The door's almost closed when Matt sticks a booted foot into the winnowing shard of light and jams it, the stab of victory only feeding his anger when he sees Near's knuckles whiten.

So he kicks it open when the fingers leave and he's satisfied with any bruises Near's going to get, though neither say a word; Near stands and holds his forearm and pinches his lips together and Matt takes a final drag of his cigarette before crushing it on Near's carpet. He'd have to bring Mello home to squalor while Near could buy someone to wipe his mouth for him after every bite.

"He doesn't want it from me," Near says before Matt can attack, and goes to the door again.

Matt kicks it shut. "Wammy accounts are the safest in the world."

"It would be a waste," Near whispers.

Matt's about to kill him but Near's security arrives and escorts him bodily from the hotel, ignoring the Buel and shoving him into a taxi and the taller one with blood on his sleeve snidely barks out Matt's exact address.

Matt's too empty to do more than pluck at the cracked pleather.

He draws out money for milk on a day when the sky seems more azure if only for the nip in the air and there's five hundred grand sitting cozy in the account, printed out in cheap dot matrix on the receipt.

Matt shoves the slip into his pocket and goes from there to the hospital.

Matt almost, almost kicks the door closed again when Near shows up alone and petrified nigh of only two in the afternoon and the snow that's clung to his boots has already melted in the sweltering hall.

"I got you a room," he says almost before Matt's face appears, and holds out a card key. "Penthouse," he says even more quickly, edging to leave, and halts. Matt's eyes are bloodshot. The card in Near's hand wavers and the piece of paper folded in a tight pocket around it snaps apart and falls. Near picks it up.

"Your face is thinner," Matt croaks as he takes both. He doesn't see the paper fall to the floor again from his fragile grip.

Near yanks down the front of his coat and leaves, wishing Matt had the sense to stifle the hysterical little giggles that follow him down the hall, into the elevator, into the waiting car and the rest of his day, his night, creeping into lines of thought and poisoning.

"Why'd he want to see . . ?" Mello whispers. The sentence doesn't finish. Matt's gaze wanders to the needle taped to the back of the blonde's hand.

"I dunno," Matt sighs, touching the cigarette tucked behind his ear. "He came alone."

Mello blinks and then his eyes dull again.

"I miss you," Mello says, even though Matt hasn't left his side in five hours. The hand stabbed with tubes gropes awkwardly out of the cage of the bed and touches Matt's knee.

"Thin," Mello notices. Matt shrugs and doesn't reach for the hand, then changes his mind and gently holds his wrist.

He hates Mello when he's needy—it's fake, a lie, a way to try to shrug a little more power onto skinny shoulders—but this time it's probably genuine so he copes. Mello sighs and falls asleep.

He doesn't envy him the pain, at least.

But Mello should have listened when Matt predicted this.

Near's pale with the tragedy of being wrong. "What?"

"I don't," Matt smiles, almost leering, "sleep with him. That penthouse has one bed."

Near goes back to finger-painting Rothko-ish planes of color.

"Aww, baby, don't feign maturity," Matt smirks, and drops to hands and knees in front of the smaller boy, goggles clacking around his neck. "You wanted me to come here and deny it." His voice is husky and has a bite to it that Near's never heard before.

"When did you ever do what I wanted?"

"When it's what I want," Matt drawls. "You poor little robot." He tips the blue over. "You're so alone anything past a handshake to you means..." He tips the yellow over. "Yeah, that's it, isn't it?" The purple follows, then the green.

Matt watches the colors mix, content. "You just don't want him to be mine." He laughs, jumping to his feet. "And he hates you."

Near stares at his stained fingers and hears the door close.

Mello's so whiny when he gets to the penthouse Matt hires a nurse and avoids the place with all the contempt of apathy. And because he's taken no side and hates the narrowness of the slippery, couture couch he shows up at Near's with a laptop beneath each arm. The SPK keep their professionalism and ask nothing and he settles into a corner and grows chilled from lack of movement, pulling down stretched-out sleeves over and over and ignoring the constant hunger headaches, instead concentrating on transferring all of their data to Near's system, because he's never taken sides and if Mello wants to fire him once he can walk, Matt will welcome it.

Once, the Wammy nurse, in a memory sharper than most, told him to cut back on using his hands or he would get arthritis.

She wasn't here now and Matt finds a spare room Near doesn't need and holes up with the latest generation of every console on the market, and plays until he's high with kill after perfect kill, a buzz he savors over any other.

He checks on Mello every day, of course, but decides after the fifth visit he doesn't care that much and the hours slip away from him and into the life that dwells inside circuits and wires. There's a manufactured plastic perfection in the nurse's smiles and Matt wonders if it would stretch and tear if he dug in his fingers.

Mello has the same type of smile sometimes. Matt laughs over a bowl of soggy ramen when he thinks of what the scarring will do to it.

Mello's screaming for him and Matt's so panicked he can't breathe and his heart is dead with hysteria but then he wakes up, tears streaming down his face, and stares at Near in the doorway.

"I'm sorry," Matt blurts before he can think. He's not apologizing to Near but to the self-betrayal, and annoyingly enough Near understands that.

"There's all manner of SSRIs in the medicine cabinet," Near says before he exits.

Matt picks up his shaking limbs off the crumb and lint-strewn floor and transfers himself to a chair hard enough he thinks he'll stay awake. The remnants of adrenaline keep his brain distracted enough that it's only when his breathing normalizes does he realize Near made a joke. He's dozing the next second and when he truly wakes thinks it was just a part of a dream, a bauble of surreality strung between waking.

"Where is he?"

"With me."

"As soon as I can walk he's going to die. Tell him that. Tell him that I'm going to kill him."

The nurse leans over and presses Mello back into the bed with soothing little movements, whispering of fractured ribs and broken bones and internal bruising and a hundred other things Near already knows of. He's seen the charts and knows the surgeons and the exact date and time of release. But Near is human and has human faults made meaty with his own genius idiosyncrasies: perfection in all things is the ideal.

And if the body had been broken he would have taken it but Mello's spirit has been diluted, and Near knows it by Mello's posture and tone and the way there is finally, finally a hint of rational fear in Mello's eyes when he speaks of the case that killed L.

"He gave you all we had?"

"Yes."

"And how much closer are you now?"

"We'll arrest him next week. I tested the Death Note you had in your possession yesterday."

"On who, Matt?"

"Yes."

Mello blinks, mouth slack and sullen. "It was like I was Midas—everything was gold—when he told me I had this customizable lackey. Guess he deserved it for disobeying me." Mello starts crying and the nurse tells Near he needs to leave.

"You faked my death? Why? Give me freedom or some stupid noble purpose like that?"

"No. I gave him freedom from you. You're parasitical."

Matt flashes the blindingly meaningless and impotent smile he bestows on everyone who believes he's trash (and that was everyone, excepting Roger), and his eyes return to the tiny monitor he's holding in his hands.

The metal of it is cooler in his hand than he remembers any other gun being and he dresses himself before standing in front of the mirror and making faces with the gun pointed at his head and rolls the bullets back and forth across the marble counter with a smile.

"Wiggle your big toe, Mello," he whispers, and then laughs so loud he flinches at the echo before he stumbles over the floor. Then he's shaking and can't remember the last time he ate, so he sits on the toilet and stares at a fly before swaying to standing and leaving to find food.

He doesn't know that he's the reason that Light's been caught this week instead of next month or the month after, and the rest are watching Yagami's execution and only one is thinking of Matt when the needle enters Light's arm, and the few people who know Matt exist hardly care that he almost committed suicide before pouring himself a bowl of generic sugar cereal and plopping down in front of his laptop.

At school they'd called him the second N. N for Nothing, and he deserved it, because he didn't care.

"You should call." Halle's voice is a trifle hesitant. They've been shuttled back to the hotel after the press conference cocooned in an armored car and Near was kicking off his socks in a slow shuffle to prepare for a late bath.

"He's fine."

Halle acts as though the conversation never happened at that, and slinks into Gevanni's room with a wink. "Sweet dreams, Near."

Near nods and flops onto his bed. He fumbles for his cell and pushes down too hard on speed dial #3. A line of threes flicker up, and he tries again.

Ringing.

"Ho, Near."

"Ho, Matt."

A comfortable silence follows. Near can hear the blips of a tinny 16bit world as he stares up at speckled plaster.

"A Link to the Past?"

"Yup."

Another comfortable silence. Near scoots farther up onto the bed.

"So," Matt breathes, voice heavy and cryptic, "what are you doing?"

Then he laughs and hangs up.

The social skills taught to those who entered Wammy's House covered diplomacy, both foreign and domestic. They covered courtroom etiquette and policing procedures and how to address certain titled individuals. There had been nothing detailing awkward flirting, which is why Matt's stab at revealing everything he'd just revealed was puzzling Near as much as it was puzzling Matt.

But Near is a genius, and he does know what phone sex is, and he's certain that's what Matt attempted, so he calls back.

No answer.

Near hadn't expected one.

He calls a second time and then a third.

"Hey, baby," comes the sinister growl, but there's something in it Near likes and the grip on the cell tightens.

"Is three the magic number?"

Matt chooses to not answer. This is more than he's spoken in days and he feels too exposed.

"I'm on my bed," is the answer to Matt's question. Nothing in reply. Nothing, hah, that nickname. "Are you sleeping okay?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Silence.

"You know, Mello would—"

"Mello abused you." This was known, and Near saying it aloud was no blatant and sudden reveal. "We're here for three more days."

A pause, and then Matt hangs up.

Clutching the phone to his chest Near knows he won't be woken with screams and sleepwalking but he still scoots up, scoots down, stares at the fantastically carved oak headboard.

No, please, he can't be.

The snap of the laptop clicking shut is louder than it should be.

"I need a bodyguard who looks my age."

"Yeah, princess?"

"We leave in five minutes."

"You're a sucky liar."

"You prefer degradation?"

Matt rubs at his mouth and sniffs. "This is what capturing Kira does to you, princess? You get perky?"

"Five minutes." Near turns and leaves, his lips in a hard line to butcher the smile that keeps trying to twitch into life.

Near demands each case to be presented to him in a manila envelope, policy form, on a table he keeps in a room next to his bedroom. This table is stacked with fifty envelopes, each case currently waiting approval. They won't be touched for three weeks.

"Threw them out," is the calm reply.

Matt swears and begins trembling.

"I need you to be healthy."

"My life―"

"Unhealthy."

"And―"

"Mine has positive outcomes."

Near stares at the blood on his finger, feeling his lip sting more than he sees the thick wash of crimson.

"Deserved it," Matt smiles, and struts out.

Matt's taken to walking, and it makes Near edgy and more confined.

"Your feet haven't even moved," Matt remarks after a brief sojourn. It's a fantastically perfect spring day and he brings the scent of sun and damp newness with him.

"I'm working," Near whispers in Hindi. He doesn't look up.

Matt floats around the doorway and leaves to smoke.

"Just making sure you weren't dead."

The hand against his throat to feel pulse is enough to make Near wake, his head aching from five hours against oak floorboards.

He sucks in a breath. "I hate your self-abuse."

Matt laughs. "You'll die first."

"I won't," comes out in the exhale.

"You're not Ender."

"I'm L."

"Yeah. No. You're Nate River." Matt cocks his head. "You know my real name's made up, right?" His thumb now soothes tensed jawline and Near doesn't hear that last sentence at all.

The faint smell of smoke infesting every breathable surface and an empty pack of Parliaments are the last traces of Mail Jeevas when Near returns from India.

They trace him, of course, but Matt's untraceable and the results are all worthless.

When he receives Mello's death certificate in an unmarked envelope Near ceases working for a full week. He knows Matt's sent it and that fact leaves him bitter enough to wish they had died together.

Matt had been right: it had always been them, and he'd always hated Near.

And now that is set, as banally fact as the counter being marble, or the laundry being halfway through the rinse cycle.

"Happy Valentine's day."

"Hello, Halle."

"You should call him." Halle kisses the top of Near's head, which is more comforting than it has any unprofessional right to be to a boy who never receives touch. She leaves, her steps slow and heavy from the baby Rester planted inside her and Near bites his lip and sets the L puppet on his pinky.

"Halle, you're fired."

"Ho."

"What do you want?"

Matt hangs up.

It's zero hour.

It hurts so much less than it should.

The sticky pay phone is left swinging, and Matt clambers onto the Norton.

It's just a passing fancy. The boy is from Wammy's and he's brilliant, and gorgeous, thick locks of dark fudge that fall into blue eyes made bright whenever Near praises him, and then another child is called in and Near feels displaced, and all the color is sapped from the room.

Near has forgotten how much this hurts. (Or he hasn't, and it's just a wound made fresh.)

He begins speaking and the new wunderkind before him listens.

In little shards of transparent clarity that imbed and numb, Matt knows what he should do. The grass is dormant and dry as tinder but there's nothing lit between his lips to set this expanse alight.

A breath puffs out in a cloud of silver caught by the sun, and Matt looks down and kicks at the gravestone half-buried. Half-buried, lost and forgotten in only the space of a year.

"I kinda miss you," he mumbles, then presses cold lips together. There's a shuddering sigh and he kicks the granite again before walking back.

A company once accepting of Nazi scientists isn't going to be opposed to a twenty year-old bearing the Wammy stamp of approval.

"Heard you got a spot in AI," the kid says, tugging off headphones. A lick of greasy hair wraps ear to cheek.

The secretary stares, then mumbles into her headpiece.

"Hey, you wanna show me my office now? Cause you're my secretary, right? Did my joke fail that hard?" Matt wipes his palms on his pants.

"Oh! Oh." She takes a sip of coffee and smiles. "Of course. Please follow me. I'll show you your office and then the division."

"Sweet," mumbles the kid, hunching his shoulders. He follows, staring at the floor, hands deep in pockets.

"I don't care that you're L and that you're both geniuses but look at me when I speak to you, Nate River."

Near stares out the window.

"I don't care that it's consensual. I don't care that it's safe and that no one knows. I will not allow you to pound a child into your proverbial mattress."

Near makes a disgusted face. "What do you mean by proverbial," he snaps.

"Obviously you have sex in more places than a bed. I know I certainly do. I don't care how you justify it." She's pacing the room now, her anger spilling into ceaseless motion and even that's not enough, she's trembling and her words are slurred because speaking is more important than swallowing. "That genius homosexuals are a little pool to choose from isn't an excuse, that this one is available isn't even an excuse. He is twelve. He worships you. He thinks of nothing else. His studies are ignored. He already has possessiveness issues; what if he gets a Death Note? What if the shinigami would think it fun to watch him kill off his other classmates so he can have sole possession of your title?"

"Just transfer him to Hogwarts," Near says idly, not paying attention any longer.

"I will not be mocked. You know he masturbates when he reads your cases? You're pornography to him."

Near fingers the dart he's holding between his toes.

"You're creating another B."

She slams the door behind her.

There's an entire ploy tapped out in binary spread across Matt's floor and he shuffles through the papers as he snorts up a loogie and ignores the blaring monitor coming from down the hall. He doesn't know when he woke up, because he doesn't want to look at the clock, and he's pretty sure he's fired because it's the fifth day he's avoided work and he's slightly frightened, but it's more guilt than anything-and feeling guilt is more frightening than the ninety even messages on his phone.

He dribbles blue foam onto a torn page (numbers articulating sentences and sentences articulating a life's work). He stoops and picks it up and grins. See? This is brilliant.

"Take forever," he mumbles around the toothbrush handle. "He'd be so mad."

But he begins sketching in the corner and soon has different plans and soon this is now simpler and will be executed in a week.

And the next day, a day of lethargy and button-mashing, the corner is flecked with stale chinese and grease and shoved beneath a book on anarchy.

"Oh really." Matt's hands go limp and the controller slips a bit. He glances at the clock. It's four am.

"I'm outside when you're ready."

"Is the kid yours, Hal?"

She doesn't care that he knows.

"My second."

"And daddy?"

"Rester."

"Cute, Halle, cute. But uh, Hal?"

She's turned to leave, but now checks herself and avoids slipping on an external hard drive.

"Rester knows he's just surrogate, right?"

Halle's mouth sets.

Matt stumbles into Halle's room sleep-drunk; he's babbling in Spanish about how hungry he is and he sits on Halle's bed and peers at her through a fringe of matted hair.

"So," he says, and it comes out sullen.

"Tell me what you know."

Matt's annoyed, but the shrug of shoulders isn't enough of a tell. "You're head of Wammy's. You've kidnapped me for like, my sperm or something."

"Not quite. Do you have a light?"

Matt shrugs again, shoulders staying hunched. "Hal."

"Yes?" She's digging through a bag and Matt sees flashes of character in the mixed percentages of items: fifty percent of a safety pin, eighty-seven percent of noise-canceling headphones, thirty-two percent of a brush.

"So. You and L."

"Yes."

"How did you guys meet?"

She looks up and her bangs tilt and Matt sees the Mello in it. "It's annoyingly long." After a brief hesitation where she measures her own strength, she pulls a pink cigarette out of her bag and begins.

When she's done, Matt cracks his back and grins. "Okay. Now tell me about you and Mello."

Their reflection in the elevator doors comes back to them gold and sickly and stout and the air in the place is too fabricated to breathe comfortably and Matt's heart is no longer in his chest but under his tongue and he doesn't dare speak.

Roger sways feebly beside him, cursing beneath his breath and acting so habitually Matt's even more terrified from the words he plucks out of the stillness.

"Eh?" A beady eye focuses on Matt as if aware that he was present. "Shouldn't have killed him," Roger chuckles. "He shouldn't have killed him."

The bathwater has a film of heat. His eyes were closed when Matt entered and they remain closed as he stands stiff beside the heavy porcelain tub so still his knees are locking.

This is not his Near—that Near has no sharp edges: hair like curled licks of marshmallow fluff and body rounded from bad posture and baggy pajamas. This Near has a narrow face, eyes smudged from lack of sleep and the thick marshmallow hair has grown wild and thinned and the tendrils floating in the water are silver.

Matt wants to swallow him whole and know what it is to be full.

"Is it rude if I don't greet the nanny?" Near slurs.

Matt starts pulling off his boots.

"They didn't tell you, did they?" Near keeps his eyes closed, content with supremacy of the situation.

The hoodie falls to the floor and Matt starts working on his jeans.

"You don't deserve to know, anyway."

The sound of a zipper; a grunt from Matt.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting in," Matt says through the shirt he's pulling over his head.

Near moves so fast Matt's feet are soaked when Near rips a towel from the wall and stands shaking as the other boy's smirk dilates wide, arms down and still tangled in blue cotton.

Matt switches off. He's paralyzed with the safety of a shut mouth and watches Near's gaze roam over him with all the practical interest of his position. Then onyx eyes drop.

"You have till tomorrow morning and then I want you on the other side of the world."

Now that he's standing and mostly naked Matt can see the etiolation: spindly bones wrapped in veins more opaque than they should be, skin growing grey without heat and fragile as crepe; his face is wan, and when Near closes his eyes for the briefest second Matt sees the relief in the action.

"You know how Mello went crazy?" Matt whispers.

The dark light in Near's eyes flickers.

"He thought L had faked his death, and that it was greatest case of them all, to find him, to find out how he did it. He went crazy."

Near's shivering now, violently, but it's not the story but the hunger and exhaustion.

"So he can't find anything, right? So he kills himself. Cause he failed him. He failed L, cause he couldn't find the secret."

Matt pauses, not for effect, but to gather his thoughts from the heartsickness that blisters between memories and distracts.

"He'd go to L's grave every day and give him progress reports." Matt digs a bare toe into grouting. "It was the creepiest..." Toe cracks and he stills his foot. "I just thought you should know."

Near's swaying now ever so slightly without any realization of it. "How'd he do it?"

"How do you think?"

"He gave himself a heart attack."

"Clever boy. Now that the fairytale is over, baby, it's time to tuck you into bed."

Near's eyelids flutter and he stops swaying with a sigh. "Warm milk?"

Hope seeps into Matt's bones. Tension he didn't know existed is stripped away and he's floating.

"With sugar."

Near lurches out of the tub with all the grace of sickness and Matt doesn't follow.

This fortress is much like that L created for himself in Japan and Matt guesses it draws heavily on the schemata because even the rooms feel the same in all their overblown needlessness.

In an hour Near's system is wiped and Matt still can't sleep, because right as fuzziness hits Roger's words come back almost too clear to be memory.

Shouldn't have killed him. He shouldn't have killed him.

Matt gets everything he'll need to hack into Wammy's system.

There's nothing.

N, for nothing.

Worthless.

Nothing, nothing.

He peeks into Near's room. Just a boy wearing pajama bottoms passed out on the floor surrounded by toys and a dead laptop.

The door's left open a crack and Matt goes exploring.

Near isn't L, which is so obvious that thought has never bloomed into life in Matt's head; for all that he wasn't expecting more than this floor to be glutted with equipment. He's bored with room after room lined with the cold glow of monitors and soft, orderly rows of color and shadow that are toys. The room next to Near's is locked, but he needs to know why the light inside fades and dims routinely. It takes him three minutes to find the keys and he feels as if he's defiling something sacred when he enters.

The night sky greets him. A child's star projector on a desk dances its celestial light over saturated blue walls and even though Matt was never a child there is still wonder in it, and he spends a few seconds captivated by electricity and patterns made magical. Then he switches on a standing lamp.

A bed snuggled into one corner is covered with a child's comforter in rocket ships fat and bright in their primary colors. Picture frames stuffed with puzzle pieces and broken crayons hang above the bed, and a few ugly drawings done on notebook paper are taped, over cracking, yellow scotch tape, to the wall. The only other pieces of furniture are a bookshelf and a chest of drawers.

All the books on each shelf are a conglomeration of Mello and Near's collections.

Matt hasn't seen them in years but each sinks into its proper spot in memory and Matt realizes how much he has made himself forget. Here's the battered copy of Meditations, which Mello made him read aloud.

He's trying to stifle now as he touches the peeling spine but he only knows how deep friendship can be in memory even after the meat of it is dead and left to rot.

The first drawer of the chest has nothing, and the next. The third has a GBC. It's cracked and stained but Matt still remembers how all his jeans had a faded baggy back left pocket worn bright from carrying it with him always. There's absolutely no reason Near should have this. Stupidly, he clutches it to his chest for a second before slipping it into the front of his shorts.

The fourth has a dinged shoebox. In the box, dozens of polaroids of a fudge-haired blue-eyed boy. Laughing. Eating an ice cream cone in a way that hints at filth, his eyes on the camera and smirking. Sleeping. Shoving a foot into a shoe. Walking, his back almost unnaturally erect and the sun sliding past his form and casting the photographer in shadow. Hunched over a laptop. Reading. Flushed with heat, looking up at the camera and Matt drops them all and goes to the lobby to play on the GBC till he's brainwashed.

He sees nothing but his own tragedy, and accepts it.

Cause of death: self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Bleary eyes reread it three times. Roger's a snoring lump of wrinkled musty old man behind him on a simple military-issued cot. It's drawing near zero hour and he thinks of how the warmth of the chair down in the lobby has dissipated.

He wants to rationalize this into something clear, and here is his weakness. He doesn't want to fix the problem because he doesn't want to acknowledge it.

Near is working himself to death over something as idiotically human as loss.

All Matt can feel is jealousy.

He switches Roger's laptop off and then takes a bath, the computer sunken at his toes.

Near's slept for seventeen hours now.

Matt stands in the bathroom with a bowl of cereal disintegrated to wet cardboard with the gun tucked in the front of his jeans (if it's not a suicide it's at least a homage). He takes off his shirt and runs the sink, not sure what he's doing, waiting for any sound beyond ceaseless humming and the clunks of the radiator next to the toilet. His mind is empty. He's cold and all his guts are sticking to his ribs and there's so much space inside and it feels like grief except this is all so stupid.

There's a scar, above one bicep, and his fingers linger over it as if to comfort himself. He knocks the bowl into the sink and goes to find Roger except there's Near in the doorway.

He looks dazed and absolutely fragile.

"You're still here?" Near's hand goes to the doorframe, and slides down it, and Matt's sick to his stomach with self-revulsion at his jealousy, and thinks of the boy captured by light onto paper not two rooms away and he remembers that he should say something in response.

"No, I'm a ghost."

Does his ghost haunt you?

Do all their ghosts?

Arms slip awkwardly across bare chest and he looks down, and it's stupid that the weight of their eternities hangs over their heads and he's embarrassed by being half-naked. All of this is stupid. Hollow. He can't look at Near's hand and he wants to die because it's not worth feeling this and he thought it was over.

He grabs his shirt.

Near asks, "You kept Mello's gun?"

"Yeah." He can smell himself in the fabric as he yanks stripes over his head. Fingers drag forward through his hair and he scoots back and sits on the sink. "You want to touch it or something?" The sentence is displaced from the affirmative by inflection and the way he cheekily spreads his legs.

It's a cheap shot at an exit and not worth the anger and disgust on Near's face.

Matt laughs, low, clumsy and he brushes past Near and struts to Roger's office to make a request.

Near stares at the screen that refuses to revive and pulls out another laptop from behind a pile of cards; the polluted black of the screen remains a hazy dim nothingness when he jams down the power button.

Matt could have done nothing less than bled him dry, sucked out his marrow, peeled back his skin and stripped him bare of the world's fate.

The enormity of this is diluted by the rush of tranquility from perfect relief.

"Why?"

Matt's gaze flicks over and snags. "What?" He can't tell if this is bait or the trap itself.

"It's..."

Matt's laying on the island in the kitchen with a shut laptop on his thighs and the GBC in his hands. "I ordered out for food. Should be here soon."

"Will you answer my question." There's silence, then a wet hiccup.

Matt pulls himself up in one effortless motion. "Hey," he says, softly. He can't meet Near's eyes, the grey stain of dried tear tracks is too riveting. Near moves his head and one catches the light and strikes silver down his face, a moment, then gone.

"Will you answer my question?"

"I sent them to Wammy's." Clipped. Matt's head bobs down.

The reply is faint and consumed by a shaky sigh.

"What did you say, baby?"

Black eyes meet his and Near shakes his head, bites his sleeve, and floats out.

Roger shuffles in carrying paper bags that bring the scent of meat and hot bread and potatoes. It's a heady mix of comfort and reality. Matt grabs a carton from the first bag that lands next to him and fishes for a spoon. Then Roger shuffles off to his room, grazing Near, who leans against the doorframe for a second to regain strength before swaying in front of Matt.

Instinct. Matt's dangling legs wrap around Near's and pull him forward, the spoon dips and Near's mouth is opened then brimming with potato soup before Matt even realizes the series of actions.

"Food" Near purrs after a thick swallow. Trembling hands pull soup and spoon from Matt's fingers and Near wanders dreamily to the table.

If it wasn't a reality than Matt wouldn't be able to comprehend it and this should feel surreal, but the actuality makes it absurdly swallowable; he should be congratulating himself for his largest victory instead of chewing the inside of his cheek and waiting for this version of his world to fall apart.

Matt buys a farmhouse. The walls are milk and the floors ash blond and soft as silk under bare feet. When it is humid they stick slightly and peeling paint bubbles and ripples on the walls. The kitchen is new, industrial steel that puts an edge on Matt's teeth and here he makes mango salsa and fried eggs and slathers apples with peanut butter and honey.

Near eats.

The hours are cut clean, as with a knife. They are parceled and stamped and dated as the month passes and they're opened too quickly.

Matt sweats and sits on the front porch and reads; the granddaughter of the ancient couple next door sells them wildflowers she liberated from the edge of the dirty highway. They sit in a glass jar in the kitchen. Plum and azure and coral stain the table as the water turns gray and Near finishes off a plate of cupcakes.

Near misses the warmth of a laptop in his sheets as he sleeps.

It's not healing. There is a nonexistence now. His world has imploded and folded into itself. Instead of calls from world leaders there is the smell of hot, dry grass. His fingers itch but no longer cramp up; he hates it at first.

"A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever," Matt quips and tugs a curl as he passes in a smooth, slow gait that draws Near's eyes to the way his toes curl when he stops moving, down from his hips.

"I don't know what that's from."

"Didn't expect you to."

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

Near's face is a question. It makes Matt's heart hurt. He wishes he could kill it. He wishes he had any sort of power over himself, any sort of self-control.

"Driving. You wanna come?"

A sort of nod as if he was undecided between agreeing or trying to crack his neck and not respond.

The night drives begin.

The car becomes Matt's exoskeleton. Two fingers light on the wheel as he flies down country roads that dodge themselves and make for Near's eyes barely closing till he learns to trust. Trees become a murky black fog. The fireflies glowing in the dusk turn to streaming flashes of gold at the edge of Near's vision.

They wouldn't speak. Near would study the lines of Matt: the muscles of his arm, the dark sepia of his hair in this light and the darkness of his skin. He wonders what colors he would be in half-light with shadows moving over him, under him as two bodies fight on a bed. He thinks it's something like this.

One time Matt yanks the car over and they're bumping up a tiny hill to the top and Matt parks and laughs. Near tenses. The seats in this are bigger than any chair in the farmhouse and the backseat has a depth that's almost indicative.

"I'm just thinking," Matt says, leaning his seat back, "of Kerouac in Mexico covered with bugs."

Near looks out the window.

Matt waits. For nothing, because all he sees is the back of Near's head.

He doesn't know how Near's supposed to know that he is trying. There is a new self-hatred that festers now.

The key turns and the car is turned around.

"This is real summer," Matt sighs. He begins painting his pale stomach with a slice of orange that has slaked off from the main mass of dreamsicle. He's not spelling anything, but Near still watches.

"So tomorrow." Matt sucks on the dreamsicle stick. "Pack."

It is a city large enough that the only stars are the moving lights of helicopters, planes, and satellites and the sky is a murky, living darkness above the skyscrapers.

It's pretty from the hotel window. Near will press his nose against the cool glass and feel the wind on the other side.

There is opera. There are farmer's markets where Matt picks over berries between wrinkled asian women with parasols and yuppies with babies nestled inside slings. There are symphonies and book fairs. There are hours spent in libraries, at cafes with names stolen from history, there are galleries and plays. There is an introduction to humanity neither have never had except in theory.

At night is the smell of popcorn and recycled air from the vents on the floor. Matt will watch movies. Near will sit next to him, apart from it, watching Matt's pajama pants slip low and his shirt ride up and knowing no one has kissed that swathe of skin. He'll eye it and suck his bottom lip and finally walk out.

Matt will crack half-popped seeds in his teeth, oblivious, but scooting back to where Near sat to feel the warmth of it and revel in his smell.

He always falls asleep on the couch and wakes to Near typing up emails on the floor.

Gone.

Every room is too still.

Near hacks the hotel's cameras first and slowly pieces it together as he remembers that this is his obsession: to find, to discover. Matt must have been planning this for days.

He forgets to eat.

Maybe Matt didn't plan this. Maybe they weren't careful enough and genius skin is selling high. Matt's phone is sitting on Near's knee as he throws darts.

He can't think. He can't call them. A fly trapped in the room buzzes and he thinks of Emily Dickinson and gets angry.

He screams in surprise when Matt taps him on the shoulder at dusk.

"You are lame," Matt sniggers. "You suck. I was in the closet the whole time. I paid this kid to pretend to be me and walk out. Don't hit me!" He dances backwards as Near lunges but still falls when his ankles gets caught and gasps between the laughter that he can't stop. "You-you scream so girly, ahahaha, Near, Near stop, stop―" Near's straddling him now and throwing punches weak from undirected anger. He catches Near's hands and throws him off. "If you get too worked up you'll get enough adrenaline to bruise me, princess." He throws himself over Near's waist and stretches. Near shakes with anger.

"I sneezed once. You know, I heard rumor at Wammy's that you talked to yourself when you were alone but now I know―"

Near punches Matt's ear and it bleeds. Near examines the bunched skin beneath his fingernail.

"Okay," Matt groans. "I'll let you have a real case tomorrow. In one of your cute little envelopes. You like that?"

"Yes," Near says. It's the only thing he says for the rest of the night and into the next day.

Love, of course, is a trick, the perfect, aesthetic eggshell surrounding the meat of genes. Near is no writer and it's not the clearest metaphor, but it makes the most sense to him. He likes eggs. And love isn't worth it; genes are just arbiters with their own plot and agenda. A device. Something he can cleanly strip of its nonsensicalness to a process. And it's nonsensical that his genes dictate creating life with another boy; in fact, it's almost a relief, because he can ignore what he never wanted that much more fully.

Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star

Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;

Into her dream he melted―

"Sometimes I see their ghosts," Near whispers as he stands beside Matt's still form and balances skittles on the edge of the bed.

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death

"They try and talk to me but I can never hear anything. L likes sitting by you and watching you work."

Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star

He doesn't know why that line keeps repeating. He doesn't know if this is real or not.

Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star

"Magnetic spots in the earth can account for cold spots," Near's prattling now in a little boy's voice, accent perfect; he could be Christopher Robin. The warmth of his hand makes Matt's muscles ease and sink and float and ethereal, flush'd. This is real.

He sits up with a gasp and skittles scatter across hardwood.

"Near. Get out of my room. Stop freaking me out."

"You're making Mello angry."

"Always did."

"His eyes scare me."

"Don't look."

"He's. He missing a. Lot. Of..."

Matt grabs the gibbering boy and pulls his white face into his chest and Near begins to shudder.

Matt closes his eyes because L is scooting farther up the bed and drops his nose into curls.

"Hey. I wish." He sighs. He hears the click of beads and doesn't look to his right. His mouth is full of curl and the taste is human enough to calm him. "I wish I could take all this."

Near knows what he means by the way he stills.

A kiss. Doesn't count, curls are too thick.

Matt wakes up. Ghostless, the hall light seeping thick on the floor, Keats running tirelessly through his head as he looks for skittles.

He doesn't sleep for the rest of the night. He stares at the ceiling till he thinks he sees streams of particles, white, like television snow made material, floating through the air in currents. It's fascinating.

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose

He thinks of Heero Yuy and all those perfect little genius boys.

Cold floor on his feet, and he's up.

Near plays with a curl near the back of his head as he pads across the kitchen floor and back.

"And japchae."

He looks across the room. Matt mouths a number.

"And a fifty-seven. Yeah, that's all, yeah."

Near hangs up.

"I think L might be alive."

Matt shrugs.

"I..."

"Seriously? He's busy making babies with Halle. Leave them alone."

"It's your birthday!"

"Yeah," mumbles Near, on his way to get breakfast. Matt is an underfoot puppy, excited and too close and dodging out of the way at the last second.

"It's your birthday!"

"Stop touching me."

"It's your birthday! Getinthehappybirthdaytaxi!"

"I refuse to go anywhere if you keep talking like that."

"It's your birthday!" Matt points to the door of the conference room.

"If I'm assassinated, my will-"

Matt pops a hand across his mouth and shoves him through the door.

"Mr. Richardson," says the first man in the suit. They're all dressed casually, with a bit of an eccentric flair. They are what the industry calls creatives. Near has no idea.

He just nods and sits down at the head of the table.

The man who first spoke smiles widely again, as if it's an entire sentence. "Well, what would you like to see from your newest acquisition? We came here with a few ideas, but we'd like to know what you think." He begins typing on a mac and the screen at the end of the room begins flashing with conceptual figures, bright colors, and he begins speaking of design and processes and concepts.

Near smiles, teeth showing, and the speaker smiles even brighter.

Matt's all wiggly, eyes shining. "You have your own toy company!"

"You're brilliant," Near says. "I would never have thought of that."

Matt glows. Near, greedy, can't look away.

Matt starts going out. He isn't meant to be sedentary even if it was taught to him. There was too much action with Mello, and even being totally inert around that dead boy one was still caught up in the relentless propulsion, the constant going, the new plans and immediate action.

Near is dull.

So Matt goes out.

The outings get longer, and longer, and Near ignores them.

I'm bringing someone back tonight."

Without a blush. Without hesitancy or even a breath before. Smooth, as if the nonexistent conversation the sentence was supposed to be tucked inside was commonplace.

"Here?"

"I'm really sick of him thinking I'm homeless."

Near's shoulders are rigid. "You can't get a hotel?"

Matt laughs. "We have."

Near tries to think. Maybe he looks panicked, because Matt assures him they'll stay in the facade of front rooms. Nothing revealed. Nothing seen except what Matt wants to be. Which is how Matt has always functioned, and Near knows this with a sharpness now that he understands the danger of it.

"This will never happen again." Drooping head, pick up the toy, try to breathe.

"No," Matt sneers, suddenly angry. "It won't."

Dirty socks slip over the carpet as Matt pads out of his room. Open the door, and he's in a tunnel made by a musty sheet.

He pauses for a second, then walks through.

The tunnel opens at the kitchen doorway, and from there Matt can see that in the living room is a mammoth fort, peaks of white and pink and green sloping across chairs, tables, stools.

Near's inside, the ceiling strung with fairy lights. He's reading on his back. Matt straddles him, just barely touching. There's a black light on the seat of the chair behind Matt's head. He doesn't see it.

"Hey."

The book is shoved into Matt's chest. "I'm working."

"On what? You gonna sleep in here?"

"Maybe."

"Sometimes Mello would build forts."

Near's eyes grow blank, he looks up above his head at the tangles of chair legs. "Good for him."

"You wish it was him who'd crawled into your apartment, not me."

Near looks surprised. He's still looking up, neck twisted. "Is that what you think?"

"Sometimes."

"Oh. Okay." He looks at Matt now. Matt hates this. Dark, dark, dark eyes, endlessly dark, unlit, secret.

He pinches Near's cheek, hard, and watches it pink. Near just looks at him.

He's analyzing. What percent am I Kira now? "What if Mello hadn't died?"

"Then he would have died later."

"You." Matt sits now, his weight on Near's hips. Near's hand finds a table leg, thumb running up and down the wood. "I know nothing about you."

"Is that what you think?"

Matt leaves, motions graceful even in anger.

Near stays under the sheets wondering if his self-trust is a lie, because this is getting too hard to stifle.

Matt, you know everything.

"Can you do this for me?"

It's an envelope.

"You won't get jealous when I solve it in a day?"

"No. Maybe."

"Mmm. Kay. Thanks."

It's solved in half a day. Matt won't let Near look over any of his notes or see his computer.

Matt asks for another one. Near refuses.

The rhythm of the stars captivates Near until he forgets that he's cold, that he's standing on L's grave.

His phone rings. The phone that doesn't exist, or something like that.

Matt wakes up fully and snaps it open.

"Hullo?"

"Matt."

The voice is more cheerful than it ever was in L's presence.

Lawliet," Matt slurs, still thinking he's dreaming. "Knocked up Halle again?"

"No. Listen-"

"That's surprising," Matt yawns, rolling onto his back so he can talk more comfortably. "Thought you had like ten kids already."

"One."

"Oh? Cute. You gonna send me a Christmas card with his pict-"

"Matthew, shut up. What time is it there?" L asks because he genuinely doesn't know. His voice is lighter than Matt remembers.

"Like um. Three. In. The morning? Yeah. Where are you?"

"Somewhere else. Thank you for what you did for Near."

Matt giggles into his pillow. "The bullying? The like...I don't know. Like, I really don't know. He was just. I don't know, he's better now."

"You were always the easiest to talk to."

More laughing. "Cause I've never worshiped you? Been afraid of you? I mean, you're just a really smart dude. And we're all smart. You were just like...not a virgin and older. I don't know. There was no r—"

"Matt."

"What. Are you going to give me some bull about how I'm not third in intelligence, just in the lineage, and how you're going to kill Near so I can finally take my place and—"

L hangs up.

For a few days Matt doesn't think the conversation ever happened.

Matt gets a letter in the mail. It's a postcard. There's nothing on it except for his address.

He shreds it before Near sees it.

The picturesque view was of Mello, in rigor mortis. Matt had taken the picture himself in a fit of black humor.

He's so creeped out he doesn't sleep for two days.

"Can we..."

Matt doesn't look up, but juts his headphones off one ear.

"Can we go driving?"

"Nah."

The anger from the night before is looming now that Matt has this chance of defiance.

"I'm leaving for England in three days."

Matt looks up, eyes weary. His lips are chapped. He shakes his head, just enough for movement. It's not refusal, it's exasperation.

"Are you going to be gone when I come back?"

Typing.

"I know you've been planning it for awhile. I'm just. Wondering. I guess. I."

The headphones are snatched off. "You want goodbye sex or something?"

Near leans back against the wall and sticks his hands in his pockets with a smirk. It's L-ish, it's Matt-ish, it's unexpectedly natural.

"Maybe."

"No you don't," Matt says. Calmly. His lip splits when he smiles and he licks the blood.

Near doesn't try to trace him this time.

Instead he opens his little envelopes and doesn't smell eggs in the morning or the hot chocolate in the afternoon. The couch doesn't smell like sleep after awhile and nothing in the laundry has to be sorted. There's nothing awkwardly embarrassing to be found in drawers or little pieces of metal sticking into his feet. There's no sudden rush of warmth as Matt mutely passes too close to him in the hallway.

Near opens his little envelopes and asks Wammy to order out.

No fingers tracing his lips when he's half-asleep, when Matt thinks he's dreaming.

No blood in the sink. No references to obscure hagiographies. No insistence to talk in Russian the entire day.

He begins the process of forgetting.

It's too easy.

He's grateful instead of ashamed.

He gets a packet in the mail. Mail. It's a lock of blonde, the white golds dulled by winter. He smells it. It's tied with a ribbon, and scrawled on the red, in ballpoint that's bled into the grosgrain, is You shouldn't have killed him.

Near blinks. So this is the direction it's taking.

Halle has now run Wammy's for three full years. He was expecting her nonchalance, because when you have a job like Halle's everything is expected, so when Matt walked through the door and asked to see Near there was never formality or coolness, only that warmth that Mello drenched himself in and that Matt is sure L loves her for. He was not expecting to be recognized by as many children as he is. Wammy's has expanded, but he knows how to get to where Near has tucked himself.

Near stares. "What do you need?"

"You look like L but inverted. Your face has really changed."

As had Matt. There are no stripes or jeans or goggles but a linen shirt, tailored, with jeans Kerouac would have favored. Lean anorexic lines are replaced by real muscle, and the immaturity's vanished. He'd been almost respectful

"Just wanted to see you."

"What do you need?"

Matt cracks a grin and waits.

Near twists a strand of hair into a sharp knot.

"How long since you slept?" Matt's getting impatient, now.

Near shrugs and resumes with his finger puppets.

"Can I take you out?"

"Absolutely not."

Matt gets up and leaves, no seconds spared for anything else.

"Wait," Near says when he's rounded the end of the couch.

Matt looks back at him.

"Never...nothing," he says, and puts the L puppet on his thumb.

"You were lying." Near's voice is muffled. Matt holds the phone closer to his ear.

"About?"

"You're not with someone right now. You've been alone your whole life."

Matt sighs. Near hears his back pop. It makes him feel cramped, broken into this position and frozen there, bones soldered.

"So?"

"So. Can you-"

"Look. Nate. I tried. I tried for a really long time. Bye."

Matt hangs up.

Near looks at the picture in front of him. It's Mello. He's dead, and the tip of his thumb is missing. This has been the third in a series. Near looks at Mello's face. There is raw flesh instead of scarring. That was the second picture.

The first picture was Mello, in a tub of chocolate, wrists cut and bleeding Lindt.

It didn't fit with the second and third. That had been taken by Matt, high on whatever was the most expensive, desecrating for the feeling of freedom.

They had not been careful that year together and now there were consequences.

Near is caught between self-scorn and anger. If he had been more careful, it would not have had to come to this. Instead, the person who sent these is getting an emotional reaction out of him, a lunge for comfort in an awkward, accusatory call.

The biotech conference is ending. Matt had spoken at a panel through a proxy and his paper, currently undergoing review, had been well-received.

The valet is pimply and baby fat is sloughing off his cheekbones. He's thrilled to even touch the Ducati, let alone pull it up to Matt.

Matt throws a leg over after handing him a tip.

Near had always liked watching that. He almost says it.

"I liked the paper."

There's the briefest pause before Matt has the strength to look at him.

Near sneezes. He's wearing jeans, because he's never been comfortable flying in pajamas, and a red shirt. He's surrounded by suits.

"I need help, Matt."

"Nah." Matt's putting on his helmet.

Near shrinks back into himself without moving a muscle. Matt can't look away from him. "You look bloody in red."

"Har har."

Matt looks uneasy now. "Spill."

"I think L wants his job back."

"What's he trying to do, assassinate you?"

"I don't know yet. He might be."

"This isn't something you planned with him to bring me back into the fold?"

"That's stupid. Will you help me?"

"How?"

"We need to kill him."

Matt's smile comes in slow unsteady jerks. "Excuse me, princess, but I am hardly a trained assassin." He mock-bows and smirks.

Near gives him the address of the condo he owns in the city and they part for two hours.

It is so much easier loving him from a distance. Matt reflects on that summer when he healed Near's heart by sacrificing his own. A half-truth—he'd laid his heart on the alter too many times before and after for that year to have any significance. Instead, there was only a sort of tidal pull—an ebb and flow of Near's vicinity that he reacts to magnetically.

"Why not hand it over?" He's changed clothes, and the soft jersey tugging at his biceps as he leans forward, chin on knuckles, distracts Near for the faintest second. It was blatant that assassination was a joke. The need for Matt's wisdom is superficial.

"I like being L. I like the power. I like the cases. Besides, I'm better than him. Do you want something to eat?"

"Sorta," says Matt, his eyes on Near's white linen pants. He's wearing nothing else. It's discomfiture, nothing sexual. They've both grown, and having been child-adults for so long the confrontation with their real-adult selves is confounding.

Near fades down a hallway and when he returns he tosses a wrapped ice cream sandwich at Matt. It's a ridiculously gourmet one.

"I think you just like the money."

"I love the money."

Matt laughs, and then stops as he watches Near lay out trim five-by-sevens on the coffee table.

"L has been sending me these in chronological order."

Mello bleeding chocolate. Mello stiff and blue, eyes clouded glass. The pictures Matt didn't take: the burns removed, the fingers missing, something profane with the rosary but the picture is too blurry.

"Why are you so certain?" Matt's licking his fingers. "Why does this mean he's going after your position?" He bites his thumb. He hates himself. "Who's that kid you killed?"

Near stops pacing.

"The kid you fell in love with. The kid you killed."

Near's just blinking.

"And why didn't L take over then? Wasn't that the perfect time? Who's to say this kid isn't alive and L really did die? Are you ready to kill him a second time?"

"Which?"

Matt stares.

Two days later, Matt is in Near's kitchen.

Mello and L, crystalline to him in their actions, their motives, their speech, had set a precedent: truth with no shackles, her teeth bared. Versus them, Near acts as both Daedalus and minotaur to Matt.

Matt never had the patience to play Theseus.

"Do you blame me for faking L's death?"

"I don't care how or why you made him quit. I don't—any of this. I'm done. How do you know he's thinking on terms of getting his job back? Did you agree to be just the placeholder till he returnedand now you don't want to give it up? How old is his kid now?"

Near's mouth pinches. "He doesn't have kids."

"With Halle," Matt specifies around a bite of cookie and ice cream. As long as Near wants to ruminate at him Matt can eat his supply of ice cream sandwiches. This one is formed from dark chocolate fudge and sour cream with cinnamon. It's delectable.

"Halle has no children. I made her get a hysterectomy."

"You what."

"She agreed to it."

"Why do I—" Matt begins, but angrily finishes off the last mouthful and reaches for another from the freezer. "Then how did L have kids with her?"

Near is dumbfounded. Matt sees him pulling at memories, trying to connect. "We were ordering Korean. You made a joke."

"I wasn't joking."

Near sits at the kitchen table. Here is a smattering of tiny wooden shapes, left natural. He begins stacking them.

"Rester and Halle were pregnant. She miscarried at five months. I dissolved their relationship. I demoted her to head of Wammy's. She got a hysterectomy at my behest. Rester was fired and I've had people monitoring him since then. In interviewing Wammy's children I found a boy I began a relationship with."

Matt feels disconnected on his feet, half a kitchen away. He slinks into the chair across from Near. Something flickers in Near's eyes at the movement.

"He got too attached," Near explains. The blocks are now stacked in twos. "He was very dead."

"I thought he killed himself."

"He did. It was me. I killed him."

"You—"

"I'm not going to discuss it."

"Let's focus. I want to leave. L called me over that summer. He thanked me for taking care of you. He mentioned his kid. That was it. When Halle fetched me I asked her about it."

"Fetched you."

"You think I came to you of my own volition?"

Near thought that. It hadn't occurred to him that Matt hadn't wanted to come. Everything is sideways now. He hates sideways. He only likes forward.

The kitchen light is harsh. Color in tones clinical, washed out. Near's skin is blue, eyes flat. Matt tastes doom. He shrugs it off. "Mello wanted Halle."

"Halle?" Near flicks the tower of blocks and they scatter. "Do you carry all our secrets, Mail Jeevas?"

Matt stops a block as it rolls and raises it to a corner, swiveling it under his fingertip. "It's Halle," Matt says. "This is her stupid revenge."

He throws the block in disgust.

Paranoia demands their courtesy, and Matt makes them disappear. Near isn't quite sure how. There's nothing flashy to it, and nothing he wouldn't have done himself, but it's part of Matt's grace: the way he weaves through traffic on a motorcycle or the way Near imagines his fingers run down another boy's body.

Hours after their conversation at Near's hearth they are shrouded in a different hotel guarded by men who had bled from the cracks in the city, calling Matt by name with respect. There was food on the table, a pizza that was piping hot and covered in roasted peppers and eggplant. Matt pushes a cold beer from some local brewery at him. Near eats best when Matt orbits him.

"Mello made me eat a rat once."

Near takes a swig.

"And dryer lint. That one was a dare though. Kinda."

"He kissed me once," Near says to his bottle's mouth. He puts it to his own again.

"How old?"

"Twelve."

"Why?"

"To make me want more, I think." Near rubs an eye. "It worked." He pushes back a stray curl and almost smiles.

"He liked blondes. Curvy ones. Sometimes he would switch to skinny when he was super emaciated. He called those his waifs. He'd throw me a boy to keep me happy every once in awhile."

"Who would you pick?"

"Whatever arrived." There's a beer in front of Matt but he hasn't touched it. He won't touch the pizza either.

"When you had a choice."

"Brunettes," Matt says softly. "Gingers covered in freckles. I like licking freckles. Blondes. I like enough hair to pull. I guess that's my constant."

"When you're on top or when you're on bottom?"

Matt giggles shrill. It echoes. "Do they not make porn where you're from?"

Near shrugs, eyes never leaving Matt. "I always had Rester buy my lube. Never porn."

For half a second Near's convinced Matt's dying as he purples but he lets out an ugly noise so like a laugh Near begins to glare.

"L-l-lube. Your private detail." He buries his face in the table, shoulders shaking. "Buying. M-make it stop."

He calms. His face gets dried with his shirt. A hand goes for his own beer. "Sorry, is truth or dare over now? Did I ruin it?"

"There's only one bed."

"That's cause you're still at your hotel. I know enough people who look like you. I've made them study your body language and they're setting up in your usual haunts. It will keep them stymied for a bit. If they care enough to look. So really, I'm the only one here. There's a Murphy in the living room. I'm not going to sleep with you, your highness. Your royal skin can't be besmirched by a servant."

They can't sleep anyway.

Near gets a little drunk, which is more boring than expected. Matt reads and sends out emails. They finally part to either bed, disquieted and forced.

L is living in Scotland in a village that boasted nothing but a flat, dull history that comforts its inhabitants with its stagnation.

Near questions them. Matt wants nothing to do with it. This arc is finally subdued and he can continue with his own history.

He wonders what dross was in their hearts that, after L's forced retirement, the only conceived outlet for retribution was an infantile psychological torture. A snip of Mello's hair and a few gory photographs. He sniggers into his coffee. What would have been next? Finger bones in boxes? Halle had known Near's one secret and that had left more disfigurement on Near's psyche than anything Mello had done yet she had disdained that timeline. Perhaps both Halle and L himself held L in too high regard, perhaps the fascination that lies in a child genius meant they clung to early history and displaced its importance in the two surviving's own lives. Maybe they were too tired.

Matt doesn't care. Near is currently working on three cases that make this snag an irritation. L had worked as a sort of international Holmes. Near was now mythic in abilities, and the bland routine of the current situation is an indication of how far he has come.

Near returns from overseeing the questioning and accepts the coffee Matt hands him.

"I don't—" Matt begins.

"I'll spare you details."

"Thanks."

"This is a stupid dénouement."

"I wanted a kidnapping. Matt racing across the world to rescue his princess from the evil clutches of their former idol. Cliches are so warm and fuzzy."

Near's grateful his coffee is black. "Thank you for all of this."

Near finishes work early.

He's taken on two apprentices, both female. They shadow him and on days like today when trees glow like embers on the horizon and rain scatters acorns, he likes taking walks down the little lanes that run across the property between high hedges. This time of year they are gemmed in blood and birds tear at the crimson berries.

He hears Matt behind him. He doesn't turn, just avoids a puddle in the crushed shells forming the path.

"Happy birthday."

Near grins. "The preschoolers insisted on all twenty-three candles being on the cake."

"What flavor?"

"Your breath is giving you away. Did you like it?"

"I like that there's a standard of living now. Remember that horrible porridge?"

Near makes a face. Matt looks good. Black jeans, scarred leather belt, charcoal shirt and a light leather jacket with a snug collar. His hair is darker. His body is more solid. Near is doomed to the ropey skinniness that plagued L.

"Do you want to run Wammy's?" Near's walking slowly now, unsure of how soon Matt will try to retreat.

"I run a lab. I like running a lab. Dealing with funding is irritating though. I'm too used to Wammy's larders to want to do things properly. What's the incentive?"

Near stops walking and stares back at the school. The right wing was undergoing renovation for an observatory. "There is none. I just want you closer."

The honesty in his face doesn't hurt. It doesn't have to anymore.

"London isn't close enough?" Matt starts walking again but Near doesn't move. Somewhere one of the groundskeepers is burning leaves. Matt pauses to let the scent cleanse him. "You know I'm taken."

"I know." Happy birthday to me, he thinks. Matt's heart had been his for years, and now that he is finally ready Matt is done. And had been done, he reminds himself. Bitterness is childish. His anger is a waste of time. He turns to begin walking back.

"Can I toast your birthday with you?" An intercessory offering between his conscience and Near's heart.

"Please." In Near's head he's begging.

Matt's apartments are spacious. Streamlined and immaculate. Architecturally, Matt is made of clean lines, blonde woods, sisal carpets and enough windows to make Near uncomfortable. Bass thrums through the floor and into Near's teeth. Matt's organizing records in his underwear.

Matt lunges at the intruder when he pauses the music and hears footsteps to his right. Near laughs as his back hits the carpet and Matt pins him tight.

"Wasn't expecting you. Want to toast your half-birthday now? Greedy." He starts to rise but Near grabs his wrists, nails digging in hard enough that Matt substitutes pain for thought.

His body tenses and coils.

The slow bite is to Near's shoulder, and teeth on skin electric gifts him a whine that trills to a purr. Near's lips part to beg and Matt slips two fingers in, insistent. Please, yes, and bright tongue slowly laps at the webbing between index and middle as Near arches. Now Matt's biting sparks up Near's jaw that flare down vertebrae to settle low between his hips and Near is deliriously happy that this is now and not some awkward teenage fumbling. His body sputters and shakes and Matt's kissing him and telling him something but he's panting out I love you as fast as words form and whatever Matt is saying is delicious white noise.

"I loved you first," Near hears, and both boys still to luxuriate in the simplicity of entwined euphoria.

Matt laughs, as clear and natural as his grace.

"I'm retiring."

They're in Near's office. His apprentices, C and X, had exited as Matt entered.

"Into the west now, Frodo?"

Near's playing with an armillary sphere. His desk cradles a universe of them. There's a spiral staircase of jet in his office that leads to the observatory on the fifth floor. Sometimes Matt calls him Dumbledore. In actuality, he's more of a Gandalf, post-resurrection, robed in varying tailored neutrals. Near thinks of Emily Dickinson more than he cares to. "I devoted myself to exactly what I wanted. I'm done. I'll still consult," he adds as an afterthought. "How's your lab?"

"I quit."

Near stills the whirling brass. "What?"

"After the year I was with you."

"Do I make you feel that stagnant?"

"Yes," Matt snaps. "Yeah, I felt trapped." He crosses to the desk and flattens his hands on the oak and Near's skin comes alive as the memories mapped on his flesh helix through him. "When I'm with you I'm an appendage." These are the scattered remnants of Mello, choking at the right triggers.

"What if I can go with you when you leave now?"

Outside a child yells and a dozen echo the cry of rage.

"Then I would have no reason to leave." He's waiting for a brusque, that's decided, then look: the one where Near's face smooths into a smug blankness for triumph.

"I wouldn't follow if you didn't want me to. I didn't last year."

"Did you want to?"

"I couldn't think of anything else." He spins his chair, slow. There's a new scar on Matt's left index finger. "Matt, I can give you up as many times as you need me to."

Matt's face splinters. He looks down at his hands and then tucks into himself with a jerk of his shoulders. He has loved Near in hues and depths innumerable. They had been sanctified in the measure of eleven and a half months. He is terrified of being worthy of more. Just love me, Near would tell him. No one has ever done that and you do it best.

"I want to be L."

It's the rhythm of surprise that keeps Near so starved for Matt. In a domain where the first requirement of Near's continuance is to be measures ahead of diplomats, thieves, and psychopaths the pulse of Matt's mind quickens Near's actuality. At those words he loves a fathom deeper now. Near is certain the well is depthless. "I can call Xin and Caio in now. If you want."

Matt's heart throbs. Accepting and receiving forgiveness has never been this painless. He yields as if into arms. "Will you still consult?"

"Can you make me that ginger peach pie?"

There, absolved in juice and lard.

"I thought you liked the money." He can't stop the stream of smiles.

"It's better when I can spend it on you."

Matt allows himself to blush. He touches a silver-milk curl. "Five years. That's it."

"Five," Near acquiesces. "You can retire before you hit thirty." He smiles, fingertips drumming the desk.

Matt's exultation overflows him.

At night, a city is a toxin of light and noise that seeps through crevices to stain the sacred calm of utter darkness.

The bed is sparsely arrayed in black. Near glows in the center, watching headlights between the wooden shutters. He woke alone. He has been counting the ebb and flow of cars for two hours, an uneven heartbeat that's pleasantly dulling to the senses. He's holding Matt's passport. Not that he doesn't have more than one, but it is like gripping an anchor. When the fragment of light from the door slices through the room and washes over the credenza, Near turns.

Matt is holding a paper bag and unzipping his jeans. They're kicked off by the time he makes it to the island of the bed, and cardamon and honey tone the air.

"Where were you?" Near tries not to sound tired or panicked.

"That new bakery on 11th. They start baking at four. I wanted these fresh. What are you—Near—" He grabs the passport and throws it across the room. It hits the miniature Nike of Samothrace on the credenza and falls to the floor. "You're such a boob. Here." He shoves a hot muffin into Near's hand. "It's peach and ginger," he says through his shirt, before Nike is disgraced with a cotton shroud for a brief moment.

Near's palms are prickly with heat. "I thought we were going out to celebrate the case."

"Yeah." A slow kiss to Near's temple and Matt pulls out more muffins. "I want to celebrate early."

It isn't until the third bite Near gags and spits. The band of silver is thin and grooved with onyx.

"You're joking." His strength fails him and his hands fall to his lap. Spit oozes through his limp fingers.

In answer, Matt fists his left hand so Near can see his ring's companion, wide and dark.

"You've been wearing that for a week."

"I wanted to think about it."

Near stares at the golden slush in his hand. The ring glimmers. A rush of unadulterated, unquenchable selfishness coils in his heart with a fulfillment so incandescent he stops breathing.

Worried, Matt slips his own ring off. "Is it dumb?" This was decidedly arrogant. Assumptive. A too-obvious symbol—not of their hearts, but how with each new month they chisel at their history to sculpt something new. And in a muffin.

Near gets up and fumbles to the bathroom. Matt hears him pee and then the water runs. He returns a bit shaky, his legs numb.

The adorned hand he shows to Matt is clean and smells like lemon.

"Give me a week too."

It will become his lifetime, Near knows, as Matt grabs his hips and pulls him into an embrace. The yes is in the hands bunching Matt's hair and the I love you is in the eagerness of the teeth on his chest and the muffins are shoved off the bed with a foot; Matt fights with the drawer of the side table. "I know, I know," Matt gasps as Near licks his hip before focus on the peripheral is snuffed. Beneath him lies the boy molded from starlight.

Near struggles through the ecstatic haze, words half-formed in his lungs lost in the new constellations Matt is charting on his ribcage with lips and teeth.

"I am only the full measure of myself with you," he explains at last, and Matt kisses his mouth.

Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night.

Nike shines.