The Mello Code

The rain was bucketing down, almost horizontally it seemed, and even Matt's considerable driving skills couldn't stop his heavy car occasionally jolting to the side with the force of the wind against it. They were hurtling south on the M6 and visibility was very low. Night had fallen and every other vehicle appeared silver in the spray that each was giving off. Each lorry drowned their windowshield in water, as they passed them. Matt responded by putting his foot down.



"Matty." Mello commented carefully, after twenty minutes of staring silently at the motorway ahead. "If I take Iggy Pop off and put some of your tunes on, will you slow down a bit? I'm trusting that you can actually see better than I think you can through those goggles."



"Chemical Brothers. Exit Planet Dust."



"CD or iPod?"



"CD in the case." Matt blinked behind his goggles. The wipers were on full, cascading water, but not fast enough to adequately clear the windowshield. Matt made a mental note to check the blades and replace them if they were becoming worn. Mello inserted the CD and the sawing heartbeat of 'Leave Home' filled the car. There came the repeated line of 'the brother's gonna work it out' and Matt released a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding. He debated the wisdom of opening a window to flick his ash outside. The rain was pelting against it.



Mello coughed slightly. "You didn't actually slow down. You went faster."



Matt sighed. "Mell, I just want to get home, ok?" A sign flashed by, blue and flourescent white. Matt read it as much from the snapshot in his eidetic memory banks, as he did the real thing. They were approaching junction 11, where the roadbuilders were anxious to divert people on the toll road. It didn't go in their direction or else Matt would have quite happily paid extortionate prices to reach more quickly where he could have gone for free. Floodlights filled the road and, beside him, Mello relaxed almost imperceptively. Visibility was much better here. "Sorry I'm being an arse."



"I thought you were just being quiet." Mello commented, as if it was of no consequence. Ahead, the motorway split confusingly between toll and free roads, a wall rose like a cliff-face to their right and all the traffic became funnelled into two lanes. "What set you off?"



It happened so fast. The road ahead of them exploded into disorientating confusion. One vehicle after another careered into the one in front; some ricochetted out into those attempting to pass. A series of loud, scraping bangs thudded through the air, but it was impossible to tell what was going to happen next. Cars seemed to roll in from nowhere in all directions, ghostly in their sudden appearance, lethal in their out of control spinning. The roaring plunge of metal on metal. A lorry jack-knifed and, for a split second, it seemed inevitable that it was going to crash down on top of them. The wall of the toll road by-pass loomed in Matt's side-window and they tore sideways, passing through chaos on either side. Mello tried to raise his feet to the dashboard, but he was being tossed too much. His seat-belt sliced into his chest and shoulder.



Then they were clear. The road ahead of them empty of traffic, while destruction littered their wake. It was eerie. Mello found himself wondering, in all sincerity, if they were actually dead and it was their ghosts which drove out of that mess. It really did seem like the only rational explanation. Matt drove in a dead calm, his lips moving, "Thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen." It was too late to leave the junction, but Hilton Park Services was only a little way beyond. They could see the lights and the sliproad. "Mello, call the emergency services."



Mello blinked and unfurled. He grabbed his chocolate and then hunted for his phone. The former was a reflex action. He understood that he was in shock. He tried to speak unemotionally and was surprised to find that that was precisely how his tone emerged. "How are we still alive?" The operator was asking him which service he required. Mello nearly replied 'all of them', but opted for ambulance. "There's been a big accident, junction 11 southbound. Several vehicles involved."



"Fifteen." Matt commented flatly, as he turned into the carpark of the services and slid into a parking slot. "Definitely thirteen cars, then one lorry. I didn't see the fifteenth hit."



Rain lashed down on their car. The operator asked her questions with professional efficiency. Mello answered with equal poise, while inside his mind was reeling, only half-believing and not understanding what had happened. The not understanding became, in and of itself, another cause for alarm. Matt had switched off the engine. He stared at the saturated glass, unable to see through it, but not needing to. His gaze was fixed on distance a long way from here. Mello finished his call. Bizarrely, it seemed that the second the authoratively unruffled woman was no longer talking in his ear, Mello could think again. He turned to look at his husband. Matt was just sitting there. "Jeevas, that is the best fucking driving you have done in your life."



Matt heard him, but Mello's voice felt detached, like it was in another world or room or simply elsewhere. Matt could see the darkness and smell the rust. That particular musty filthiness. He could feel things crawling over him. He wrapped his arms around his chest and clutched his own shoulders. A voice screamed inside to play a game, light a cigarette, find Mello, touch your collar. Matt blinked, not understanding it. He heard the sound of metal pounding. He felt a terrible hunger. He moved swiftly, opening the door and stumbling out into the rain. It jolted him. He stood there getting drenched, with Mello calling his name, but it felt like awakening from a dream. He was starting to hyperventilate. "Mello! Mello!" Matt screamed. There was a thud of a car door and Matt's vision was suddenly filled with the blond. Anxiety darted through his heart and mind, but it was better than the disorientating numbness. "Mello! I can't breathe! I can't..."



"You're breathing, Matty." Mello was trying to push him back into the car, out of the rain. "Honestly, you are breathing."



Matt fought him, running free for just a few steps, through the slag-heaps of rubbish piled high in the backyard. Mello caught him, grabbing him around his waist with all his strength. The yard became the rain-soaked carpark again. The services illuminated just a few yards ahead. They could hear the sirens of emergency vehicles rushing behind them and along the motorway. "Hyperventilating!"



Mello slapped him soundly across the cheek. "Mail!" There was an angry edge to Mello's glinting glare. "Mail, you're having a panic attack. Look at me."



Matt looked. Mello's hair was dripping water, down onto the fake fur of his hood. Distantly, Matt wondered why Mello didn't put his hood up. It would have protected his head. Mello's hand gripped Matt's collar and held him steady. Matt felt himself breathing, though the hunger didn't recede. He saw his own car door wide open, several feet away, and, as if a switch in his psyche had been flicked, Matt landed back into himself. He panted, but he was breathing. He was in a carpark, getting soaked, just past junction 11 of the M6. "I'm ok." Matt assured Mello. "I'm ok. I just need a cigarette."



Mello nodded and stalked away to retrieve the keys and lock up the car. He returned to grab Matt's arm and to half-drag him through the automatic doors, into the shelter of the services. There was nobody around, just the soft hum of an operative cleaning the floor with a motorised buffer somewhere out of view. "What just happened to you, baby? Panic attack? That's what it looked like. It was the metal, wasn't it?"



"Don't!" Matt raised his hand, as if that could ward off the suggestion that might, in turn, spark his memories again. Water splattered down from their clothes and hair, creating a puddle on the tiles. "I need a cigarette." He patted down his pocket, but it was Mello who handed over the tin filled with the hand-rolled that Matt had prepared earlier. That seemed like a million years ago. Listening to Greater Manchester CID asking a second round of questions dictated to them by Mello, then watching Mr Singh being told that he would be detained overnight. Mr Singh had been told that he had an off-spring studying at the University of Southampton and had confirmed it readily, seeming shocked that they knew so much about him. In truth, he could have been released, but Mello wanted to speak to the son without a tip-off reaching him first. "I'm going back outside for a cigarette."



"Matt, just smoke it here. I'll deal with anyone who complains." Mello was watching him with a curious look on his face. Demons of his own dancing in his eyes. Matt understood. There had been flames out there. Mello wasn't quite pyrophobic, but he had a wariness of fire that bordered on it. It hadn't stopped him walking through a burning building in Croatia, to rescue Luka Martinovic from a brothel, a few months ago. Matt reached out and patted Mello's arm. The blond blinked at him.



"You realise that we're in shock." Matt commented cautiously.



Mello shrugged and looked away, as if denying that he was or ever could be experiencing shock. His reply belied the sentiment though. "Yes, I know."



Matt followed his gaze, looking around. The services were practically empty. It was only in the vicinity of eight o'clock at night, but it felt later. The shop had a white, grill shutter down over its entrance. An A4 sized note sellotaped to it informed them that it would be open in five minutes. "No-one else has walked in since we got here."



"I know." Mello touched his rosary, but there were no prayers just yet. "The motorway will be closed. That will have backed up traffic. No-one else drove through it." He was watching a woman watching them from behind the counter in the self-service restaurant. His mind caught up with his own words. "No-one else drove through it." Mello turned on his heels and ran to the glass door, peering out into the darkness and the rain, trying to determine if any cars out there had survivors sitting in them. All he could see where the blue flashing lights of emergency vehicles rushing back and forth. "You drove through it, Matty. Through it."



Matt froze, his expression and his stance betraying that he was looking to see if he was in trouble for this. "I drove."



Mello flashed an incredulous smile of reassurance. "How fucking fast does your mind work? Yeah, adrenaline sharpening it, but..." The blond frowned. "I could probably have done the same thing. Yeah, I probably could have."



"You would have."



Mello nodded. "I think we should have a hot drink." He took off into the restaurant, only turning at the threshold to watch Matt crouching to extinguish the butt of his cigarette in the puddle at his feet. As if it was more illegal to smoke inside the restaurant than it was out in the foyer. He suddenly had a burning urge to call someone, anyone, and tell them that he and Matt had just had the near miss of their lives, but they were alright. Maybe telling someone that they were alright would make it seem real to him too. "Matt! I don't even recall enough space to drive a car through! The timing and spatial awareness..." He gagged, his gloved hand rising to cover his mouth. "You couldn't have even driven that well in Japan. You had more room there."



"Mello, stop." Matt breathed out and joined him. He felt much calmer now. "There was patently enough room, because we got through. Do you want a hot chocolate?"



Mello stared back at the doors. Was that more dangerous than the night the Mafia hideout was blown up in Los Angeles? Was it more dangerous than the countless occasions before that when a wrong move could have seen him clipped? Had he been any closer to death than he was in Japan, when Takada spelled his name wrong? Matt was tugging on the sleeve of his jacket. "What?"



"This lady has just asked how big the accident was." Matt nodded towards the woman behind the counter. Her name tag informed them that her name was Brenda.



"Very big." Mello confirmed. "At least fifteen vehicles." He turned his head to stare at Matt again. "How the fuck did you count the bloody vehicles?"



"A large hot chocolate with as much sugar as you can spare and a mug of tea please."



Brenda pointed to the machine right in front of them. "You pour your own and pay me for it at the end of the counter."



Matt stared at the vending machine. He knew, on some vague level, that this wasn't difficult. His mind, however, shrank away from being able to work it out. "Mello, you do this. I'll pay for it." In a daze, Mello activated it, then carried their drinks behind Matt. "I'm starving. Are you still serving food?"



Brenda glanced at the long counter of hot plates, keeping warm the meals advertised on huge boards behind her. Matt followed her gaze. He had just walked past them. "Yes, we are still serving food."



Matt blushed crimson. It was Mello who replied. "I'm sorry, we're in shock." He put the drinks down in front of her and threw a twenty pound note beside them. "How the Hell can you even think of eating?"



"I'm starving." Matt doubled back and read the board. "Toad-in-the-hole and mash, with peas please. Oh! And some French fries. What soup have you got on?"



Mello rested his hands on the bar before the till and leaned with his whole weight on them. His head bowed, he rasped, "Matt, there's no way you're going to eat all that. You ate a huge pizza before we left Manchester."



"You're whinging about me eating now?" Matt snapped. "You're normally moaning because I'm not eating enough."



"Fine!" Mello stood up properly and smiled charmingly at Brenda. "I'm having my hot chocolate now. There's the money." He picked it up before she could protest and carried it to a booth. There he sat, sipping it until the prayers came. Mello was halfway through the 'De Profundis', when his husband joined him with a tray piled high with food. Mello rushed to the end of the prayer, aware that he hadn't felt it and so it probably didn't count. Matt was shovelling toad-in-the-hole and mash into his mouth like he was afraid it would be taken off him; so fast that he barely chewed before swallowing. Mello took in the muffins, chips, packets of crisps, an orange, a pre-packed Mediterranean grilled vegetable sandwich, a pot of sun-dried tomatoes and a cookie. "You do realise that you're never going to eat all this stuff, don't you? It's just a reaction to..." Mello frowned. "What did you see on the carpark, Matty?"



"Rain." Matt replied through a mouthful of mash.



"I deduce that your delayed reaction freak out, after hearing so much banging of metal, sparked an eidetic hallucination. Your body now thinks that you're three years old and starving. Am I right?"



"Stop acting like you're calm and sane."



Mello smirked. "I think I am now. I just needed to sit down quiet, drink my hot chocolate and let my mind catch up with my instincts. They were still set on flight or fight. In a minute, you are going to calm down too and realise that you're really quite full. You're also going to remember that you don't like sun-dried tomatoes."



"I do."



"You don't, Matt. Honestly, you don't." Mello reached across to pick up his chocolate from where he'd flung it when he first sat down. "You class it with olives and rocket salad." He picked up the sandwich and inspected it. "Interesting subliminal messages that your mind is trying to tell you."



Matt scowled. His plate was already cleared and he was starting on the chips. "You're analysing me so you can feel in control of your environment again, Mello. Two can play at that game."



"Oh look! The sun-dried tomatoes come from Spain! What do you know?" Mello tipped up the pot so that Matt could read the lid. "It says so right on the top."



"Oh look! Mello's feeling things too deeply again, so he's gone all sardonic and is looking for things to pick on me about." Matt picked up his cigarette tin. "I'm going outside for one."



"Don't go out there without me." Mello started to collect up all the portable food. "You haven't finished your chips."



"Fuck off." Matt rounded the corner and dashed outside. There was a three foot gap before he was exposed to the elements. Even within it, rain bounced off the floor to lash up at him. The night was filled with the sound of sirens. His cigarette got wet the instant he picked it out of the tin. Mello appeared behind him. "What now?"



Mello shrugged. He'd acquired a carrier bag from Brenda and it bulged with Matt's food haul. "We go home. There's not a lot else we can do." He stepped out into the rain. "I'm driving."



"Oh?" Matt jogged after him. "Because I was so shit at it?"



Mello shook his head. He yelled to be heard over the din. "You were fucking brilliant at it. We're alive now because you drove in a way that I can't fully comprehend even now." He opened the driver's door and threw the carrier onto the back seat as he sat down. He unlocked the passenger side for Matt to step in out of the rain too. "Honestly, Matty, that's the best driving I have ever witnessed. It's beyond genius and into the realms of the mythical."



"So why are you driving now?"



"Because, as you so often point out, I'm a control freak." Mello turned on the engine and fastened his seat-belt. Neither of them were looking forward to the remainder of the journey. It was going to take at least three hours, possibly five. "I'm not going fast. I don't care if we don't get there until well past midnight, we're going slow."



Matt flashed him a disdainful look. Its effectiveness was diminished greatly by his steamed up goggles and the red hair plastered across his forehead. "Mello, I doubt you know how to drive slowly, but be my guest."



Mello crossed himself and took them out of there.