The Mello Code

"You know there\'s a stereotype that it always rains in Manchester?" Mello wasn\'t looking at Matt, so he didn\'t feel the need to respond. His suspicions were confirmed when Mello folded his arms and sat back in his seat, glaring out of the glass front of the cafe. "Well, you\'re not helping your reputation with this!" Apparently undaunted by Mello\'s views on the subject, the rain continued to fall on the city outside. "This isn\'t helpful."



Matt continued to scroll through the options on the website displayed on his laptop. It had taken them five hours to drive to Manchester, an hour and half of which had been stuck in traffic in Staffordshire. They had arrived to discover that the officer they had been due to meet had been called away at the last minute. "Ok, we\'re in at the Midland Hotel." It was the first higher star rating he\'d found in the vicinity of where they had parked their car. Matt personally didn\'t care where they ended up as long as it had WiFi, but five stars lessened the number of things that Mello could find to whinge about. Four stars would just have to do. "I\'ll have another cup of tea please. I\'m just nipping to that shop two doors down to get some cigarettes."



Mello sat up straight. "I thought you..."



"You said you were working on the paranoia. I\'ll be two minutes." Matt slid his laptop back into his bag and pushed that up against the leg of Mello\'s chair. He sauntered out, turned the corner and ran. Images filled his mind of Mello watching his progress on the GPS map on his mobile phone, but it couldn\'t be helped. Mello was turning into a real pain in the backside and it should be nipped in the bud. Matt reached the store that he had clocked on the way up there and darted into it. It took him less than a minute to make his purchase and race out again. Mello was in the cafe doorway, scowling at him. "That is not working on your paranoia. Have I got a cup of tea?"



Mello stepped backwards into the cafe. "I was just..."



"I know what you were just doing." Matt resumed his seat. "I know you hate surprises, but tough. You\'ve got one. Instead of sitting around being a moody bastard all day, you can have an early birthday present. I\'ve reserved tickets for this afternoon\'s Manchester United match and," Matt handed over a carrier bag, "it might not be stylish for you now, but there\'s pre-pubescent boy inside you, who really wanted one of these."



Mello peered inside and lifted out this season\'s Manchester United shirt. His expression stayed blankly neutral for a few seconds, then he smiled coyly up. "That\'s really thoughtful."



Matt shrugged. "Maybe I\'m just sick of you looking so het up and miserable. How many times have you seen them play?"



"Never." Mello bit his lip, his gaze softened. "Not live. I\'ve watched hundreds of matches on my laptop, but never been to Old Trafford." His grin transformed his features. "It never even crossed my mind."



"Much."



"No, it didn\'t." Mello quickly tugged off his jacket and let it fall onto the back of his chair. His arms immediately rose into goosebumps despite the moderate heat of the cafe. He bit off the plastic tags and labels, then put it on. Eyes shone with delight as he surveyed Matt. "This is so romantic!"



Matt frowned. "A Man United strip is romantic? I thought that was flowers and chocolate."



Mello was starting to shiver, so he reluctantly put his jacket back on, but kept the front unzipped. He kept looking down at his chest and back up to Matt. "This is really thoughtful."



"You said." Matt flushed slightly. "I\'m getting another tea, do you want coffee? I\'ve got my eye on that lemon meringue as well. Oh, no chocolate cake." He wandered away before Mello could embarrass him further. Yet he was secretly pleased. Matt had expected that there might be some grumbling about surprises and events happening that hadn\'t been controlled by the blond from the outset. He had thought that he might slowly bring him round to almost believing that Mello had been the one to orchestrate this. In fact, Matt had his whole strategy in appeasement worked out. But instead the Slav was gushing like an adolescent girl. "Mello, there\'s chocolate brownies. Want one?"



"Yes please." Mello breathed. Matt glanced back. His husband was radiating camp. His whole stance simpered. "Thank you."



Matt shook his head and brought their refills and cake. He paused, noticing that the left side of the cafe opened up into a massive gallery. There was an escalator and a gift shop. He turned back to look at the clock that was behind the counter. They had a couple of hours to kill before the match. Matt decided not to mention art galleries to Mello, on the basis that they needed to check into the hotel soon enough for Matt to ensure his PSP had enough battery charge to see him through 90 minutes of football. He wandered back to his husband. Mello hadn\'t stopped grinning. "Shall we drink up these and find the Midland Hotel?" Mello nodded. Matt peered at him. "I really don\'t get you."



"How am I confusing you, love of my life?"



Matt stared at him. What he wanted to say was that Mello had been oozing testosterone for weeks. For the rest of the country, football was one of the great bastians of masculinity, yet Mello had put on a football strip and immediately got in touch with his feminine side. "You know, I just like the fact that you\'re a happy boy. Exalt in the knowledge that you\'re keeping me on your toes. You like your top then?"



"I love that you went and bought it for me." Mello leaned closer and, for a moment, Matt thought he was going to kiss him. Then he wondered why that notion bothered him so much. There was some in-built prejudice on his own part, Matt decided, analysing himself with the ruthless objectivity that had been hammered into them at Wammy\'s House. He realised that he assumed that anyone north of the Watford Gap was a homophobic bruiser, with their knuckles scraping along the floor. His own bigotry surprised him. Especially since the evidence of their surroundings, this open-plan, arthouse cafe, was very much in contradiction of his presumption. "I love watching you think. I love how your eyes lose their focus as you look inside your own head. I know it\'s not deep thought, because your fingers aren\'t moving. But I think about the sort of thoughts that could be sparking inside that awesome brain of yours and it," Mello leaned even closer, "really turns me on." Matt turned slightly and kissed him. It was just a peck, but Mello smirked and drew back looking thrilled. "Is your lemon meringue nice?"



"Very." Matt grinned, shovelling another spoonful of it into his mouth. Mello was watching him keenly. Matt tried to imagine what the white meringue and lemon curd could be translating as in his husband\'s mind. It was ridiculously easy for that thought to become lewd. Matt laughed. "Eat your brownie." Mello nodded. He disdained his fork to lift the stiff cake in his fingers to his mouth. His lips encased the end and Mello closed his eyes. Matt slapped his thigh. "Eat it properly."



Mello chuckled over the brownie, his tongue lapping across it. "I am."



"I\'m not watching you."



"You are."



Matt ostentatiously turned away, finishing his own cake and refilling his cup from the teapot. "We need to go back the way we came. The hotel is near to where we parked the car. It\'s also near a tram station, which will take us to Old Trafford. I want to check in quite quickly because I need to charge my PSP." He glanced back up to see how Mello had received that news. The blond had devoured most of the brownie, but the end protruded from between his lips and was sucked in the second he saw Matt looking. "You\'re a fucking pricktease, you are."



Mello smirked. He tidied their crockery onto the tray and folded the carrier bag into his pocket. "Let\'s go and find this hotel room, baby."



The hotel turned out to be grand in a way that only the Edwardians ever seemed to manage to pull off. There was an overall impression of gold everywhere, not least in the giant Christmas tree, which rose to dizzying heights in the reception hall. A uniformed doorman opened the glass door for them, while a porter hovered ready to carry their bags. Both clutched their own and refused his services. Across the vast hall, a couple of steps led to a wide dias, where people lounged in easy chairs. The bar behind them looked very well stocked. Mello signed in, using the alias that Matt had reserved their room under, then received the key. He turned to locate the twin lifts, but Matt leaned onto the counter. "Is there a smoking area in the hotel?"



The receptionist frowned. "The hotel is non-smoking, Sir. Also no smoking outside the front doors. There\'s a backdoor down that corridor. If Sir turns left, there is a smoking area a few feet along."



Matt peered down the corridor. It seemed to go on forever and he couldn\'t even see the exit from there. "Right." He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and loped towards the lift door.



Mello fell into step and bowed his head. "We won\'t stay here long. Just do what we need to and then go out again." The lift arrived in a twinkling of lights behind the gold Art Deco decorations. "Erm, Matty, Old Trafford is bound to be non-smoking as well. We\'ll find a drugstore."



Matt shrugged, "I\'d love to see what you get if you ask for a drugstore in Manchester." He followed Mello into the lift. "You were only in America for a couple of year and you still come out with the odd Americanism. In fact, you still have a slight American accent."



Mello immediately slipped into the received pronunciation Home Counties diction taught to them in their childhood. "Would you prefer me to enunciate like this?"



"If I get to choose," Matt smirked, "Me gustaría que hablaras en Español, por favor."



"Ok." Mello fixed his gaze upon him. "Me gustaría tomarte en mis brazos y desnudarte. Clavártela fuertemente y hasta el fondo contra la pared. Usarte hasta que grites de placer y te corras por toda la fina decoración de este hotel tan elegante."



Matt blushed from the tips of his ears until halfway down his chest. He had no idea how he let Mello get to him like this, especially after all this time together. It was the sheer unexpectedness of his comments, delivered in such upper-crust surroundings. The lift door opened and Matt scurried out, his sex twitching in reaction to Mello\'s blatant flirting. Their room was at the far end of two long corridors. It felt like it would take an age to get from it to the nearest smoking area. The thought was like a drench of cold water over the state that Mello was provoking in him. Matt\'s lips were pursed together, as he waited for Mello to insert the keycard and for the door to open.



The room was reasonably spacious, once they had manoevred themselves through the small entrance. A king-sized double bed, with its gold-coloured counterpane, lay beneath an ornate, floor to ceiling image of archways. They sank into the carpet, gazing at the furniture. It all recalled the heady days of genteel Edwardiana. The huge television-cum-monitor looked very out of place beside the antique writing bureau. Matt immediately crossed to the windows. A decorative, ironwork grill could be seen through the double-glazing. He knew before he even tried them that they would open only a crack. Even if he got his screwdriver to it, there would still be the grill to contend with. He didn\'t have metal cutters on his keyring. Matt dropped his bag and searched through for his power-pack. He silently plugged it into the socket and began charging his PSP.



Mello had jumped backwards onto the bed. He half-lay, rubbing the palm of his hand across the mattress. "Ooh, esto está bastante firme."



Matt laughed. "Ok! Ok!" He rose and knelt on the bed. It was, indeed, firm. Matt edged forward towards Mello. "You can go back to that half-English, half-American, pinch of Slavic accent if you like. Your Spanish is going straight to my head." His gaze dipped so that his husband knew which head precisely Matt was referring to. A thought occurred. "What\'s my accent? I don\'t think I have one."



Mello switched back to the received pronunciation. "Oh you speak very proper, Matt. Though I have heard you produce a passable Hampshire when you were with your friends at the flat. More lower end of Southampton than Winchester, which proves you were copying them."



"Oh come on! There has to be a bit of Spanish somewhere. There\'s something undefinable about occasional sounds with you. Mainly on a couple of vowels and sometimes sibilant consonants."



Mello stared. "My accent is perfect for whichever language I\'m speaking."



"Say \'ear\'."



"Ear."



"Say it like you usually say it."



"Ear."



Matt rolled his eyes. "I\'ll point it out next time you do it, but there\'s definitely an edge occasionally that I now know to be Slavic. I used to think it was Russian. In fact, I spent the entire of our time at Wammy\'s thinking you were Russian."



"Why?"



"I have no idea." He searched his memory. "Ah! Didn\'t Mikhail Gorbachev get some kind of reward? We were only kids. There was a big debate in the common room about whether it was warranted."



"Mihael sounds nothing like Mikhail. You might as well have said that I\'m German because of Michael Schumacher." Mello stretched out a hand to clutch the material of Matt\'s jacket. He drew him down inches away from a kiss. "How long have we got until we\'re going to," Mello stopped. His eyes widened and he bit his lip over a huge smile, "Old Trafford?"



"Just over an hour, but we have to find a chemists. Plus we have to get there." Dread washed through him again. Matt glanced at his PSP, his mind making urgent calculations. "How far away is it?"



Mello quickly kissed him, then rolled away. "I\'ll find out, shall I?" He shrugged off his jacket and reached for his own bag, with his laptop inside it. Then paused to look in the full-length mirrors covering the front of the wardrobe. "My shirt looks so good!" He abandoned the laptop to parade in front of the mirror, smiling at his own reflection. His hands smoothed down the creases and Mello frowned as he felt his leather motorcycle vest underneath. It would have to go. He quickly pulled the t-shirt over his head, removed the vest and dressed in the t-shirt again. This time there were no bumps or creases. It hung perfectly. "Thank you for buying me this, Matty. I look great."



"Pleasure." Matt urgented pressed the back button and scrolled through another site. "Ok, it\'s good. It seems that the stadium isn\'t far away and the Metrolink leaves from just over the road. It just doesn\'t say how long it\'s going to take the Metro to get us there." He frowned. "It\'s a ten minute walk from the tram to the grounds at the other end. This poster says to get there at least fifteen minutes before kick-off because of the crowds. None of them say how long the fucking tram takes to get there though!" Matt glanced back towards his PSP and caught sight of Mello. The blond looked stricken in front in of the mirror. Matt closed his eyes. Then opened them to look back. "Hey, Mello." He grinned. "We\'re going to see Man. U. play. Exciting!"



Mello flashed a weak smile and bent to pick up the PSP. "There\'s half a bar of charge. A match is only 90 minutes. You will have the distraction of men running around in shorts as well."



Matt nodded, affecting a happy air. "It will be great." He closed his laptop and eased it back into his bag. Then he opened his overnight bag and reached in to grab another packet of cigarettes. His fingers touched a hard case and Matt\'s heart leapt. "Mell! I packed my DS as well! I hadn\'t realised!"



"Joy, happy joy." Mello stated blandly. "So you might survive this after all. I\'m so glad." He picked up his jacket. "Shall we go and find a drugstore and the tram then? Outside, where you can smoke your little head off?"



"Sorry, I\'m being a pain in the jacksy, aren\'t I?"



Mello smirked. "I understood at the time that I was marrying a junkie. I agreed to take on your addictions as I said my vows." He brought a bar of chocolate to his mouth and snapped a piece off with a wink. "Come on then, guapo. This is going to be great!"