[Death Note] [Mello/Hal] bye-bye, security deposit

phishy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:45:04 GMT

Once again, I am cutting it down to the wire with these 30_kisses thingies. ^_^;; And, because I'm completely insane, I've also claimed Yamamoto/Gokudera from Reborn. 'Cause I love them so~. &hearts

Title: bye-bye, security deposit
Series: Death Note
Pairing: Hal, the SPK; implied Mello/Hal.
Prompt: #24 - goodnight @ 30_kisses.
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 650
Notes: Set post series, so spoilery.
Summary: A gunshot slices through the dark, kissing bone, muscle, grey matter, and Hal wonders, dimly, if he would hate her for being so unfaithful.

Morning: shafts of sunlight slide between her window blinds like long, yellow fingers.

The scream of her alarm clock. Harsh, jarring, unremitting.

Hal twists in the sheets, pressing her face between two pillows. It dimly occurs to her to invest in an alarm clock with a functioning snooze button. Funny, she thinks, how the older you get, the harder it is to get out of bed.

The day crawls by.

Hal attends to Near's - oft ridiculous - requests without comment, glancing, every now and then, at her watch.

Giovanni grins. "Date tonight, huh? Who's the lucky guy?"

And Hal wonders if it would arouse an indecent amount of suspicion if she told him to kindly go fuck himself.

-

Evening falls. Streaks of orange-tinged crimson paint the sky with an almost supernatural brilliance.

But Hal doesn't pause to enjoy the view over the Manhattan Bridge, up St. James and Essex.

Ugly men leer at her as she drives home in the dark. Gaunt men with sunken eyes. Corpulent men with sagging jowls. She drives on, indifferent.

At home, Hal prowls her living-room floor while ruminating on ridiculous things - like the origins of the universe and whatever weird, esoteric purpose was behind her existence. She comes up empty.

There are deep foot tracks in her rug.

She goes to bed alone.

-

The next morning, she's two hours late for work.

Rester looks concerned. Near suggests an earlier bedtime. Giovanni just grins.

Life goes on as usual. Or as usual as it can be- with a crime rate that has nearly tripled within the past month. Fortunately, though, so has her salary.

It doesn't take long for Hal to ditch her stuffy Brooklyn apartment in favor of some swanky penthouse in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But she's restless.

One night, for no reason in particular, Hal goes out, gets spectacularly smashed, and brings home some random guy - only to fall flat on her ass before even reaching her threshold.

Not the best idea. The guy looks even scummier here, in her sun-lit bedroom, than he had at the club the night before. Hal tosses him out with contempt, wishing (with pounding remorse), that she could always see the world through beer-colored glasses.

Instead, she makes due with what she has. She grabs an aspirin.

-

It is a dangerous pattern: one that can only worsen over time. But Hal learns too late.

Little by little she watches everything crash around her; crazy spending decisions, detachment from her work, and alternating periods of all-night partying and compete isolation. She sees a shrink, who summarily concludes that she is suffering some sort of midlife crisis.

What? says Hal. Twenty years early?

Next day at work, Rester approaches her awkwardly (on Near's behalf) and she finds herself suddenly jobless. High-flying, superstar Hal.

Unfortunately, Rester says, to her right foot, we can only give you two-weeks unemployment, due to exhausting L's inheritance (the chief source of this organization's funding) during that siege back then.

But Hal hears nothing except the pounding of her ears.

She's Brooklyn bound faster than you can say: "bye-bye, security deposit."

-

Days turn into weeks which, ultimately, collect in months. It's sort of surreal, Hal thinks: this sudden onslaught of purposelessness. Each day sort of melds into the previous one, collectively forming some grim montage of cheap beer, instant ramen, and endless games of solitaire.

Misery covers the world. Sinister men convene nightly in New York City's bars and clubs, scoping out under-aged girls and tempting them with more than free beer. Homicide rates triple.

Tipsy girls sneak home at night, the subway closed, girlfriends gone, last few dollars spent on booze.

If Hal weren't so far gone, she supposes, it might be even funny.

But, a gunshot slices through the dark, kissing bone, muscle, grey matter, and she wonders, dimly, if Mello would hate her for being so unfaithful.

The humid air slides between her skin and bones like cyanide.

Everything stops.

Musings Of a Crazed Fangirl

[Death Note] [Mello/Hal] bye-bye, security deposit