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The day before Takada’s abduction, Matt drove past the turn Mello had told him to take.
“You missed it.”
“I know.”
“The safe house is the other way.”
“Temporary detour.”
“We don’t have time for detours.”
Matt kept both hands on the wheel. “We have twenty-six minutes before the next check-in. I timed it.”
Mello looked at the road, then at Matt. “You timed disobedience.”
“Efficiently.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
The look on Mello’s face would have made most people fix the mistake immediately. Matt kept driving.
“Matt.”
“Ten minutes.”
“No.”
“Then eight.”
“I didn’t agree to ten.”
“Seven, if you stop arguing.”
Mello’s hand moved toward the gun inside his coat. It was not quite a threat. Not quite habit either.
Matt glanced at him. “If you shoot me, you’ll have to drive back.”
“I can drive.”
“You hate this van.”
“I hate you more.”
“No, you don’t.”
Mello said nothing after that. He did hate the van. It had a poor suspension, weak heating, and a cigarette burn on the passenger seat that Matt had caused four hours after they bought it.
Matt drove to the coast and parked beside a closed convenience stand. The signs in the window were faded. One vending machine hummed behind them, its light flickering over the pavement. Beyond the low wall, the beach stretched out, empty and dark.
Matt turned off the engine.
Mello stayed in his seat. “We have work.”
“Seven minutes.”
“You said ten.”
“You spent three of them threatening me.”
Matt got out before Mello could answer.
For a moment, Mello considered staying in the van. The laptop was on the floor between his boots. Takada’s route was waiting. Near was somewhere ahead of him, patient and infuriating. Kira was alive.
The beach was empty. It was January. The sand was dark with old water, and trash had collected near the seawall. Far behind them, the city lights were coming on.
Matt walked, hands in his jacket pockets, boots sinking into cold sand, shoulders hunched, goggles pushed up into his hair. He looked too alone from behind.
Mello opened the door and followed. The cold hit the scarred side of his face first. He hated that.
He joined Matt by the water, a scowl on his face. The air was cold enough that he felt it in his fingers after less than a minute.
“You know,” Matt said, “for someone who acts like he hates the ocean, you’re doing a pretty convincing impression of a guy looking at it.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s your excuse for everything.”
“It works for everything.”
Matt turned around and began walking backwards. The wind caught his hair, throwing it into his eyes. “Thinking about Kira?”
“No. I came all the way out here to think about dolphins.”
“Finally. Character growth.”
Mello broke off a square of chocolate and let it melt bitterly on his tongue. He had been thinking about Kira. He had also been thinking about Near, which was worse.
Near in his white room, Near with his toys and his soft voice and his exasperating patience. Near, who could afford to wait because people like Mello had always been expected to burn first.
Mello looked away from the water.
Matt had stopped walking backwards. He stood where the wet sand darkened under his boots, facing the horizon.
“What are you really doing here?” Mello asked.
Matt glanced back. “At the beach?”
“With me.”
The question came out sharper than he meant it to. Most things did. Mello hated that, hated more that Matt never seemed surprised by it.
Matt shrugged. “Currently? Freezing.”
“Matt.”
The name slipped between them and landed softly, recalibrating the question.
Matt turned fully. The wind tugged smoke from the cigarette still hanging from his mouth.
“I’m here because you are,” he said.
Mello scoffed. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
The sun lowered another fraction. Shadows stretched long and thin across the sand until Matt’s almost touched Mello’s boots.
Mello looked down at it.
There were questions that had kept him awake since Wammy’s House. Questions with Near’s face, L’s letter, Roger’s voice, Kira’s silence. Questions about justice and victory and whether a person could carve meaning into the world hard enough that it stayed after he was gone.
And lately, questions with Matt’s presence in them.
Matt passing him a lighter without looking.
Matt sleeping badly on the couch, goggles still on, as if dreams were something he needed protection from.
Matt saying, “You eating today?” like it was casual, like it didn’t matter whether the answer was yes.
Matt following him into every stupid, dangerous, half-made plan as if loyalty were not a virtue but a reflex.
Mello had no idea what to do with that. So he did what he always did with things he couldn’t solve. He attacked.
“You shouldn’t be.”
Matt blinked. “Shouldn’t be what?”
“Here.” The word cracked harder than intended.
Matt’s expression did not change, but something behind it stilled.
Mello hated that too.
“You’ve made that speech before,” Matt said lightly. “Several times, actually. I think I have the achievement unlocked.”
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah. That’s usually when you’re most unbearable.”
“Matt.”
“What?” Matt’s voice sharpened. “You want me to agree? Fine. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have left England. I shouldn’t have hacked whatever you asked me to hack, followed whatever lead you chased, sat in whatever freezing car you picked for surveillance because apparently heating is for people with weak moral character.”
Mello’s jaw tightened. Matt stepped closer.
“And you shouldn’t have run off after L died. You shouldn’t have joined the mafia. You shouldn’t have gotten yourself half-blown up. You shouldn’t be standing here acting like the smartest thing either of us could do is abandon the only person who actually knows what this is.”
The waves swashed. Mello said nothing.
Matt looked away first, but not because he was beaten. Matt never looked beaten. Tired, yes. Irritated, constantly. But never beaten.
He took the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it in the sand.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said.
Mello laughed harshly. “Do you?”
“Yeah.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re trying to make peace with things by making sure you don’t have anything left to lose.”
Mello’s hand closed around the chocolate bar until the foil crumpled.
Matt’s eyes were hidden behind orange glass again, reflecting the dying sky. “It’s a bad strategy.”
“You have a better one?”
“I’m trying to ask whether you’ve left any room in your head for surviving.”
“You dragged me here for that?”
“Yeah.”
“You could’ve asked in the van.”
“No. You would’ve opened the laptop.”
“Shut up.”
“Also a bad strategy.”
“Surviving is not the goal,” Mello said.
Matt nodded. “I know.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because I’m here too.”
Mello turned toward the ocean. He wanted to walk until the water swallowed him.
Instead, Matt came to stand beside him. For a while, they said nothing.
It should have been uncomfortable. Silence usually was, for Mello, unless he controlled it. But Matt had a talent for filling space without noise. He stood close enough that their sleeves brushed when the wind shifted, and somehow that was worse than any confession.
Mello broke first. “What if there’s nothing after?”
Matt tilted his head. “After Kira?”
“After anything.”
Matt was quiet. Mello regretted it immediately.
“Then I guess we stop worrying about our permanent records,” Matt said.
Mello huffed. “Idiot.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Matt sat first, close enough to the water to hear it but far enough back that the tide would not reach them. Mello stood beside him, annoyed by the cold, the sand, the interruption, and the fact that Matt had known he would follow.
Matt patted the space next to him. Mello didn’t move.
Matt lowered his hand. “Fine.”
Mello sat.
They faced the water in silence. Mello kept one knee drawn up, forearm resting on it. Matt stretched his legs out and leaned back on his hands.
Mello took out another bar of chocolate and broke off a piece. The wrapper was loud in the quiet.
The water moved in and out. Cars passed on the coastal road behind them every few minutes. After a while, Mello reached beneath his shirt and pulled out his rosary. The cross rested in his palm, dull in the low light. Matt looked at it, then looked away.
Mello turned it over with his thumb. “Do you think God watches over people?”
Matt did not answer right away.
Mello’s mouth tightened. “Forget it.”
“No.” Matt sat forward. “I’m thinking.”
Mello sighed dramatically.
“Be nice. This is a serious beach question.”
Mello stared at the water. “Answer.”
Matt took a cigarette from his pocket, held it between two fingers, and lit it.
“Watches over,” he said, “or just watches?”
Mello’s hand closed around the cross.
Matt nodded. “Yeah. That’s where it gets bad.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I don’t know. I never liked the idea much.”
“Of God?”
“Of someone watching and not helping.”
Mello looked down.
Matt went on. “At Wammy’s, everyone talked about legacy, destiny, succession. Clean words. Adult words. They made it sound less ugly.”
“L was alive then.”
“Maybe L is sitting somewhere with a notebook full of complaints about how badly everyone’s handled his legacy.”
Mello’s mouth twitched.
Matt looked out at the water. “But I don’t think an answer changes much.”
“Of course it does.”
“Does it?”
Mello turned to him.
Matt shrugged again, but this time it was smaller. “If someone’s watching, we still did what we did. If no one is, we still did what we did. We still have to live in the middle part.”
“The middle part.”
“Yeah. Before the credits.”
Mello stared at him.
“What?” Matt asked.
“Only you would compare mortality to a game.”
“Everything is a game. Some of them just have terrible save systems.”
The laugh came out before Mello could stop it. It startled both of them.
Matt grinned, pleased with himself in a way that made Mello want to shove him into the sea.
So he did. Or tried to. He stood up and seized Matt’s arm, pulling him up and towards the water.
Matt caught his wrist before Mello could get a good angle, and suddenly they were grappling like they were fifteen again, like Wammy’s House had a beach and not a damp garden and locked doors and expectations turning children into chess pieces.
Matt slipped on the wet sand first, dragging Mello with him. They hit the ground hard.
Cold soaked instantly through Mello’s trousers. “For God’s sake,” he snapped.
Matt was laughing, breathless and bright, one hand still around Mello’s wrist.
The sound did something terrible inside Mello’s chest. It made him think of time. Not the strategic kind; not schedules, windows, police rotations, Takada’s broadcasts, Kira’s patterns. Real time.
The kind that passed whether or not you were ready. The kind that had taken L, that had put scar tissue over half of Mello’s face and smoke into Matt’s lungs and had Near somewhere far ahead, still waiting.
The kind that, tomorrow, would probably stop.
Matt’s laughter faded when he saw Mello’s face. “What?”
Mello looked at him lying there on the sand, ridiculous goggles crooked, hair full of salt wind, mouth slightly open. He had the sudden, violent thought that there would never be enough of this.
Not enough evenings, not enough cigarettes stolen from Matt’s mouth just to annoy him, not enough arguments. Not enough motel rooms, bad coffee, hacked feeds, engine noise, chocolate wrappers. Not enough of Matt’s laughter.
Mello had spent his entire life trying to become something impossible to ignore. He had not considered that he might also be someone impossible to keep.
“Mel?”
Mello leaned down and kissed him.
Matt made a surprised noise against his mouth, and the sand was wet beneath Mello’s hand. It should have been ridiculous. Maybe it was.
Matt went still for one second. Then his fingers tightened around Mello’s wrist.
The kiss changed. It became less a collision and more a question neither of them knew how to ask aloud.
Mello pulled back first. Matt stared up at him. The ocean dragged another wave over the shore, erasing the prints around them.
“Well,” Matt said finally. “That’s new.”
Mello’s face burned. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say I objected.”
“I said shut up.”
Matt smiled, but it was softer than his usual grin, and that was dangerous. Mello could defend against mockery. He had armour for sarcasm. He had no defence at all against tenderness.
Matt reached up and brushed damp sand from the edge of Mello’s coat.
“You okay?” he asked.
The question was unbearable.
“No.”
Matt’s hand paused.
Mello looked at the place where Matt’s collar had folded wrong. “No, I’m not.”
“Yeah,” Matt said quietly. “Me neither.”
Mello rolled on the side and sat back, unable to look at Matt. He pulled his rosary out again, the cross resting in his palm, still warm from hanging against his chest.
Matt straightened and picked up a handful of sand, then let it fall through his fingers. “If God was watching Wammy’s, I don’t know what He thought He was doing.”
“Careful.”
“You asked.”
“I asked whether He watches over people.”
“Maybe He watches some people,” Matt said. “Maybe He misses others.”
Mello laughed bitterly. “That’s worse.”
“Yeah.”
The answer lingered between them.
Mello stared at the cross in his hand. He had carried it through Wammy’s House, through Los Angeles, through the explosion, through every room where he had woken up.
“I used to pray,” he said.
Matt kept silent.
“After tests. Before rankings. After L chose Near.” Mello’s voice stayed flat. “I didn’t think it would change anything.”
“Then why?”
Mello’s fingers tightened around the rosary.
“I wanted someone to know it hurt.”
Mello regretted it immediately. The words had left him too simply. There was no anger in them, no performance, nothing he could use to take them back.
“I know,” Matt said.
“No, you don’t.”
“I know some of it.” Matt rubbed both hands over his face. Without the goggles covering his eyes, he looked tired. “I watched you after L died.”
Mello went still.
“I watched you pack,” Matt said. “I watched you leave. Everyone else acted as though you had made a choice and that was the end of it.”
“Stop.”
“I tried to follow you.”
Mello stared at him.
Matt looked embarrassed now. Not ashamed. Embarrassed, which was worse, because it meant the truth mattered to him.
“I didn’t get far,” he said. “I was fifteen and furious and had no real plan. Roger caught me before I got out.”
Mello could not speak.
“He said you had chosen your path.” Matt’s mouth tightened around the sentence. “I hated him for that,” he said. “Not because it was wrong. Because it made it sound finished.”
Mello’s grip on the rosary hurt. “You never told me.”
“When was I supposed to?”
Mello had no answer. There had never been a right time. Not after Matt came back into his life, not in any apartment, not in any stolen car, not over hacked feeds and weapons checks and takeout boxes. They had lived side by side for months, with their past carefully placed out of reach.
Matt looked at the water again. “If God was watching over you, He was late.”
Mello stood. Matt did not move.
“I’m not insulting your faith.”
“I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m saying I wish someone had stopped you before you learned how to disappear into whatever hurt most.”
Mello’s throat closed. He wanted to hit him. He wanted to leave. He wanted Matt to take it back, because if Matt took it back, Mello could pretend he had never heard it.
Matt rose slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“You always say that after you cut too deep.”
“I know.”
“Then stop cutting.”
“I’m trying to reach you.”
Mello looked at him then.
Matt’s expression held no strategy. That made it harder to fight.
“Why?” Mello asked.
Matt’s answer came quietly.
“Because I’m scared you’re going somewhere I can’t follow.”
Mello looked away.
Matt stepped closer. “Not physically. I’ll follow you there. I already know I will.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I know.”
“You could leave.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Matt did not hesitate.
“Because you’d be alone.”
Mello’s face changed before he could stop it.
“I know you hate that answer,” he said.
“Then why say it?”
“Because it’s the real one.”
Mello turned back toward the water, then finally sat back.
If God existed, He had watched L die. He had watched Kira become untouchable. He had watched Near wait and Mello burn and Matt witness all of that and decide to place his life between Mello’s hands anyway.
If God did not exist, then all of it rested on human memory. That was worse.
Mello wanted a better answer. He wanted a court beyond death. He wanted L to know. He wanted every child at Wammy’s remembered correctly. He wanted Matt’s loyalty recorded as something other than usefulness. He wanted his own rage understood as grief before anyone called it pride.
Mello snapped another piece of chocolate and, after a pause, broke it in half.
Matt stared at the offered piece.
“Don’t make it weird,” Mello said.
Matt grinned and took the chocolate. Their fingers touched for half a second too long.
Mello watched Matt eat the chocolate. “What if we started again?” he asked.
Matt sat and glanced over. “In what sense?”
“In any sense.”
Matt considered this with appropriate seriousness. “I’d pick a better username.”
“I’m serious.”
“Stop being serious at me when you say things like that.”
Mello looked away. “Forget it.”
“No.” Matt nudged him with his shoulder. “I just mean… what counts as starting again for people like us?”
People like us. Us.
Mello closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”
It cost him something to say it. Matt seemed to understand that, because he did not joke.
After a while, he said, “Maybe this counts.”
Mello opened his eyes. “This?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“This is sitting on a freezing beach waiting to get pneumonia.”
“Starting again doesn’t have to be impressive.”
Mello scoffed.
Matt leaned back on his hands and looked up at the darkening sky. “Maybe it’s just deciding something is true for as long as you have it.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Probably.”
“That’s not enough.”
Matt looked at him. “Isn’t it?”
Mello did not answer.
Because no, it wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t enough. Enough would be justice. Enough would be Kira dead, Near watching, the world forced to admit that Mello had done what no one else could. Enough would be time.
But Matt’s shoulder was warm against his. And for one suspended moment, Mello wondered if enough was not a quantity. Maybe it was a decision. Maybe forever was just what cowards demanded when they were afraid to value something temporary.
Maybe a moment could be infinite if you were stupid enough to call it yours.
He hated the thought. He leaned his head against Matt’s shoulder anyway.
Matt went very still.
“Mention this,” Mello said, “and I’ll kill you.”
“Obviously.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Matt did not move. Then, cautiously, as if approaching a stray animal, he rested his cheek against Mello’s hair.
The tide came in.
“We should leave.”
Matt didn’t question it, didn’t fight it. He watched Mello stand up and dusted the sand off himself as he followed. Mello stopped right by the low wall circling the beach and turned around. He gripped Matt’s jacket, unmoving in front of him.
Matt had pushed his goggles up. His eyes were red from cold and smoke, and maybe not only that. He gently took Mello’s wrist and held it against his chest.
“I’m not asking you to become someone else tonight,” Matt said. “I’m asking you to admit this exists.”
Mello’s grip on his jacket tightened.
“This exists,” Mello said.
Matt breathed out. His expression broke for less than a second, but Mello saw it.
“That’s enough?” Mello asked.
“No.” Matt’s hand moved from Mello’s wrist to his fingers. “But I’ll take it.”
The cruelty of that nearly made Mello step back. Instead, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against Matt’s.
They stood that way until the sun was gone. Their twenty-six minutes became forty-three. Matt did not mention the time. Mello did not either.
Mello’s mouth opened as he shifted. Nothing came.
Matt lowered his eyes. “I know what happens next.”
“You don’t.”
“I know enough. I know you’re building toward something you won’t name. I know when you start treating survival as optional.”
Mello’s face went blank. Matt saw that too late.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.”
Matt looked away. Mello stayed silent, every word threatening to break him once spoken.
Matt reached for him. “Mel?”
“Don’t go.” Mello heard himself too late.
Matt’s hand stopped. His face changed. “What?”
“Forget it.”
“No.”
“Matt.”
“Say it again.”
Mello looked at him with anger in his eyes and grief beneath it.
“When it happens,” he said, each word pulled out of him, “when I tell you what to do, don’t go.”
Matt’s grip weakened.
Mello gave a broken laugh. It sounded wrong. “There. Proof. I’m selfish.”
“No.”
“I’ll ask anyway.”
“I know.”
“I’ll let you.”
“I know.”
“And if you die, it will be because I chose something that needed you in the line of fire.”
Matt’s voice dropped. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth.”
“It hasn’t happened.”
“It will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know how things end for people near me.”
Matt looked at him for a long moment. Then he said, “You didn’t kill L.”
Mello’s grip faltered.
“You didn’t make Kira. You didn’t build Wammy’s. You didn’t put me in that house, and you didn’t make me care about you.” Matt’s voice shook. “My choices are mine. Don’t take them from me because guilt is easier for you than being loved.”
Loved. The word stayed there.
Matt looked as though he wished he had saved it, hidden it, dressed it up as a joke.
Mello let go of his jacket. “Take me back,” he said.
Matt nodded. “To the motel?”
“Yes.”
They walked to the van without touching. At the passenger door, Mello stopped. Matt unlocked it.
Mello looked at the handle, then at Matt. “If God is watching,” he said, voice low, “I hope He looks away tonight.”
Matt’s face tightened with pain. “I don’t,” he said.
Mello frowned.
Matt opened the door. “I want someone to know you were loved.”
Mello got into the van before Matt could see his face.
The motel room was too warm.
Mello entered first, set his gun on the table, then placed his rosary beside it. The cross lay next to the weapon. Matt looked at both and said nothing.
Mello noticed anyway. “What?”
“You took it off.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
Mello glanced at the table. “I don’t want to hide behind it.”
Matt absorbed that silently.
Mello turned toward him. “And I don’t want to feel watched.”
“I can leave.”
“No.”
The answer came out too fast. Mello’s jaw tightened.
Matt stayed near the door. “Tell me what you want.”
Mello looked down at his own hands. There was a cut across one knuckle. He did not remember getting it.
“I don’t want to think.”
Matt’s face closed slightly.
Mello saw and corrected himself with visible effort. “No. That isn’t true.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to be alone in my head.”
Matt crossed the room. He stopped close enough to touch him. “You aren’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can for tonight.”
Mello looked at him. “I want you. I want the rest to disappear so there’s just you. Us.”
Matt lifted one hand slowly. Mello let him touch the scarred side of his face. His palm rested there without hesitation.
Mello shut his eyes. “I hate that you can do that,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I hate that I want you to.”
“I know that too.”
Mello opened his eyes. “Don’t be kind to me because you think we’re going to die.”
Matt’s face changed. “I’m kind to you because I love you,” he said.
No joke. No cover. Matt looked terrified, but he did not take it back.
Mello stepped forward and kissed him, soft, hesitant.
“Don’t do that,” Matt said.
Mello’s face burned. “Do what?”
“Disappear while you’re touching me.”
Mello stepped away.
Matt’s voice softened. “Stay here.”
“I am here.”
“No. You’re already tomorrow.”
Mello looked at him. Matt waited in front of him.
Mello lowered his hand. “I don’t know how,” he said.
Matt nodded. “Then start with the next ten minutes.”
Mello laughed sadly. “You and your ten minutes.”
“It’s a manageable unit.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Consistently.”
Mello looked at him for a long time.
The first minutes were unsteady. Mello’s hands shook while he pushed Matt’s jacket off his shoulders. Matt caught his hands and kissed his knuckles, including the cut one.
Mello froze.
“Too much?”
Mello looked away. “No.”
Matt waited.
“Don’t stop,” Mello said.
They undressed slowly. Coats on the floor. Boots near the bed. Weapons within reach because neither of them knew how to become people who didn’t need them. Mello’s rosary stayed on the table under the motel lamp.
Matt removed his goggles and set them beside the alarm clock. Mello stared at him, then looked away.
Matt touched his hand. “Mel.”
Mello shook his head. “I’m here.”
“I know.”
“No.” Mello looked back. “I’m telling you. I’m here.”
Matt’s face broke open for a moment. He covered it by leaning in.
They made love with the lamp still on, on a bed that creaked too loudly, under a blanket too thin to keep out the cold. They had to stop once because Mello went rigid and angry with himself. Matt pulled back immediately. Mello caught him before he could move away.
“Don’t leave.”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t know how to be touched without waiting for it to cost something.”
Matt rested his forehead against Mello’s shoulder. “Then let it be free this once.”
“Nothing is free.”
“This is.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I’m deciding.”
Mello stared at him.
Matt’s voice was low. “Let me give you one thing that doesn’t ask anything back.”
That was when Mello broke. He turned his face away, but it was too late. His breath caught, his body shook, tears slipped free despite every part of him that fought them.
Matt did not tell him it was all right. It was not. He held him from behind, one arm across his chest, lips pressed to his shoulder. Mello gripped Matt’s arm and did not let go.
Afterwards, they lay under the thin blanket. The room was quiet except for the heater and the occasional sound of a car outside.
Matt was on his back. Mello rested against his side, one arm across Matt’s ribs. He had not meant to stay there. He had meant to move away once his breathing settled. He did not move.
Matt’s fingers traced idle lines over his shoulder. Contact. Mello stared at the wall.
“Do you think that counts as sin?” Matt asked.
Mello turned his head. “Now you care?”
“No. I’m checking whether I should feel accomplished.”
Mello punched his side.
“Ow.”
“Good.”
Matt smiled at the ceiling. Mello settled again.
After a while, Matt said, “Do you feel watched?”
Mello considered the question.
The room contained evidence of their life together. Burners. Wires. A half-empty pack of cigarettes. Chocolate wrappers. Guns. Two coats on the floor. A map with Takada’s route marked in Mello’s handwriting. Matt’s goggles on the nightstand.
He thought of God looking down at all of it. Not only the sex. The fear. The pride. The violence. The devotion neither of them had been brave enough to name until the end had come close.
“I don’t know,” Mello said.
Matt kissed the top of his head. “Okay.”
Mello’s hand tightened over Matt’s chest. “If He is, I don’t want forgiveness for this.”
Matt went quiet.
“For other things, maybe,” Mello said. “Not this.”
Matt’s fingers stopped moving.
Mello forced himself to continue. “I don’t want this treated as something dirty just because it happened before everything goes wrong.”
“It isn’t dirty.”
“I know.”
The words surprised him.
Matt looked down at him. “Yeah?”
Mello nodded.
Matt’s voice lowered. “Then what is it?”
Mello could have given several answers that were easier. A mistake. A distraction. A bad idea. A human weakness. A thing they would not discuss once daylight returned.
He was tired of easier answers. “It’s mine,” he said.
Matt’s breath caught.
Mello corrected himself. “Ours.”
Matt held him closer.
Mello closed his eyes. “Don’t say anything.”
“I won’t.”
“Ever.”
“Okay.”
Matt kept his promise for almost a minute.
Then he said, “I love you.”
Mello’s eyes opened. Matt did not apologise. He looked scared, but he did not take it back.
Mello’s hand flattened over his chest. Matt’s heartbeat was fast beneath his palm.
There were things Mello could face directly. Guns. Fire. Near’s contempt. Kira’s shadow over the world. This was a lot harder.
“Say it again,” Mello said.
Matt’s mouth trembled. “I love you.”
Mello closed his eyes.
Matt touched his cheek. “You don’t have to—”
“I love you,” Mello said.
Matt stopped breathing for a second.
Mello opened his eyes. “I don’t know how to carry it. I don’t know where to put it. I don’t know what it changes.”
“It changes tonight.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“No.”
Mello moved closer until his lips rested on Matt’s pulse. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Everything I’m still going to do.”
Matt shut his eyes.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Then Matt said, “Ask me again.”
Mello’s chest tightened.
“No.”
“Please.”
“That’s cruel.”
“I know.”
Mello’s hand gripped Matt’s shoulder.
“Don’t go,” he said.
Matt’s eyes opened.
“Don’t go when I ask you to. Don’t follow the plan. Don’t get in the car. Don’t die because I couldn’t find another way.”
Matt touched the side of his face. “I can’t promise that.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know that too.”
Matt kissed him. “I love you.”
Mello held him too tightly.
They slept very little.
Close to morning, Mello reached for the rosary on the table and put it back on. Matt watched him in silence.
Mello lay down again and placed the cross between their bodies.
“I thought you didn’t want to feel watched,” Matt said.
Mello touched the chain.
“I changed my mind.”
Matt waited.
“If there’s a record,” Mello said, “I want this in it.”
Matt turned his face into the pillow before Mello could see too much.
Mello saw anyway.
In the morning, everything returned.
Mello woke first. He dressed without turning on the light. Matt watched from the bed, silent.
The tenderness of the night before had nowhere to go in daylight. It stayed in small things. Mello leaving the last piece of chocolate on the nightstand. Matt placing his goggles over his eyes before Mello could see too much. Both of them checking weapons with hands that remembered each other.
At the door, Matt said, “Mel.”
Mello stopped.
Matt held up the chocolate. “You forgot this.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Matt looked at it, then at him.
Mello opened the door. “Eat it after.”
The word ‘after’ hung.
Matt carried the chocolate with him all day. He did not eat it in the car. He did not eat it while the police cars closed in. He thought about it when the road ended and the guns rose.
For a second, he almost laughed. Mello had given him something for after.
Matt stepped out with his hands raised.
The chocolate was still in his pocket when he died.
Mello never found out.
He knew Matt was dead. That was all the world gave him. He got no last words, no returned body, no pocket inventory, no report that mattered.
He drove with Takada in the truck and felt the news carve through him.
God watched, or did not. Mello no longer knew which answer was crueller.
He kept one hand on the wheel. The other touched the rosary beneath his clothes. The cross had rested against Matt’s chest the night before. For a moment, Mello could swear he felt the warmth of him there.
I love you too.
He had said it.
Thank God, he had said it.
The thought broke something. Not enough to stop him. Nothing ever stopped him when it should have.
Later, near the end, when heat and smoke and pain made the world narrow, Mello understood what he wanted.
It wasn’t victory, nor Near’s defeat. Not even forgiveness.
He wanted the motel room back.
He wanted Matt alive in the dim light, asking questions he pretended were jokes. He wanted to be held without earning it. He wanted one ordinary morning where after meant breakfast, not death.
His hand found the rosary again.
If God was watching, Mello had no final argument prepared. There would be no defence or polished accusation, not even a claim of innocence.
Only one request came to him, and he hated that it came too late.
Let him know I meant it.
There was no answer.
Mello died anyway.
Somewhere behind them, beyond the case files and the police reports and the names people remembered, there had been a beach, a motel room, and a night where two doomed boys stopped pretending they were only useful. No one wrote it down. No one needed to.
For one night, Mello had believed someone was watching with love instead of judgment.
For one night, that had been enough.