wild, strawberry-red hair stuck out in all directions and there were dark shadows beneath his almond-shaped, hazel eyes. "You look like five miles of bad road, you know that?" she said. Then, in a somewhat softer tone: " Why don't you take a shower and try drinking some coffee?"

"Uh...maybe," he answered uncertainly.

"No. No 'maybes.' Just go." And here, Ari shoved him in the direction of his bathroom. Then, as a sort of compromise, she said, "I'll even put the coffee on for you."

O'Malley glanced at her suspiciously. He must really look terrible if Ari was actually trying to mother him. But the shower and the coffee did sound good...

"Alright, I'm going," he said, walking, in not quite a straight line, toward the bathroom.

"I'll get the coffee then," Ari called after him. But she didn't move to go to O'Malley's kitchen area. What she did, instead, was take the binder down from the shelf-the binder that O'Malley had shoved the serpent-and-apple picture in-and she took the photo out.

"Too good to leave out," she murmured over the glossy image, and quickly tucked the picture into her own portfolio case.

What O'Malley didn't know, surely wouldn't hurt him...

End Prologue

Author's Note: The title is taken from the Elizabeth Bishop poem of the same name.