The artist who'd rendered Jesus in Mello's new painting of the Baptism of Christ had made him a little bit too sexy for it to have been an accident.

When Matt was 10 or something, he'd had a neighbour who had invited him over to her house to look through an old magazine. They'd sat on the edge of her yellowish duvet, facing a cracked pale wall with one framed photograph hanging by a bit of frayed twine on a raw metal nail: a black and white picture of her recently dead husband, which showed him shirtless and carrying a worn leather saddle in his well-defined arms. Gleaming muscles were bright on an ink background; grey shadowy six pack.

The Jesus painting made Matt feel like he was back in that room, trying to avoid staring at the abs of a doomed man.

'How do we fuck in here?' Matt asked when Mello banged the painting into the wall with a hammer.

'On all fours, on our backs, what are you talkin' about?' Mello muttered.

'I feel like Jesus is, like, watching me and finding me wanting.'

'Of course he is, he's Christ.'

'He's shredded.'

'He was a carpenter.'

'Hey, I'm thinking about adding another leg to the dining table,' Matt grinned. 'Now who's wanting, eh?'

Mello rolled his eyes. 'I'll believe it when I see it.'

'Not sure where I'd get the leg.' Matt conceded, bouncing a little on the mattress and lighting a cigarette. 'Never seen one at the konbini.'

'Stick to what you're good at.' Mello suggested.

'I'd love to...' Matt agreed. 'So you won't mind that I'll not be doing any dishes anymore?'

'If you don't mind that I'll not be stickin' around.'

Matt closed his eyes and Mello wandered over to peck his mouth.

Their worlds had shrunk down to just each other since they'd arrived in Japan. Mello had lifted the corner of the busy tapestry of the country's roadmap and found nothing underneath: no criminal underground, no Mob ready and waiting, no one with the balls to so much as nick a bag of crisps from a corner store on Kira's own soil.

No people, no help. No drugs, no guns, no fun.

Matt was taking on as much casework as he could, staying up late watching video feeds and eating egg roll cookies. But he couldn't replace an entire gang's worth of people, no matter how many all-nighters he pulled.

By now, Matt was used to letting Mello down. He played a lot of online games that couldn't be paused, so more than once he'd denied running down to the shops to get Mello a bottle of Robotussin when he had a cold, or he'd gotten too comfortable in the sinking cushions of their old green couch and refused to get up to grab a chocolate bar from the fridge for Mello when Mello asked. That sort of thing was always happening. Matt was really bad at being helpful in the everyday, small ways that people noticed. He was aware of his mundane laziness, his inability to follow through with chores and errands. It was starting to annoy Mello, but only because Matt's minorly irritating idiosyncrasies were grating against hi s exhaustion, his frustration at his limited progress in the case and hi s lack of resources ; they were both getting very erratic, sparse sleep. Mello had even developed an exhausted eye twitch. For all the mistakes Matt was making as a detective, Mello could have been furious , but was only resigned.

Despite all their setbacks, Mello had managed to make some important headway in the case. He'd uncovered information even Near didn't have. Actually, that was their major problem, these days. Halle was still acting as an informant on the movements of the SPK, and when Mello found out that Near was planning a confrontation with Kira – the Second L – very, very soon, they were suddenly on a frenzied timeline to reveal the existence of a fake notebook, to win the game before Near and his posse were butchered in an airplane hanger somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Mello was jittery, and hyper-caffeinated on chocolate and coffee, stilling his hands with the occasional cigarette. Matt thought it was nice of him to care so much, sort of appealing to watch him twitch around a vodka soda like a sexy sweating savage.

Matt shifted on the bed so he was lying horizontally, legs hanging over the end, feet flat. Most mornings, Mello would wake up twenty minutes before his alarm to the sound of Matt's raucous music coming from the living room. There, curled on the floor, Matt would be sleeping with his head on one arm, laptop propped open or headset still nestled in his hair like berries in a bramble, squished under one ear and leaving red marks on his soft cheeks. Matt's loyalty was irreplaceable.

'Give me one of those.' Mello said into the stale air, pointing a gloved finger at Matt's pack of smokes.

Matt flung the pack at Mello's chest and said, 'What's up?'

'We're really down to the wire.' Mello answered, after a beat of silence. 'With this case.'

'Well, yeah.'

'So we need a plan.'

'Yup.'

'I've been looking at it from every angle.'

'Uhuh.'

Dust motes in the noon sun kept falling on Matt's upturned nose. A sunbeam was cutting him in two, like a magician's trick. Mello had never stopped being enraptured by him because Matt had never stopped growing into Mello's expectations like a choking vine. When Mello started thinking a life of crime was the coolest way for a boy to make his money, Matt was a criminal. When Mello jerked off in an ashy room, Matt was a smoker. Mello still didn't believe in God, or fate, or anything except his own power and his uncanny ability to overcome, but sometimes moments with Matt were religious, anyway. Sometimes Mello liked a bit of imagery, a touch of drama.

'I'm thinkin' I'll take Takada from outside the News Station building.' Mello said, and launched into a brief explanation of the new kidnapping plot he'd been dreaming up since finding out about Near's next move. 'Then I guess I'm gonna need you to be the car guy.'

'Well, not just the car guy.' Matt said, sitting up and shaking his moppy hair out of his face.

Mello squinted at him, unsure what he was getting at. 'What do you mean?'

'I'm a little more than just the car guy.' Matt shrugged.

'Do you want to be the guy who brings me a coffee in the morning, too, then?' Mello asked coolly, disliking being challenged.

'At the very least.' Matt said lightly.

Something in Matt's tone grated against Mello's inferiority complex, against the weight of all the independence he'd shouldered since leaving the Orphanage, had fought for in the Mafia. 'I don't know why you're causing an argument right now, Matt. What the fuck is this about? I don't have room for changes in this plan just because you want to, what, drive the motorcycle yourself? So you can feel special?'

'No, no, I just don't like the insinuation that I'm, like, only useful because you've got no one else. You know, I guess Matt will drive a car to distract some guys, I mean he might as well. Man, I've basically funded this whole vacation.' Matt said, chuckling.

'If I knew you were gonna fuckin' throw it in my face, Matt, I wouldn't have taken your fuckin' scam money.' Mello growled.

'I don't know why you're being so defensive, I'm just saying.'

'I don't know why you're starting this!' Mello retorted. 'We were having a good fucking -' he paused, cheeks colouring, ' a good fuckin' day.'

'We can still have a good day, jeez.' Matt rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. 'I guess I've just... I don't know, been feeling... sort of... useless.'

'Why?'

'I fucked up that thing with Misa. I don't know. You haven't said anything about it, but I fuck a lot of this shit up. So you gave me a small role. I don't know. I did a lot, you know? I'm capable. I don't know if I'm showing that off, right now, but like... I don't want to just have a throwaway job.'

'Jesus Christ – Matt, there are only two jobs. Stop reading into this.'

'Ok, sure.'

'What do you want from me?'

'I guess nothing. No, seriously. I don't know why I – you're right, I was being... like, reading into it too much. Just wouldn't kill you to blow me sometime.'

'Uhuh.'

'Just show some appreciation, since you obviously can't ever, like, use your words.'

'I appreciate you.'

'Yeah.'

Matt shifted his gaze back to the Jesus painting. 'What's going in in that picture, anyway?' he asked, obviously changing the subject. 'I thought it was babies who get baptized.'

'You can be baptized at any age.' Mello sighed. 'And there's more than one way.'

'Did you get baptized?'

'Of course.' Mello said.

'What if you do a bunch of nasty shit, do you have to get baptized again?'

'No.'

'What if you just really feel like it.'

'I don't know, Matt.'

'What if I got baptized, being an atheist?'

'Then you'd have gotten baptized.'

'That's so fascinating, thank you for walking down this hypothetical path with me, Mello.'

Mello rolled his eyes.

'Why don't you sit down?' Matt asked, patting the bed beside him. 'You look a little bit like you need to sit down.'

With a shrug, Mello sat. He pulled out his phone and started flicking through text messages, letting Matt grab him around the middle and squeeze him and bury his nose in his shaggy hair. 'I'm sending you some stuff.' Mello said.

'Look up at that Jesus thing from this angle and tell me you don't mind waving your dick out right in front of it.' Matt muttered into Mello's jawline, lips like moth's wings against his skin.

'I don't mind.' Mello said, giving it a cursory glance. 'I bought it because it reminded me of something, something I tell myself to motivate myself. I want it there.'

'Reminds me of something, too.' Matt said.

'What?'

'Just this weird lady from when I was a kid.'

The fluttering confusion on Mello's face made Matt sputter a laugh.

'It reminds me to become new, as much as necessary, to always make myself new.' Mello explained.

'So that's how you do it.' Matt teased.

'Tell me about this weird lady.' Mello prompted, nose still in his phone.

'Well, this lady I knew had this porn picture of her dead husband hanging in her bedroom, and it was the only decoration in the whole house, so it was extra weird. Who goes and gets a professional photo of themselves shirtless and then, like, hangs it in their bedroom?' As Matt said it, smiling crookedly, he thought of an amendment, 'Other than maybe you.'

'I wouldn't.'

'Well, let's see what happens when you're 40 and you've had a couple more years to develop your self-interest.'

With such carefree ease, Matt admitted to imagining a future together. Mello had been fretting, in these desperate few days as their grand finale drew closer, about what might happen after. To which country would they retreat? What sort of roof would they live under? What sort of relationship would they develop? Would Mello have time to cook them a holiday meal, and would Matt wink at him over a kitchen island and steal a bit of frosting off the top of a pastry? Would they know how to do it, would they learn to do it? Would Mello roar down a city road in his motorcycle with Matt lightly holding his belly? They could drink schnapps at a table in the warm glow of Christmas tree lights. They could read the newspaper. They could solve cryptic crosswords. And, underneath it all, excitingly, they could stash Mello's guns and Matt's bags of powders in dresser drawers and tins in the kitchen. They could make big money and do anything, anything, anything. Without Kira to stop them, they could really live.

'You never tell me shit about yourself.' Mello said. 'Tell me something else.'

'Oh, hmm.' Matt flicked the lighter for Mello, passing him another smoke, and then lit up himself. He loved smoking with Mello. He loved everything they did together. 'I lived in this sort of wooden... house, with a backyard. We had a laundry wire. There was a fence. We had a car.'

Mello snorted. 'You haven't told me anything about yourself because you're a shit narrator.'

'Aw, come on.' Matt huffed. 'You want a story?'

'I'd rather have a story than a list.'

'Well, then I won't tell you about how we had a fridge and there was a front door and a back.'

'Spare me.'

Matt's lopsided dimple crinkled. 'How about this: once I walked to school in only socks in September, because I'd thrown my shoes at a basketball someone had lodged up in a tree and they'd ended up stuck, too.'

'No good.' Mello judged.

'Why?'

'I don't feel any attachment to the characters.'

'But it's me!' Matt laughed, pushing at Mello's arm. 'Ok, one time, I went with these guys into the city, and we found a whole outfit laid out near a creek, like someone had laid down and disintegrated right there. Purse, skirt, everything. It totally stuck with me because I was like... man, a person is naked somewhere, or dead. I wonder which?'

Mello nodded. 'I found a backpack and a pair of hiking boots at a trailhead once. Backpack was full of orange traffic cones.'

'Man, there are so many weird people out there.' Matt said. 'That's what's so fucked about Kira, I think – why get rid of the all the interesting, weird people? Man, there was this guy who lived down the street from us who bred these dogs called, uh, well... I don't know what they were called, but they were these cool white dogs. And he also did a bunch of armed robberies. I heard about it. But like, he was cool. He had all these dogs.'

'I thought you didn't like dogs.' Mello said.

'No, I don't. But I still think an otherwise nice guy who did some robberies should be able to just breed dogs out in Kuybyshev without anyone bothering him about it.'

Mello snorted, and leant over Matt's thighs to put his tongue in his mouth, as a reward for thinking that. 'Tell me more,' he said breathlessly against Matt's mouth, 'tell me more about the type of people you'd save.'

The next days bled together, approaching January 26 th . Their routine was so repetitive, no weekend stood out from a weekday. Mello dragged his feet through the mornings, at once desperate for more time to prepare and anxious to get to the starting line, already. The day before the kidnapping, he had already triple checked the routes they'd take, the time Takada would arrive , that Matt's gun was in proper working order, that his bike's tank was full. All that was left was to pace, and listen to Matt telling him sit down, c'mon, sit a while.

'And you checked, you have power steering fluid. Whatever the fuck... steering fluid...' Mello muttered, dodging Matt's grabbing hands as he breezed past the couch where Matt was sitting, twisting wires for what he called a "personal project".

'Duh.' Matt said. 'Worrying about the hydraulics in my car is getting pretty nitty gritty, baby.'

'Nothing can go wrong.'

'Nothing will go wrong. Or, it will, and you'll set a big fire. It'll be fine.'

'Did you check?'

Matt grumbled and rolled his eyes. 'No one checks that.'

'Let's go unprepared into our drive-by shooting.' Mello said, deadpan.

'Let's make trenches in the carpet over it.' Matt clipped back.

Sighing, Mello pulled out a seat at the little table they'd set up in the kitchen, only an arms reach away from where Matt was lounging, thanks to the tiny open floor plan of their temporary apartment. 'Are you packed for Kiev?' They would escape there, sit and wait for Kira to blow over.

'We have some time between the thing and the plane.' Matt said, so nonchalant it was irritating. 'But I packed my gear and some shirts, so if we don't have time to kill, I won't bitch – Jesus, your face. Chill.'

There was no point hurrying Matt. Mello didn't have power over him, the way he'd amassed power over gangs and Presidents. 'Fine.'

'You'd almost think you weren't looking forward to this.' Matt cracked a smile. He was bathed in yellow sunlight, jaundiced from fingertip to the flaming freckled bridge of his nose. 'You're about to win.'

- And that was what Mello told himself when he swung his leg over his motorcycle the next morning, Matt's stained smiling teeth in his mind's eye.

The day was fresh. Mello could feel the cold creaking in his leather gloves, nudging his exposed cheeks. He put his helmet on with finality. Through the tint in the visor, he watched Matt peel away in his cool little red chevy. A loitering anger was pooling in his gut, at nothing and no-one in particular. It was the feeling that, in him, replaced anticipation, nervousness, fear. It was part of his power, his strength of will, to swap one emotion for another, to push it all down. He breathed deep and kicked off, steering into traffic.

Driving was a beautiful calm. Mello had always loved to ride, always savoured the rush of it. Being on the bike alone was like freedom, being on the bike with Matt behind him felt as close to true love as Mello imagined a man could get.

Takada huddled onto the back of the bike with a little shuffle of her coat, coated in the confusion of Matt's gunsmoke. Through the haze, Mello could make out Matt's tires burning away over the asphalt. He zipped off the curb and dodged down an alleyway, catlike, to drop the tail of bodyguards who tried to trail him into the city. Chipping off chunks of the plan settled his stomach; a little at a time, he unwound.

One of the details he'd agonised about for days was the placing of the delivery truck. The outfit that would shield him from recognition was stashed in the passenger seat, and the keys were on Mello's belt. He changed quickly in the cab, transferred Takada into the back. Another step closer to victory, so close he could taste the cloying tang of success on the meat of his tongue like a heavy metal.

Laser focused, he drove the truck out of the city. The little television on his dashboard was tuned in to Takada's channel: it would show him the aftermath of the kidnapping, the first reports on what he hoped would be a major factor in Kira's ever-nearing downfall.

There they were: the smoky front doors Takada had never walked through. There was a news anchor saying it was shocking. There was Matt's car, Matt's car wrecked, Matt's car in a puddle of shimmering glass, unknown man dead, like it was good news -

- and that was so fitting an end for Matt, to sort of smile and bleed out.

This was Mello's operative heart-string high note. This was his moment, the glorious completion of his master plan. This was the devastating loss of the love of his life, of his motivation for all he'd done, of his reason to fight for a brighter future. Here was his chance... but his boots sunk and caught in a quicksand of guilt.

Guilt.

Forgive me.

There was no one left who would.

He parked in the safe embrace of a stone church ruin, numb like a fever. The rubble of the cathedral he'd been building, the life he'd been making, the great gesture, crumbled around him like drying ink on a page.

Quietly, Mello died.