The Mello Code

Mello was feeling quite pleased with himself. The effect would probably be ruined if he didn\'t gag Matt at the earliest opportunity, but that wasn\'t a problem. The ball-gag was dangling from his hand as he surveyed the bathroom door and heard the sounds of Matt emerging from the bath within. Mello smirked, then ducked back to check his appearance one final time. It was the best he could do at short notice, but the overall impression was there. He had had to make do with skin tight leather trousers, tucked into heavy boots, but he had got a baggy white shirt. It had languished in the darkness of his wardrobe unworn since the day it had arrived, because Matt had taken one look and said, \'Oh look, it\'s Near.\' It was nothing like Near\'s shirts, except for its whiteness, but Mello had been put off.



He waited now behind the bedroom door hoping that Matt would hurry up and finish whatever he was doing in the bathroom. Mello smirked. The redhead probably thought he was safe. They had already had sex, hard and fast on the kitchen floor, so he possibly believed his husband to be hard at work in his study. That he wasn\'t, Mello considered, was Matt\'s own fault. He should learn to keep his comments to himself. A feather tickled at Mello\'s chin and he moved it away. It was hot in his long, black coat, but it was necessary for the moment. He listened. It would be even hotter if Matt took much longer about leaving the bathroom.



The door finally clicked open and Matt emerged, still dripping with a towel wrapped around his waist. Mello held his breath, peeping through the crack. His husband was smoking a cigarette, but his goggles were in his hand. Mello grinned. That meant that he might not be able to see until it was too late. Matt passed through the doorway and Mello pounced from behind, pressing a hand holding the ball-gag in place over the redhead\'s shriek. Droplets of water from his hair saturated Mello\'s feathers, as Matt twisted to see. "You can\'t resist me." Mello growled, pulling his husband off balance, and grabbing the wrist that was turning in his direction. A lit cigarette was held in those fingers and Mello had been burned by one of those before. He stretched Matt\'s arm towards the ashtray. "Put it out, Mail."



Matt had stopped struggling now that he definitely knew himself to be held by his husband. He did as he was told now, scaping out the embers on the end of his cigarette. He tried to turn, but Mello pushed his head back. A hand, encased in black leather, ran up Matt\'s chest and enfolded his throat. Another yanked off his towel, then held him around his waist. Matt swallowed around the ball-gag and started to breathe through his nose. Mello nuzzled his neck, kissing along Matt\'s left shoulder. Green eyes slid to survey him, a slight frown on the redhead\'s face. "Worked out what\'s happening to you yet, guapo? You will understand in a minute that it\'s best to submit to my views on certain matters. I know my own mind." Mello drew back before Matt could get a proper look at his face, then knocked a shin against the back of Matt\'s knees. The redhead folded and Mello caught him, lifting him off the ground and cradling him in his arms. Shock, then amusement, then disconcertment registered in Matt\'s gaze, his thought processes transparent behind it as he saw Mello\'s face clearly for the first time.



Mello didn\'t give him time to consider it too much. He strode out of the bedroom and headed straight for the main staircase. Fear flashed across the redhead\'s features and Mello silently understood it. He too had wondered if he could safely run down those stairs carrying his man. Matt might be ridiculously underweight at the moment, but he was still heavy enough for such a distance. It would only take a slip and they would probably both end up falling. Matt momentarily moved to be let down, but Mello held him more tightly and took the stairs at speed. Matt clung to him, wincing. Mello grinned, evilly, "Point of no return, baby!"



They made it. Landing on the tiles below with Mello\'s arms protesting, but they were at the home stretch now. Mello carried his prey into the front room and finally set him down. The room was transformed. Candles burned from every surface and the fire roared inside the fireplace. Everywhere were skulls lifted from Mello\'s library, while the fake fur mat was covered in a red velvet drape. Beside it were a selection of the toys that Matt hadn\'t let him use when Hal was there. Matt stared, then turned to give a withering look at his husband. Mello smirked. The paper mache opera mask, created quickly in his study and blasted into shape with a hairdryer, covered the left side of his face. "Let\'s review the situation, Mail. I said, \'have you got me and Hal tickets for \'Phantom of the Opera?\' and you said, \'no, because I thought you were joking.\' I asked why I would be joking and you commented that you got the reference even if Hal didn\'t. You said that you weren\'t putting up with the post-show angst that I would have, because I couldn\'t possibly have a sense of humour about it. You said that you wouldn\'t get me a little mask to scare small children with, even when I asked you nicely for one. You said that most of all, you weren\'t letting me see \'Phantom\' because you aren\'t going to be Christine." He turned Matt again and wrapped his arms around him. "Wrong, Matty, you are Christine."



Matt raised his hand, trying to pull the mask off, but Mello drew back. Matt\'s shoulders started twitching, the redhead evidently having decided that this was amusing. Mello flew at him, knocking him down onto the red velvet, before moving away into the shadows behind the first row of candles. With the fire and the journey here, Mello was now baking in his feathered coat, so he took the opportunity to dramatically remove it. Flames flickered ominously. "Think it\'s funny, guapo? You were the one who make the comparison." He watched Matt\'s body stiffen. "Do you look at me and think all he needs now is a good singing voice? Does my mask suit me? Do I look like an angel to you now?" He stalked through the rows of candles, aware that beyond a certain point, Matt wouldn\'t be able to see him so well. "I laughed it off, but I\'ve seen into your mind, Jeevas. I know what you were thinking." Matt was shaking his head, his hands rising to remove the ball-gag. "No!" Mello swooped down and knocked Matt onto his back. He growled out. "You will never touch anything that I\'ve put onto you."



The redhead looked afraid and Mello smiled down at him. He took Matt\'s arms and raised them above his head on the red velvet. Two handcuffs were already attached to the grate. They were slotted over his husband\'s wrists and clicked into place. "Do I scare you, baby? I should scare you. Everyone else in the world has the sense to be scared of me." He ran a gloved finger down Matt\'s body, stopping at his pelvis to dance away and to take up a candle. "Look into my eyes, Matty. Do you see a kind man? My soul is as twisted as my face." Mello tipped up the candle and the wax dropped in hot, burning splodges onto Matt\'s chest. "My poor, battered, beautiful baby. I am Satan to you. But the sadist in me takes over more often than you\'d hope." Matt was squirming, so Mello sat on his legs and poured more wax. "Does it burn, baby? Am I cruel to you?" He placed the candle down and took up the nipple clamps. Holding Matt in place with a hand on his chest, Mello clipped the ends over his husband\'s buds. Matt stared at him, his eyes wide. "You searched for an angel and found a monster. You should have run. When you left Wammy\'s, you should have run as fast as you could and never looked back. You found me and now look at you."



Mello glared down at the redhead, watching his mind trying to process the words he was saying. His hand, meanwhile, found a knife and he held it up, so that the flames reflected in it. Matt glanced at it, then met his eyes again. The redhead winked. Mello bowed his head, his mask nearly slipping. It was held on mostly with ordinary paper glue, with just a few pieces of fuse wire concealed underneath and within his hair. He swopped hands and held the mask in place. As much as he favoured his left hand, he could cut well enough with his right and did so, flicking away congealed wax with the tip. It caught often, tiny nicks bubbling with blood. Mello leaned down, his mouth closing over to suck at them, teasing out more. He could feel Matt\'s heart pounding under him; his sex was already hard.



Mello smirked and drew away. "My power over you grows stronger yet." He slashed down and blood poured from a gash in Matt\'s side. The redhead tried to curl onto it, but Mello grabbed his legs, pushing them upwards and leaning with his full body weight against them. Now he selected a toy, a stiff shaft encased in rubber balls, each a little bigger than the one before it. He slid his fingers into Matt\'s entrance first, pressing in the heating lube, a gel that became hotter the longer it was in contact with flesh. Satisfied that the lubrication was enough, Mello pushed in the toy, though Matt kicked against him. "Would you be saying Watari if you could speak, baby? How do you signal stop when you\'re bound and gagged?" He left the toy half penetrating and spread his husband\'s legs, holding them down with a tight hand on each. Mello loomed between them, seeing how Matt was sweating in the heat. Mello empathised. His shirt and trousers were sticking to him and his mask kept threatening to fall off. "Hush, little one. Hush." He stroked Matt\'s stomach as he released a leg, then began pushing the toy in further. The redhead was still. "Good boy. Are you having fun with your angel of the night?"



The response was a coughing fit. Mello waited to see if it would subside, but it quickly became apparent that Matt was choking. Mello reached across and helped his husband turn off his back. When the redhead still shook with the effort to breath, Mello quickly unhooked the ball-gag. Matt spluttered over the red velvet, but his throat was clearing in spitting and raucous coughing. Mello occupied himself smearing blood from the deep cut in Matt\'s side over his own lips. The redhead peered up at him. "Wow! Fucking Hell."



"Did I say you could talk? You\'re in thrall to me." Mello tugged gently on the lead connecting the nipple clamps, until Matt rolled back over onto his back. "I have you in my lair."



"Take the mask off."



"Those who have seen my face draw back in fear."



"Mello, take the fucking mask off."



"Do you want this gag back on?"



Matt bobbed his tongue out. "Do what you fucking what with me, but I want to see your face while you do it. By the way, my fingers and the side of my face are really burning in front of this fire."



"Any more complaints before I gag you again?" Mello smirked. "God you\'re fucking sexy bleeding all over the place like this."



"Thank you. Take the mask off please."



"Does it fill your heart with fear?" Mello narrowed his eyes, aware of the effect through the holes he had cut into them, because he\'d tested it out in the mirror first. "That\'s nothing to what you\'d feel if I took it off."



Matt blinked at him, spitting out a last glob of saliva. It stuck on his chin and glistened in the firelight, until Mello reached down to wipe it off with a gloved finger. "Put it this way, I\'m shagging Mello. I\'m shagging the prettiest person to come out of Wammy\'s and that includes the girls. Do you think I\'d rather be looking at his face or a lump of dried paper? And incidentally, the quotes are totally lost on me. I\'ve never seen the play."



"Neither have I." Mello smiled, secretly pleased with the compliment. He drew patterns on Matt\'s abdomen with his blood. "I\'ve read the book and I\'ve got Nightwish\'s version of the song. It\'s on their \'Symphony of Angels\' CD. Some things you just know by osmosis though."



"Take the fucking mask off." Matt surveyed him carefully. "And while you\'re about it, taking everything else off would be nice too."



Mello\'s eyes narrowed. "You really need lessons in being the helpless victim. I\'m gagging you again." He crawled over Matt\'s prone body and forced the ball-gag back between his teeth, securing it along the same ridge in his drying hair that the straps had originally forged. "Oh, baby boy, you got all clean and now I\'ve made you dirty again." He planted a kiss on Matt\'s exposed forehead, staining it with the blood on his lips. "What a waste of all that hot water." Matt moved his head suddenly, the ridge of the ball-gag catching the inner edge of the mask. It ripped against the inadequate glue, dislodging it enough that inertia pulled against the rest until it dangled, held on only by the fuse-wire hidden in Mello\'s hair. Triumph blazed in the green eyes beneath him. Mello slapped him hard across the cheek. "Naughty boy!"



The Slav scrambled to his feet, holding the mask back in place, but the glue was upstairs and he couldn\'t be bothered to fix it. He gazed down at Matt, while fingers untwisted the wire until the mask came free. His skin thanked him for the coolness. His clothes were sticking to his body and the leather around his groin was nearly unbearably tight. Mello made an executive decision to strip off, even if that did look remarkably like giving in to his husband\'s demands. On the floor beneath him, Matt was squirming, trying to find a position halfway comfortable with the toy jammed into his rectum. Mello smirked and placed a boot onto the redhead\'s genitals to stop him. Matt instantly became still, though his fingers curled away from the fire.



Mello leaned across to position the fireguard to afford some shield from the heat, then roamed around the room replacing the tealights that were dying. Some of the larger candles had been extinguished and those were relit. Then he took his position near to Matt\'s feet, where he was confident that Matt\'s eyesight was good to watch the flamelight dancing against Mello\'s skin as he stripped, slowly and sensually. His gaze remained fixed on Matt; the serpentine smile promising much more than had already been dealt out. Until Mello stood naked, his erection already dripping pre-cum, his stare sultry. "Poor degraded, little man. What am I going to do with you?" Mello knelt, pushing Matt\'s already parted knees down to the velvet. "Poor bruised, battered, cut, stitched, scarred, whipped, tormented, beautiful man. What will I do with you?" His tongue lapped at the cut, undoing the healing that had started to stop the bleeding. He licked up, over the prominent ribcage to the dip at the base of Matt\'s sternum. His husband tasted salty, both of them so hot in the midst of so much fire. Mello\'s fingernails scratched up the inside of Matt\'s thighs, then he could wait no longer. Even as his mind devised other tortures, his loins told him that they would have to wait until next time. "I want you."



Mello pulled out the toy with less patience than it had been inserted. Matt\'s chin rose and his back arched as it slid free. Mello was immediately there, positioning himself to take its place. His hands glided over Matt\'s sides, pressing against his hips, then thrusting inside as soon as he had the leverage. The heat was even greater in there; Mello remembered too late about the heating lube, but he didn\'t let it put him off. In fact, it added to the sensation and he moaned aloud. "Mail! Oh my God! Mail!" The temperature was stifling. Mello plunged in feeling no resistance at all. He leaned forward, between his husband\'s thighs, holding the man down as his administrations would have nudged him against the grate. He removed the nipple clamps for no other reason than they were in the way. His skin burned against Matt\'s, but he had access to his throat now, kissing and sucking it. The collar was hot. Mello thrust in harder, no friction fast or frenzied enough for his need for release. Beneath him, Matt pressed against him, his head back, his heart thundering. Mello\'s hand slid down, smearing blood en route to Matt\'s shaft. He had barely touched it, when Matt came. The redhead\'s whole body shuddered, gutteral moans sounding the depths of his throat. The sight urged Mello on and he erupted inside Matt\'s body, seeing stars and nearly fainting over him.



They lay, still, gasping for breath. Mello unhooked the ball-gag, fastening his mouth over Matt\'s as soon as he could move again. The redhead was started moving under him, already aroused again. Their tongues fought each other\'s for supremacy. Mello realised how powerfully thirsty he was, for water and his man in equal measure, though the water quickly grew in urgency the instant the need had been acknowledged. He drew back, grinning. "Wow. Guapo. That was..."



"Yes, it was." Matt stared at him, his lips turning in a slow smile. "I need a drink."



"Me too." Mello sprang up and raced into the kitchen, shocked by just how cool it was in the rest of the house. He grabbed two bottles of water and a bar of chocolate out of the fridge. He made it to the doorway before dashing back to also pick up a pouch of tobacco, Rizlas, filter tips, a lighter and the First Aid kit. His haul felt like their life in microcosm. He laughed and took it back into the front room. Heat hit as solidly as the coldness had outside. Matt was panting on the ruined velvet, body twisted to inspect the handcuffs. "Planning on escape, rojo bebé?"



Matt fell back and grinned at him. "Not particularly."



Mello opened the water and took a long swig before holding Matt\'s head so that he could do the same. Their eyes met and their smiles turned into amused chuckles. "I captured you."



"I noticed." He nodded towards the paraphrenalia of smoking. "Can I have a cigarette please?"



Mello unwrapped his chocolate and took a big bite out of it. "I suppose I\'ll have to uncuff you then, unless you\'re going to give me a crash course on rolling. Why are you rolling your own anyway? We can afford filter fags, you know."



"I like the taste better and it doesn\'t make me cough so much. Haven\'t you noticed I can get out of bed without coughing up an oyster these days?"



"I\'m normally up and about by the time you get up." Mello leaned over him and found the keys that he had hidden by the side of the fireplace. The handcuffs were surprisingly hot and he blinked. "Shit! They must have been hard to wear. Have I burned you?"



Matt laughed and couldn\'t stop. It ended in another coughing fit and Mello couldn\'t quite see the joke. Matt noticed and it made him worse. He eventually took up his bottle of water and emptied half of it in long gulps, before tipping the rest of it over his neck and chest. "That\'s better." He gasped, as he reached to roll a cigarette. Mello watched him, silently devouring his chocolate bar. Matt lit up, then slowly inspected his own chest and arms, turning to peer over each shoulder, then moving his legs to survey each section of them. Then he bowed his head, laughing loudly.



"Masochist humour?" Mello ventured.



"Look at the fucking state of me." Matt spluttered, removing his cigarette to laugh and speak. "You sadistic bastard."



Mello frowned. "You want me to stop?"



"God no." He opened his arms and Mello crawled into them. They lay together on the soggy velvet, that clung to them and puckered with each movement. "I like the candles thing."



"I brought them down from my library. You take forever in the bath, by the way."



"I need another one now."



"Yes." Mello smirked. "Did you like my \'Phantom of the Opera\'?"



"Very nice." Matt flicked his ash towards the fire. "Was it the Cliff Richard or the the Michael Ball version you said you had?"



Mello slapped him. "Nightwish. Gothic heavy metal version. I love how you seem endlessly determined for me to be linked with any music other than what I actually listen to. I still want tickets for the West End though. I told Hal I\'d take her. I thought I\'d treat her to a meal before the show. Come with us."



"Sounds like Hell. No thanks."



"Aren\'t you scared I\'ll run off with Hal and..." He paused as Matt chuckled nastily. "What?"



"You\'re as bent as a nine bob note. No, I\'m not scared you\'ll run off with Hal."



Mello laughed and kissed him. Their love-making this time round was slow and tender, only the heat a reminder of the first frenzy. Then they slept, wrapped up in each other\'s arms, despite Matt\'s assertions that he could never sleep unless cocooned in a quilt. Mello noted that, as his eyes closed and he allowed the darkness to softly take him. They would awake in the early hours, when the fire had died down and most of the candles burned out. Briefly panicking over the fact that they had slept with so many fire risks burning unattended, before shivering up the stairs and creeping bloody beneath the quilts. Any regrets could be washed away in the morning.