ju ichi.
Finally, they reached their destination, and Mello parked as dutifully as he had in the vast parking lot of the retail store, even though this parking lot was considerably less crowded and the building was three times smaller, almost encompassed by the shadow of the building next to it.
"Shady lookin' thing," Matt commented off-handedly as they pulled up and parked. He yawned, absently scratching at his chest as though he could get to the bandages underneath. Now that he was pretty much stoned on pain killers, the shot wound had dulled its pain to a constant throb and itched something like a devil.
Mello grunted in response and stalked toward the building, wrenching open the door and glowering at the inside. The seething feeling that had bubbled up in his abdomen, that had seemingly come out of no where, was lingering.
No verbal exchange was necessary. The blonde stopped short of the counter at the front and flashed some kind of ID, sending the man behind it scurrying. He disappeared in one of the back rooms for quite awhile.
Matt couldn't help but to chuckle a little and reach over and sharply prod Mello's side in something that might have been his brutal version of a tickle.
"A regular rascal, aren't you?" he taunted the other gently, his voice low. The store really commanded it—maybe because Mello and the clerk hadn't said a word to each other, and maybe because it was kind of dimly lit. Or maybe it was just Matt being weird. He straightened and stuck his hands into his pockets, looking idle and pleasant as he blinked up at the ceiling and his surroundings.
"And you're not?" said the elder, playing along against his better nature. "Hasn't anyone ever told you to pick your friends wisely?" He smirked. "You're only as guilty as the people you associate yourself with, Matty."
That little endearing name was the product of an annoyed yet strangely amused Mello. The man came back with a grocery bag, handing it over with a sense of finality, and it was taken by gloved fingers. Okay, so maybe this exchange would appear rather shady to outside eyes, but it was the cliché underground look that made everything interesting. It sort of took the seriousness off of the fact that the thing Mello was carrying could be the thing that either saved Matt's life, or doomed him.
"Matty?" the red-head echoed. He might have paid attention to what other clever things that Mello said if he hadn't thrown in the old ditty at the end of it. Now, Matt just grinned, roguishly hiding it from the clerk like this was his happiness and not anyone else's. Maybe Mello's. But that was all. Matt was always a selfish kid—he never shared his video games, much like Mello never shared his chocolate.
"That's your name, isn't it?" the blonde commented dryly, escaping to the outside to return to the car, each footfall perilously slow. "More or less." Of course it wasn't the other's real name, and it was only his nickname with an extra syllable added. But Mello felt like he was entitled to at least one condescending pet name before they set off for their dangerous venture, in case he didn't get to do it later on. Another pointless thing on his 'things to do before I die' list, behind the hundreds on his list to do with Near.
He slid into the driver's seat, mentally ticking off what they had, and trying to figure what they still needed, which was pretty much only plane tickets. Those, though, they could get without having to leave the apartment.
"Close enough," Matt drawled, shrugging slightly on his right side, eyeing the back of Mello's head with a curious appreciation. Although he would never admit it out loud, he'd always held some degree of admiration for Mello—and it was just nice to wander around the city with him. Even if they happened to be shopping for a kidnapping. This was completely normal context. He slouched down in the passenger's seat again, closing his eyes and viewing the backs of his eyelids like they were a fucking cinema. He had the most dazed of expressions on his face, too—you could either say he was really bored, or the drugs were getting to him. "So we got... stuff to kidnap the hottest star in Japan...and stuff for me to shoot the fuck out of some men with. What next, Mel'?" He, evidently, was keen to seize back a chance to throw Mello's nickname in for the record as well.
Matt seemed all too keen to reiterate their intents, quite flippantly too, and that pissed Mello off slightly. What didn't, though?
"Plane tickets," he murmured, chancing a glance in the other's direction before backing out for the last time and meshing with the typical flow of traffic that would eventually deposit him back where he wanted to be. "But I have some qualms with that. If we paid online, that would require using a credit card, meaning that we'd more than likely have a record of our antics somewhere on the web. Your credit card...is it a fake name, or is it someone else's?" Everything had to be considered before they acted, or else they could make a fatal mistake.
"It's someone else's," he answered, trying to remember which European stock broker it happened to be. "I've got a couple under fake names too, and they can't trace shit back to me 'cause I don't have records." Of course not. Matt, being Matt, wouldn't have records. He would choose to be invisible, a nobody. And this was convenient. As long as he had the options, Mello could procure the answers, right?
"Hmmmm," mused the blonde audibly, highlighting the sound with a swift turn of the wheel. "Then I'll leave it to you to get tickets when we get back. A round trip, for Saturday." He, of course, meant it for the Saturday coming up, which was not far at all. And the mention of a round trip...it only made you think that Mello was hopeful. He wasn't. Talking to Hal only made him realize how doomed they really were. Of course, he would never display this to the other; he kept stolid and firm about the whole thing, and that's how he would remain until he had to actually met death head on. And even then, maybe...
Matt himself could somehow hear the empty promise that a round trip ticket held, but he just nodded.
"Sure," he answered, thinking idly on how he wanted to do this—he could use any of his multiple credit cards...and it was best to do it with two different people's credit cards anyway. Sounded like a plan to him. And of course, his IP address would be blocked just in case. Just in case was how Matt always did things.
"Saturday it is." Well. Way to run headlong into danger. Matt wasn't complaining though. Even if this was the end--it'd been one hell of a ride, even for only nineteen years.
He said no more after this, knowing full well that further speech would be redundant. The instructions were set, the plans were made, and Mello was nervous as hell to go through with it. But...if it succeeded...they would be one up on Near, and perhaps that much closer to Kira. If it failed, well, you could only guess what would happen then. After that, either Near would win or Kira would, and things would be no better off for Mello, or Matt for that matter.
The blonde took one last turn onto the street that housed the apartment complex, and repositioned the car into the place it had been in before. With not even a breath in response to their arrival, he slid out of his seat and strode toward the building with his goods in hand.
Matt followed suit, looking back at his car and feeling somewhat disdainful that it would be left in an airport parking lot until they got back. Hopefully, that damn round trip ticket would be put to good use and his car wouldn't rust away where no one could come rescue it. The generally monomaniacal gamer headed up to the apartment with Mello, his hands stuck into his pockets, fingering the smooth edges of his handheld. After he ordered the tickets, afterwards…
Matt entered the apartment shortly after Mello did, shrugging off his vest after he unzipped it and tossing it somewhere near the couch.
Mello didn't spare so much as a look at the one who had followed him inside, choosing instead to merely partake in the ritual of partial undressing. He slid off his jacket and folded it cleanly over the back of a wayward chair. He glanced wantonly at the plastic bag that played host to his remaining chocolate bars, and after a moment's inward battle, his better side won out, and he pilfered a second bar to rip open. Sure, he would be through with them in no time, but he couldn't help it. So much for self control. Maybe if he learned to contain his desire, he could learn to contain his emotions.
"Hey," Matt commented after a while, having secured one ticket. For the fun of it, he was getting Mello and him seats together. They looked conspicuous as fuck side by side, but hell, you met all kinds of characters on plane rides. Some blonde androgynous guy in leather and a someone in stripes and a fluffy vest wasn't going to be a problem. "You really think we're gonna need round trip tickets?" He questioned, arching a brow. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it out of Mello's mouth. That, or see if Mello would lie for the benefit of it all.
"Of course," Mello replied sharply, and he wasn't lying. If by some miracle they didn't die, how would they get back? And it was also for reassurance. Mello deluded himself a lot, and this was no different. If he made himself think that they would need round trip tickets, they would. That wasn't always the way the world worked, but since when did he necessarily do things by the way the world indicated they would?
"Do you want to be stuck in Japan?"
Matt shrugged.
"Japan's nice."
Well, Mello was right. In the event that they made it out of this alive, they certainly would need a way to get back to the States. Although, Japan was nice. "Cute girls. Mostly."
Matt was cracking a grin on the inside, but he looked as placid as ever from the outside.
"Hey, you know," he started suddenly after securing their second ticket, "were you planning on lugging Takada back with us? Or are you going to do something crazy in Japan?"
Mello rolled his eyes at the comments about the girls. Leave it to Matt to bring something like that up. But the second was at least a partially legitimate question, and so, the blonde sought to answer it. Not in a straightforward way, of course.
"What do you think?" he inquired lightly. "You managed to put your brilliant deductive mind to the test and figure out my initial plan. Or are you too distracted by the thought of girls to be of any use now?"
"Too distracted by girls," Matt answered with a wry grin breaking through his features. It couldn't be helped, though. Girls were always such a light-hearted thing with Matt—he'd never taken a single one seriously since his mother. "I would say that it's a good idea to go back to the states with her. Normally, not really. But since she's a high-profile star and the entire country will want to kill us..."
Matt shrugged. It would buy them time, too, at the very least. "But I really don't think we'd be too good at getting her through an airport."
Of course this was the expected answer.
"We'd have to take her back with us, even if it's risky," replied Mello evenly, having cleaned through half of his bar. "It would be easier than trying to keep her concealed in Japan, where everyone's looking for not only her, but us too." He pursed his lips. "They'll be looking for us here, too, but not as much. We'll have a better chance once we get her back here, if we take away any means of communication between her and Kira."
Matt nodded, trying to envision a way to get Takada across the borders of Japan. It didn't really look like taking a conventional flight would do them any good—they'd basically be hijacking the plane or something like that. Maybe they could get a private aircraft somehow.
"Did you have one of your guys fly a helicopter a while back? Any chance of us getting something that's not, you know, a commercial jet to get an obvious kidnappee out of Japan?" Matt questioned, his tone almost sarcastic.
"Of course, Matt," said Mello, the intensity of his sarcasm a little greater. "Let me just pull a helicopter out of my ass, along with all of my people that Kira and the Japanese task force killed, and the hideout that is currently a pile of ash. And while I'm at it, maybe I could get Takada here magically. There's an equal chance of both happening." He sighed. "If I could get those luxuries back, do you think I'd be wasting my time with you?" The blonde shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"Nah, if you had those things I'd be getting laid," Matt chimed in helpfully, turning his attention back to his computer screen and, for the hell of it, buying an extra ticket—one way, from Japan to the States. It wasn't like it was his money to be worrying about. He shoved the laptop aside, grunting discreetly in discomfort when he managed to get himself off the ground and onto the couch. Bored now, he pulled out his handheld and turned it on. "Well, I think we can get through airport security with a gun to her head if we really wanted to." Sarcasm? Maybe.
Mello watched the movement from the ground to the couch with disinterest, and then debated silently with himself when the handheld was brought into view. After a moment's thought, he allowed the other to have his leisure, but for how long was another question entirely.
"Sure we can," he said back, scowling, and being less than helpful. He didn't plan on arguing with Matt right now; the other had to trust him to have a plan in mind. He wasn't just going to burst into Japan like an idiot with nothing, though that did seem like his style.
Quiet gaming noises joined them in the apartment while Matt urban ninja'd around the screen, jumping from place to place without much interest. He didn't really think that they would be that successful in getting Takada across the ocean, but he figured that he'd just leave this to Mello. Whatever, let him figure it out or execute whatever he had going on in that brain of his. Matt would just lay low and do whatever was needed of him, and nothing more.
Meanwhile, Mello had packed. Not in the usual, conventional way, with toiletries and clothing and things necessary for travel, but in a way that he tried to conceal the weapons he packed in the suitcases. One per bag, plus a ton of usual items that you would expect to be in a suitcase. Still, it would be difficult to surpass security, but he had a vague feeling that it would be a lot easier than shuttling Takada over the ocean.
He returned to the living room, having done the required, and was met with a strange feeling: he had nothing left to do until that Saturday when they left, except maybe check and double check his things. And knowing him, he would end up doing just that.
Matt was still sitting on the couch playing his video game—although every now and again his game would loop the same music without the interruption of a 'chinng' or a bleep that indicated he was doing anything noteworthy. He was, after the day, dozing off. Either he was a sleepy lazy-ass, or he was a little worse for wear than he let on.
"Mello," he mused suddenly, after a while, his gaze lifting to the blonde with a somewhat dazed awareness there. "I said we were more than friends. You agreed. What does that make us, then?"
This question took Mello off-guard, maybe because he thought that that discussion was done, and that they would never come back to it. Obviously he was mistaken.
"I don't know," he answered, strangely unperturbed by not being the source of answers. He hated being ignorant, but now he figured it was better. "You were the one that brought it up. I thought you knew." Okay, maybe that wasn't why. Then again, Matt didn't need to know everything that was going on in his head.
"No, I don't know," he answered plainly, watching the elder like he could come up with a good answer this way. He couldn't. "What do you think we are, then?"
The blonde didn't want to answer this new question, only because he didn't know the answer. There were a few intensities of knowing a person: acquaintances, enemies, and friends. And then there were the things beyond friendship, a long line of names that the average mind couldn't fathom. Mello wasn't the average mind, and yet he still couldn't delve past that line. Maybe because he didn't want to, in fear of what he would find.
And so, he remained difficult.
"I don't know."
This business with Mello was half fun and half infuriating—it was the kind of thing that Matt subjected himself to for kicks, and always had. This time, though, he didn't have the answer for himself, so it was kind of hard to keep up the hassling conversation. "You don't know anything then, do you?" he commented lightly, reverting back to his old tricks of pressing Mello's buttons in hopes of eliciting an answer to prove him wrong.
But Mello wasn't provoked. He should know Matt's tactics by now, even if they were aimed at is usual weaknesses.
"I guess you don't, either," he replied evenly. The male had eaten down to the very bottom of his chocolate bar, and now had resorted to eating slowly to keep from going through all three of his bars before the next day, at least. Somehow, though, he had a feeling that that would be inevitable, especially if there was nothing left to occupy himself.
"Just eat your chocolate," Matt told the other after a second of noting how he was trying (and failing) to preserve the remainder of his chocolate. "I'll go out tomorrow and buy more. You're not going to have anything to do other than eat chocolate and get fat, so."
Clearly delighted, Mello returned to his ordinary pace of eating his chocolate, and then retrieved the last bar to rip it open and begin to devour it lasciviously. It was funny how he began to do something only when Matt allowed it, even when he decided that he himself was the sole master of himself. When he had time to think about such trivialities, he'd do so. That would probably be in the days preceding Saturday, when Mello was torn apart by a lack of duty.
"I doubt I'll get fat," the blonde added. This was redundant, but he said it anyway.
Really, Matt doubted that Mello would get fat too—that guy had a metabolism to make rats shy. To be crude about it, of course. Matt shrugged a little, discarding his video game to settle neatly on the couch. It wasn't comfortable, but he was dozing off anyways, and couldn't be bothered to haul his lazy ass to the bed. Besides, despite the voracious amount of pain killers he'd taken, the consistent throbbing was starting to get the better of him, and he'd rather sleep it off before the medication wore off entirely.
"I 'unno," he mused , not bothering with his goggles. Currently, they were doing a good job of concealing his half-closed eyes. "You eat enough chocolate."
"And you play enough video games to turn your brain to shit," he pointed out. "And yet you were still third in line to succeed L, and by my observation haven't dropped an IQ point since. So habits can be deceiving." And thus, another seemingly pointless conversation between Matt and Mello. They were full of them, and most escalated into meaningful discussions about things that the blonde would never dream about divulging.
"Yes, well, if I didn't keep it up, they would have kicked me out and that wouldn't be good, would it?" Matt commented, a faint smile tugging on his lips, but he didn't yield to it. Of course, keeping appearances didn't explain why he still was bright nowadays, but it wasn't like intelligence was something that would go away. But touché: Mello did have him on the whole habits thing.
"Geeze, your metabolism must work like a fast mother fucker," he remarked after a second's worth of thinking. "You're thin as a rail." Maybe that was because Mello didn't seem to eat too much else..? Hell, that reminded him, he'd have to get some take out tomorrow or something, he was damned starving.
Mello merely nodded to this first, though he hadn't really digested any of it. It was a thing of selective hearing.
"I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing," he said off-handedly, gaze flicking to the near unconscious figure on the couch back to the waning chocolate in his hand. He had always gotten his exercise in the past, he supposed, but that didn't account for why he still retained his physique even when he didn't do much but sit around and work away on Matt's laptops. Maybe it was those not-so-frequent walks he took around the block. Doubtful.
"Mmn, you should eat more. I worry about you sometimes," the red-head muttered, admitting to that Mello's unhealthy habits did concern him. As far as he knew, Mello was damn malnourished and that wasn't exactly the best condition to run around trying to catch a mass murderer in, was it? Somehow, though, the blonde seemed to manage, and that was beyond Matt... He shifted uncomfortably on the couch, screwing his expression momentarily. "You're going to die early," he concluded finally, as though this accounted for everything.
"That's nice to know," Mello said, his tone rather amused. "Because I live to be told I'm going to die soon." He didn't seem like he cared, with all he had at stake, and how he seemed to throw his life away at every chance he could. He did care, though, in some sort of cosmic way. Dying seemed like a waste, and it was for people other than him. Everyone else seemed mortal except him, even though he was expecting death everyday. His own ideations conflicted with each other, not that he dwelled to long on them.
Matt hummed something of a response, seeming to be uninterested in keeping up the rest of the conversation. His head felt as heavy as fuck, and though he was pretty precariously positioned on the couch, he was falling asleep pretty quickly. Within the next few minutes, Mello was left alone in the realm of the waking, for the gamer lying in the room with him was long gone.
Mello listened to silence for awhile, eventually accepting that Matt had fallen asleep. He polished off the rest of his chocolate sadly and discarded the wrappers, taking everything out of the grocery bag to put stuff last-minute into the suitcase. Once he was done with all of this, the blonde shot another look to Matt, and was immediately envious. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep for days following this point, mostly out of worry, and partially out of the racing thoughts that were bound to occupy his mind until the plane trip went by successfully.