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beep…beep…beep
Matt woke slowly, wriggling his toes, then his fingers, coaxing the life and blood back into them. They tingled grumpily in reply, cramped with lying still too long.
Ugh, he needed a fag. Badly.
Where had it been this time? The Mud Club? Chiques? Or that new place in town that only the hardcore people went to? Jenny's promised she'd take him there, set him up with someone….
His mind drew a blank. Nothing rose out of its depths but more fuzzy whiteness. He felt like an actor on stage as the dry-ice came rolling in. Only someone'd left the switch on too long and it had turned into an avalanche…
Hah. He was in limbo, and all he could think about were fucking avalanches?
See, Matty, this is what hangovers do to you.
He didn't remember drinking though. Driving somewhere, yes, but drinking? Besides, apart from the dry-ice, there was nothing in his head that actually hurt. In fact, he felt oddly weightless, like you do when you've been carrying a heavy bag for miles then try and walk without it.
Maybe he'd just smoked something? Hm. Not unusual, but, again, no memories. Pills? They were always harder to remember, but the taste they left stayed with him for hours….
His lips felt like someone'd stuck tape over them then ripped it off, but they didn't taste of anything.
None of the above, Matty. Next guess.
A groan escaped him. Trust the voice in his head to sound like Mello.
Matty?
Strange. Voices in his head didn't normally ask questions.
His eyelids flickered. He realised they were closed.
Where…?
The first crack of light felt like someone had pressed a blade directly onto his eyeball. Matt swore, rolling into a sitting position and cradling his head in his hands.
Fu-uck. Whatever he'd taken, he was not taking it again. Ever.
"Matty."
A command this time, still in Mello's voice.
Matt'd be damned if he ever ignored a summons from Mello.
He opened his watering eyes.
He saw nothing at first, only whiteness, rolling on and on and on in every direction. Slowly, he managed to make out what might be a horizon (at least, there was a point where the swirling sort of whiteness becomes a still sort of whiteness, but he couldn't be sure), and realised that he was buried up to his chest in what looked like cloud but felt like nothing at all.
He staggered to his feet, dry-ice pouring around his shins like a river. It was flowing quickly behind him, though he couldn't feel any pressure on his legs at all. There was a strange, nudging feeling though, more mental than physical; telling him to turn round, to look where the current is flowing.
What choice did he have but to obey? He turned…
…And there was Mello.
Matt blinked, then scrubbed at his eyes, but the vision refused to fade. There he was, clad in the same leather jacket and trousers that he had been wearing the last time they saw each other. He looked…different though, Matt thought; then, with a sudden jolt, he realised why.
The scar on his face was gone.
The two boys stopped a few metres apart, watching each other curiously, as though waiting for something to fade or change and prove that they were dreaming. Eventually, Mello cocked his head to the side, a slow grin splitting his face.
"Hello Matty." He said.
Matty. Mello hadn't called him Matty for almost four years.
"Hi." He managed after a minute or two. They were both speaking English for the first time since arriving in Japan together, and for a moment its awkwardness is the only thing that bothered Matt. Only after they had stared at each other for another full minute did the obvious question actually surface.
"Where are we?"
"Wish I knew." Mello answered, looking back over his shoulder with the same nonchalance as someone standing in the centre of their hometown and unable to find their favourite café. "I was just starting to get bored when you showed up."
"Showed up?"
"Yeah, you just rose out of the fog. Over there." He pointed vaguely somewhere behind them. "Like Frankenstein or something…" He paused, then looked Matt straight in the eye. "Listen, do you think we're dead? I can't remember much before I woke up here, but I remember the TV in the van I was driving. Something about you and the police. And guns."
Matt didn't answer; the coldness running slowly through his blood gave him all the answer he needed. His memory was returning too, but in pieces, like one of Near's jigsaw puzzles.
He's in Tokyo, his hands on a foreign steering wheel and watching a motorbike speed into the distance. He can see a woman on the motorbike, with another black-clad rider that he instinctively knows is Mello. He remembers driving again, through air thick with grenade-smoke… but then the pictures become nothing more than blurred snapshots. Bright streets, police lights…a crossroads…opening the car door, and then-
"They shot me." Matt murmured. "They shot me with my hands above my head."
"Bastards." Mello murmurs. His hands shift to his pocket; a nervous reflex that normally ends in him pulling out another chocolate bar. This time he stops and clenches his fists; either there's no chocolate or he's eaten it already. "Serves you right for surrendering."
"You're a fine one to talk." Matt snaps. "You're up here too."
"Yeah. That bitch Takada got me with the Death Note. I had a full forty seconds of heart-attack to figure that one out." Mello looked down and scuffed his feet.
As Matt watched him, the air between them seemed to shimmer, like the desert in a heat haze.
A picture swirled out of the murk; the front seat of a van. A pair of familiar hands grip, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel. Matt hears laboured breathing, curses, prayers. The image swings wildly for a minute, then fades into nothing.
"I…" Matt blurted out the moment the picture faded. "I, I just saw your…"
"Yeah, I know." Mello said. He looked pale now, and slightly queasy. "I just saw yours too."
"Oh." Matt hesitated. Discussing deaths seemed too incongruous, even for this weird white limbo. "Do…do you think it's some side-effect of-"
"-Of being dead?" Mello rolled his eyes. "Call me crazy, but I never thought the afterlife'd have fucking symptoms."
"Alright, alright." Matt held up his hands. "Chances are we're dead, alright? Nothing's gonna make sense."
"Good. Now stop theorising or I'll smack you." Matt smiled wryly.
"Some things never change." Mello's eyes narrowed.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"You've been beating me up since we were little kids, remember? Since the first day you met me."
"You ask for it." Mello's reply was gruff, but he was smiling too. "Fourteen years and you never stopped being a dolt."
"Fourteen years." Matt grinned. "You'd've thought I'd have learned my lesson by then, and stayed the hell away from you." Mello shifted to the other foot and glared at him.
The drifting whiteness was starting to change colour; shimmering, solidifying. Another memory began to form between them. Just before they were enveloped completely, Matt heard Mello mutter under his breath.
"Shut up, you."
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