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At a carousel inside terminal eight of JFK International Airport, while Mello is standing there waiting for his luggage to tumble down the chute and be paraded past him on a sluggish mechanical belt with a hundred stranger’s bags, a hand closes around the right sleeve of his jacket.
He hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Startled, he looks over his shoulder.
At first, he is unable to make any sense of what he’s seeing. The person beside him is the very last on earth he would have expected, and because of this, it takes a long time— ten seconds, maybe— for him to successfully identify his assailant as Near.
“What the fuck,” Mello blurts, turning on his heel so that they’re facing one another.
“I thought that was you,” Near says, continuing to grasp the jacket.
“What are you doing here?” Mello demands. He sounds more panicky than he wants to, but really, it’s a fucking shock. There has not been a day since he left Wammy’s that Near didn’t cross his mind— didn’t inhabit it, burrowed into the folds of his brain like a parasite— but he never imagined he would see Near in the flesh again so soon. That he would run into him like this, somewhere foreign and crowded, when he wasn’t at all ready for it.
“Nothing I can freely discuss in public,” Near says drily. “I imagine the same is true for you.”
Mello breathes out quick through his nose, an almost-laugh despite himself. Near is right, as usual; he’s in town to negotiate with some allies Rod has in New York. They’ve got a surplus of military-grade weaponry, more than they can use, and this gang has a surplus of cash. If Mello can strike a deal— and he can, he always does— they’ll be richer than ever before.
“Good guess,” he says.
“It wasn’t a guess,” Near tells him. He still has not released Mello’s sleeve. Mello decides to focus on this instead of Near’s intense manner.
“Do you mind?” He says pointedly, gesturing to Near’s hand.
After a moment of hesitation, the younger boy drops it.
“My apologies,” Near says. “I thought you might flee when you saw me.”
“Ha,” says Mello. “Yeah, you’re real scary, all— what, five feet of you?”
Near smiles, clearly unoffended and surprisingly genuine. “Approximately. I am one-hundred and fifty-five centimeters in height.”
Mello does the conversion in his head. 155 divided by 2.54 is roughly 61.024 inches; Near is 5 feet and 1.024 inches tall.
Knowing this information with some precision both satisfies and unsettles him. He clears his throat.
“Well,” he says, “I’m sure you’re busy.”
“Not really,” Near says, either missing or ignoring the cue. “I’m glad to see you.”
This strikes Mello as such a bizarre thing to say that he is shocked into nodding and replying: “You, too.”
“Do you have an email address?” Near asks politely.
“I’m not working with you,” Mello snaps.
A nod. “I know. I think it could be useful for us to establish a manner in which to correspond, anyway.”
Mello narrows his eyes, skeptical.
“You can always ignore my correspondence if you don’t wish to reply,” Near adds helpfully.
“No,” Mello says. “You give me your email. If I ever feel like it, I’ll reach out.”
Near nods like this is wise and just. “Do you have a pen?”
From his jacket pocket, Mello produces a Sharpie and a sheet of notebook paper. Near holds both, seemingly at a loss for a writing surface, and then tries to flatten the paper against Mello’s chest.
“No way,” Mello says, shaking him off. “You’ll get ink on it.”
“I don’t have anything to write on,” Near protests. Pouts.
Exasperated, Mello rolls his eyes and shrugs off his jacket. Hypothetically, he could give Near his whole pocket-size notebook, but he doesn’t like the idea of having it lie in someone else’s hands, even for the briefest time. There’s too much information inside it that must remain his alone.
He rolls up his right sleeve, draping his jacket over his left forearm. He wiggles his elbow, signaling for Near to use his upper arm as a writing surface.
Hesitant now, Near carefully flattens the paper against the contours of Mello’s arm and begins to write. The world goes quiet except for the sound of Near’s breathing and the rasp of marker over paper.
“There,” Near says, stepping back. “Oh. It bled through.”
Mello extends his shoulder, looking down at his bicep. There are faint splotches of black ink on his skin. The stains will probably last a few days unless Mello scrubs them out with acetone. Even then, a faint shadow would still be visible through tomorrow, at the least.
“That’s why I didn’t want you writing on the leather,” he tells Near.
Near tucks the paper, folded in half, into Mello’s hand. He returns the Sharpie. After Mello has put these things in his pocket, they stand there in silence. Near is the one to break it.
“I have your CD player,” he says. “You left it behind.”
This declaration— the way it is phrased, the way Near forms the words— makes Mello ache, abruptly and brutally. He has not cried in two years, but finds himself wanting to, now.
“Oh,” is all he can manage to say.
“I can give it to you, if you want it back,” Near tells him. “I used it to listen to music on my flight.”
“What,” Mello says, “are you into Black Sabbath, now?”
Near shakes his head. “I listened to Tchaikovsky.” A pause. “Do you want me to return it to you?”
Mello’s throat hurts. His mouth feels dry. He mimics Near’s movement, shaking his head. The movement of hair around his ears feels strange. This moment should feel surreal, but instead it feels inescapably vivid. Mello has never been so aware of his proximity to another person as he is right now, not even during sex.
He pictures Near putting on the headphones he left behind, and twirling the cord. It feels right that Near should wear them. That their heads should be held by the same device, and that Near’s fingers should trace the buttons Mello’s wore shiny-smooth years back. The idea of accepting it back repulses him.
“Keep it,” he says, hoarse. “I have something else.”
A slight dip of Near’s head indicates that he accepts this. The index finger of his right hand works a lock of hair at his temple. His eyes begin to flicker over Mello’s face in quick, precise movements, like he’s taking a scan of Mello’s features and saving them for later reference.
Mello finds himself doing the same— memorizing Near’s features, committing them to memory. He wants a perfect copy, an exact preservation. Their paths are about to diverge again. It’s impossible to know how many months will pass before their next reunion.
“It was good to see you,” Near says.
Then he reaches for Mello. His hand drifts from his hair across the space between them, like Near means to touch him. It’s something that hasn’t happened since they were very small. Mello cannot decide whether he wants to lean in or jerk away, and remains completely frozen.
Ten centimeters from his face, Near’s hand stalls. Stills. The younger boy looks alarmed, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He withdraws his hand quickly and looks at the ground. Mello feels an ugly, gutting disappointment.
The emotion is nonsensical. He has gone through hell to break free of Near, to stand on his own. This knowledge does not soothe him at all. His lips are moving, vocal cords vibrating against one another, before he can think better of it.
“It was good to see you, too,” Mello says.
He sounds like he means it; maybe he does.
Near lifts his face to give Mello a fleeting smile. Then, without another word, he turns and begins to walk away.
Mello watches as Near grows smaller. He wants to watch Near walk so far that he becomes nothing more than a speck, and then watch him grow larger and larger again until he is the right size. The airport is crowded, though, and likely not large enough for this. It belatedly occurs to Mello— probably incorrectly, maybe insanely— that he and Near are the only two people in the building who know one another.
He slips his jacket back on. Inside the right-hand pocket, he traces the edge of the paper with Near’s email address. Later, in the mirror, he will study the ink markings left on his skin by Near’s hurried scrawl. For now, his eyes burn as he follows the shrinking head of white hair on its path into the distance, into the future.
A split-second later, Near disappears behind a man in a large red jacket, dissolving into a crowd of strangers. Behind Mello, the buzzer sounds on the luggage carousel, and the belt begins to move.