The Mello Code

Matt smiled across the dining table. They very rarely ate in the parlour, the kitchen being far more convenient for both serving up and clearing away, but they were in here now. The candlelight reflected in Mello\'s twinkling eyes. He had been surprised the first time the gate bell had rung. That time, mid-morning, Mello had been in the bath, soaking away the recent stresses and working his way through his new lotions. Matt had had to take his delivery of flowers in there and, though Mello denied it, he had squealed at the sight of them. The second time the gate bell had rung, Mello had grinned at Matt in anticipation, then darted away into the hall, before returning to ask if he was allowed to respond to it. It had been the external caterings delivering a four course meal for two. The remnants of it lay between them now.



"I dare you to say I\'m not romantic now."



Mello\'s grin was coquettish. "You\'ve certainly pulled rabbits out of hats today." He winked at his husband. "I\'ll, of course, expect this all the time now."



"You\'re not twenty-one every day."



"I will be for the next year."



Matt laughed. There was no reply to that. "So did you get everything you wanted?" Matt sat back. "It\'s your day, there\'s still time for things to happen, if you want them to."



"I didn\'t get any sex."



"That will be coming. I\'ll strip myself naked and wrap myself in ribbon. How\'s that?"



Mello leaned forward, patently flirting, with his gestures and long looks. "That sounds perfect. I really have had a lovely day, thank you." His hand snaked out to stroke Matt\'s finger. "There was a little something."



Matt leaned forward too. They couldn\'t actually kiss, because the table was too wide, but he attempted to flirt right back. "And what\'s that, Mello?" He caught the slightly too sharp glance upwards. "Now I\'m really worried. You wouldn\'t be lacing your request with layers of \'I want to fuck you\', if it wasn\'t something scary." He chuckled. "What is it?"



"How would you like to go out and do something totally reckless?"



Alarm bells sounded in Matt\'s head. "That\'s not relaxing in the house and shutting the world out, Dr Keehl. That\'s, well, going out." Matt\'s mind span through the possibilities of what Mello might want to do out there. He had to admit that, other than having sex, there seemed remarkably little to do in the house with the internet disconnected. There were films, games, books and, radically, conversations, but none of them held any lure for the unplugged. "You want to go to Wammy\'s House and tackle Hal about your doctorate."



"No." Mello rose. "Humour me, baby?"



"I\'ve been drinking."



"I haven\'t." Mello indicated the half-full glass of wine, which he had sipped with his meal. "I\'m sober enough to drive."



Matt nodded, bowing to the inevitable. He grabbed both the opened and unopened bottles of wine and wandered around the dining table to the door. "Do I need to dress up?"



"No, you\'re fine like that. Though boots and a jacket might be good." Mello caught him in the doorway and they paused in a lingering kiss. "That was beautiful food. Thank you for arranging it."



"De nada." Matt smiled, reaching for another kiss. "Where are we going?"



Mello just grinned at him. It was serpentine. "Can I leave it as a surprise, baby?"



Matt leaned against the wall. It was cold out and he was full. Mello was looking at him like sex was imminent. "Isn\'t this the wrong way around? Me getting surprises on your birthday?" Matt bit his lip. Mello was undulating towards the cloakroom. "You\'re really making me nervous. You don\'t flirt this much when..." He failed to find a suitable analogy, so covered it with going to fetch his own jacket and boots from his study. He took a hundred pounds out of the safe and wandered over to the landing balcony to call down. "Do I need weapons?"



There was a distinct beeping from the hallway. Mello had his coat on already and was playing on his PSP. "Probably best." He responded.



Matt stared. That drastically reduced the number of places where they were headed. He returned to his study and slid a knife into his boots before taking out a semi-automatic to stick into the collar of his jacket. He gathered up the wine bottles from the stairs, where he\'d left them, then joined Mello in the hallway. "Enjoying that?"



"I\'m still sorting out my team." Mello replied brightly.



"Oh good." Matt returned to the dining room to fetch his own PSP. "Let me know if you get bored of that game. I have plenty more."



Mello snorted. "Do you really, Matty?"



"Huh?"



"That\'s easily the most unnecessary thing you\'ve ever said to me." Mello winked. "I\'ve lived with you for most of my life. I spotted the games."



Matt bobbed his tongue out. "I\'m ready."



Mello led the way out. He left his own PSP on the kitchen table, but took three bars of chocolate with him. Matt found it distinctly ominous that the next thing that Mello did was to pick up a crowbar and throw it onto the backseat of the car. "That\'s worried you." Mello laughed, as he slid into the driver\'s seat.



Matt climbed into the passenger seat, jamming the full bottle of wine in the gap by the door. He\'d picked up a teatowel to protect it. "I\'m easy." He carefully closed the door, then sat back, cradling the half-full bottle. "What are we breaking into?" The second the words were out of his mouth, he had an inkling. "Oh no." Mello just smirked and reversed them out at speed. "If this is what I think it is, then I\'m not even sure that you\'re not just doing it for shits and giggles."



"What do you think we\'re doing?" Mello locked the gate and drove them fast down the lane.



"I\'m not telling you, in case you\'re not and it puts the idea in your head." Matt sucked on his cigarette. In truth, he was having second thoughts. Even Mello wasn\'t crazy enough to do what Matt had deduced, but they were heading in the right direction. Ten minutes later, it was confirmed. "Don\'t smash the church up, Mello."



Mello turned to look at him, his face a mask of incredulity. "Freak." He pushed his chocolate bar between his teeth and reached back for the crowbar. Then Mello was out of the car, locking the door quickly before darting around the corner. Matt followed more slowly. He brought the wine with him and dawdled to the gate, half-hoping that he would be spotted and confronted. No-one stopped him. He looked up the steps, but couldn\'t see Mello. An instant later, a hand reached out and dragged him behind the gatepost. "I can\'t believe you brought the wine."



"I can\'t believe you brought the crowbar."



"Ok, keep to the edges. Shadows." Mello led the way, crouching low. Despite his blond hair, he kept disappearing from view. Matt followed, swigging from his bottle. Still no-one called out to them. Mello reached the top of the hill, and thus the sanctuary of the pouch, a full minute before Matt did. Matt swallowed over his gasping throat, trying not to sound out of breath. Though Mello had never preached about cigarettes, Matt didn\'t want to give him an excuse to start now. "I don\'t think I can pick this lock. It\'s too old."



Matt tutted and pulled his keyring from his pocket. He sorted through the skeleton keys and small lengths of metal before straightening. "Yeah, you\'re right. Let\'s find a side-door."



Mello was gone like a whippet. Matt stood back to take in the view. Even the street itself was quiet. There were lights on in many of the surrounding houses, but no-one appeared to be in any of the windows watching them. He took a long hard look at the house which assumed was the rectory. He wondered if Peter was in there as well as the priest. It didn\'t matter, it was quiet. Mello appeared back at his side. "Found one." He ran away again.



Matt ran after him, followed the wall and the glimpse of blond hair in the moonlight. "Mello!" He hissed. "Why the fuck are we breaking into a church? If you\'re not smashing it up, the only other thing I can think of is looting it. Anything else you can do in our chapel." Mello didn\'t reply, he just stood there, his hands presenting the lock like he was a gameshow hostess with the main prize. "You\'re going to go to Hell."



"I\'ve got the crowbar, if your keyring can\'t get us in."



Matt ignored the slight to his skill. He bent down and picked the lock. The door opened inwards and they listened for alarms. There was a steady humming which suggested one preparing itself to wail into the night. "Go! Go! Go!" They both raced inside, but it was Mello who found the box and Mello who disabled it. Matt closed the door and waited in the darkness. A tiny torch was in his hand, but night vision was preferable. He kept expecting Mello to leap out at him, thus it was a surprise when his voice sounded from a fair distance away.



"It\'s lighter in here. Come on through. No cameras. No other security at all from what I can see." Mello\'s voice became louder as Matt followed it to its source. "Fucking ridiculous! You hear all those stories of devil-worshippers stealing the wafers to defecate on them, but the security is practically non-existant. An alarm, that\'s it. I\'d have sensors all over the floor and cameras everywhere."



The church was quite eerie by night. The profusion of stained glass windows meant that moonlight and, to a lesser extent, the streetllights, could penetrate, but that only caused shadows on the statues. Matt couldn\'t shake the feeling that unseen beings were watching them, packed into the empty pews. There was a presense to the space itself that Matt couldn\'t think of as holy. It felt more like they had surprised something unearthly in the middle of doing something. The room watched and waited. Even Mello, standing by the altar, looked half swallowed up by it. The air between them flickered. Matt picked out tiny particles of silver. Dust caught in faint moonlight and the murk of the general darkness. "Mello, what the fuck are we doing here?"



"Getting you baptised." Mello strode away to the great stone font. "It\'s my birthday present to myself, then I can put it behind me and get on with the rest of my life."



"Right." Matt had left the wine-bottle near to the back door. He debated going back to fetch it. "Don\'t we need a priest for that?"



"Not necessarily. There\'s such a thing as an emergency baptism, which a layperson can do, as long as the situation is dire enough. Like the person could die before a priest arrived." He was touching the lid of the font. A chain rattled. "There\'s a padlock on this."



Matt drifted to his side, pulling out his keyring yet again. "Is my life in danger?"



"No, but Peter\'s would be if you had to go back to those classes. Besides," Mello leaned on the font as Matt worked. He could see his teeth glinting under his grin in the half-light, "considering that I\'m not going to let you go to those classes, the reality is that you probably will die before a priest baptises you. It\'s never going to happen. The Catholic Church is never going to accept me and you, therefore I\'m never going to accept you attending their classes. If you don\'t attend the classes, then no priest will baptize you. Ergo, it\'s a vicious circle that will continue, even if you live to over 100 and die peacefully in your bed. That\'s point one. Point two, I don\'t recall a single instance of Jesus Christ sending people away to study for a year. He was \'do you accept the Lord your God?\' \'Yes\' Then dunk, they\'re in the River Jordan and securing their place in Heaven." He held the pencil torchlight trained onto Matt\'s work. "How are you getting on with that padlock?"



"Mello, I\'ve done some mad things in my time. I really have. But this has to be in a class of its own." Matt finally succeeded in clicking the lock and it came apart in his hand. He carefully laid it onto the floor, while Mello lifted back the lid. Matt peered inside. There was water, just a dribble at the very bottom. He wondered how stagnant it was. "Wow, I was expecting loads. I thought you were going to end up dunking me."



Mello had wandered away again. He was a couple of steps away, staring at the crucified Christ. Matt watched him, wishing it was a full moon, because that would have picked out Mello\'s silouette far more clearly. As it was, Mello seemed unworldly. His hands wrapped around each other up by his mouth, in an attitude of prayer or worry. It was hard to tell. Then his rosary dropped from his grasp and Matt assumed the former. The blond turned back. "Mail, I need..."



"You looked like an angel then."



"What?" Mello breathed.



"The light on your back and the surroundings. You looked like an angel."



There was a silence. It was difficult to see Mello\'s expression, but his body dipped slightly. Finally he spoke with a smile in his voice. "Thank you. Mail, I need you to believe in this. I know how your mind works. I know you have to see something and analyse it for flaws before you\'ll believe it. I know that faith is something alien to you."



"I have faith in you." Matt countered softly. It was so easy to say the right things to Mello in this context, though it was also truth. "But you need me to believe in God for as long as it takes you to," he shone his little torch into the font, "flick water at me?"



"Just ponder the possibility. Can you believe that there is something more than us?"



Matt looked around him. The room buzzed. He still couldn\'t shift the notion that, as soon as they left, something that had paused with their entrance would carry on going. "Of course I can. The Death Note was real. I\'m also prepared to believe in the shinigami. It\'s not a giant step from there to the existance of angels and demons. Where it gets hazy is the idea of some supreme being over-seeing all of this."



"Right." Mello leaned on the font and Matt could feel his gaze in the murky light. "But sometimes the only way to know that something exists is through the cause and effect. When you switch your computer on and look at your desktop, it implies the existance of the the mother-board. Yes?"



"Yes." Matt nodded. "But I could also open up the case and see the mother-board. In fact, I know it\'s there because I put it there."



"You\'re prepared to believe in angels and demons. Could they not imply the existance of God?"



"A God who leaves babies starving and crawling with lice, because their papa is too drunk and up his own arse to deal with it?"



"A God who led the Spanish police to the oil tanker, so they could fetch you out and bring you to me." Mello countered.



Matt could have gone on. He could have destroyed any argument that Mello sought to give him, because Mello\'s point of view was rooted in faith alone. Mello could debate cleverly and articulately, Matt had no doubt about that, but they would be here all night. He wanted to help him. "Look, right now, in this church, I think I could believe in anything. It\'s fucking creepy. If I call that anything God, then we\'re halfway there. The Death Note is evidence of the supernatural. The supernatural exists. Ok." Matt found his cigarettes in his pocket, then left them there. It felt wrong to smoke in a place sacred to Mello. "The supernatural exists. You and Near have independently confirmed the existance of shinigami. The probability is that shinigami exist. You have an awesome mind. You have rationalised the existance of God, despite all the evidence. No, reverse, because I also know that you can think some utter shit and believe it\'s true."



Mello sniggered. "Thank you."



"Can I just say that I believe in God?"



"No, you need to believe in him, otherwise this is just water." Mello\'s hand looked ghostly as he jabbed a finger into the stone basin. "We\'re pushing it not having the oil. Keep going."



"It\'s enough to believe in the possibility of God?"



Mello paused. "Yes. I think that would work."



"Ok." Matt nodded. He rocked slightly on the balls of his feet. "Prove to me that God doesn\'t exist."



"Huh?"



"You\'re right. I will only believe something that\'s demonstrated, so prove to me that God doesn\'t exist."



Mello swallowed. "I can\'t, because I have faith that He does."



Matt nodded again. "Then, if you can\'t prove that he doesn\'t, I\'ll have to accept the possibility that he does." He peered out across the gloom. His night vision had settled some minutes ago. It didn\'t help with the feeling that they were being watched by hundreds of invisible eyes. "I accept the possibility of God."



"Do you accept that Jesus Christ died on the cross?"



"Yes."



"Do you accept that he did so as a scapegoat to take on the sins of humanity, so that we might gain entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven?"



"You\'re really pushing it now, Mello." Matt frowned. "Hold on, when Jesus was baptising people in the River Jordan, how did they get that bit to have to believe? It hadn\'t happened yet!"



Mello shuffled. His boots sliding on the stone floor. "Good point. Do you accept the possibility of God?"



"Yes." Matt replied firmly.



"Right, then I\'m baptising you." Mello walked around the font. "Turn around." He held Matt, bending him backwards over the cold basin. Matt reminded himself, despite the proximity of his husband, to think spiritual thoughts. He didn\'t look at Mello. He looked out over those pews and dust-mite figures flickering in the half-light; he thought about the Death Note. Mello pushed back Matt\'s fringe, but, even bend at such an unnatural position, gravity kept reasserting itself. Mello sighed and used the goggles as a hairband. Without sight, it was worse. Matt could see, with eidetic recall, the pews full of people. He placed them there himself. Mello\'s gloves were in his pocket now. With his bare hand, he scooped up as much of the tiny puddle of water as he could. It felt icy on Matt\'s forehead. "Ja krštenje te u ime Oca i Sina i Duha Svetoga. Amen."



"Amen." Matt forced the word over his strained Adam\'s apple, his head dangling right back over nothingness.



Mello hadn\'t finished. Another twice, he scraped up as much water as he could and emptied the cup of his hand over Matt\'s forehead. "Ja krštenje te u ime Oca i Sina i Duha Svetoga. Amen." He repeated each time.



Matt thought of the shinigami and remembered the look in Mello\'s eyes as he\'d told him about it. Mello had seen it. Matt knew it. There was too much confusion there. Matt recalled Near speaking to another shinigami. Mello and Near both staring at the same spot; alike in their aspect. It had all felt very real then. Yagami Raito screaming out for the same shinigami to help him in his death struggle. It was real. Matt thought of their desperate flight from the Kira supporters and how the bullets had rained down, but only one connected. Luck, coincidence or skill? It could have been divine intervention. That Takada bitch misspelling Mello\'s name, that felt like the hand of God, if anything did. Mello coming back to him after so many years apart. Matt believed. For the moment that it mattered, he knew that, hand on heart, he could tell Mello that he believed.



Mello helped him stand again, pulling down the goggles and smiling into Matt\'s face. Mello replaced the font lid and fitted around it the padlock and chain, then led Matt by his hand to the altar. They knelt there and, as Mello crossed himself, so did Matt. "Oče naš, koji jesi na nebesima, sveti se ime tvoje." Mello whispered, then stopped. "Matt, say it with me. Erm, I\'ll do it in English. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name."



"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be they name."



The prayer went on, Mello speaking it line by line and Matt repeating it. He did vaguely remember hearing it in a class once, but he heard Mello\'s words now and concentrated on them, willing meaning into them. They finished, then, as if Mello didn\'t quite believe it was real in the English language, he quickly raced through it again in Serbo-Croatian, too fast for Matt to say it with him. Then he plunged into a couple more prayers, still holding Matt\'s hand and still whispering at break-neck speed. Matt understood that he was just to kneel there. He didn\'t know whether this was all part of the impromptu baptism, with Mello conveying religion through his fingers, or if this was Mello getting his money\'s worth out of being in a real church. Either way the whispered words rushed on until Mello crossed himself again and they rose. "Right, let\'s get the fuck out of here."



"I\'m a Catholic now?"



"To the best of my ability, you\'re baptised. I think that\'s as far as we can go." Mello grinned, towing him past the altar and back towards the side-door. "Brilliant birthday present. Thank you, Matty."



Matt hurried behind him. Perversely, now it was over, he kept imagining the priest and half a dozen police officers to leap out at them. It just felt too easy. It occurred to him that, if there was a God, then why wasn\'t an archangel standing in their path? At the very least, God could have inspired the priest to take an impromptu walk in their direction. Matt nearly collided with Mello, as the blond stopped suddenly in front of the security box. "What?"



"I need to reset this."



"Have you got the code?"



"No." It was darker here. Matt couldn\'t see Mello\'s face, but he could hear the smirk in his tone. "I\'ve got a husband who is really good at electrics and technology. Go Matty!"



Matt stared in the general vicinity of Mello\'s head. "You\'re having a laugh."



"Come on, Matt, we can\'t leave the church unsecured. Anyone could walk in."



"Isn\'t that the fucking point of a church?"



"Please."



Matt sighed. "So you want me to get this reset, presumably quickly, without the code, in such a way that the priest can deactivate it when he arrives tomorrow?"



"Yes." Mello\'s hand traced the contours of Matt\'s backside, in blatant promise of what awaited clever boys.



"Right." Matt shone his torch at the box and felt around it. It took a few seconds and one false start to find the switch he was looking for. The alarm sounded instantly, shrill and untenably loud in the small room. "Run!"



"... the fuck?!"



"Run!" Matt was already hurtling towards the door, dragging Mello behind him. The blond took over, finding them an escape route that felt more like a real life platformer. Matt following him close behind, scaling a tree and leaping onto a wall, like Super Mario in sight of a gold coin. He was glad of his gloves, though his hands still stung with pins and needles at the impact. Mello pulled him up and over. It was a steep drop into the street, which, thankfully, was a hill and therefore sloped up to receive them. They ran until Matt thought his lungs would burst, though Mello barely broke a sweat. The blond pulled ahead to unlock the car. He was starting the ignition as Matt fell into the passenger seat and, a second later, was reversing out of there as fast as he could. "Arse!"



"What Matty?" Mello\'s gaze was sharp with adrenaline.



"I left the wine bottle by the back door."



"Oh! You incomparable shithead!"



"I had gloves on."



"Hurrah Wammy\'s House and it\'s \'don\'t infect the evidence\' ethos." Mello snapped back. He drove halfway down another street, then sighed and reversed. "You were drinking out of it. They\'ll have DNA."



Matt frowned. "They\'re hardly going to test the fucking wine for DNA. They\'ll see it as an attempted breaking and entering with the perpetrators scared off by the alarm." He leaned down. "Besides, it\'s alright. I have another bottle." He took it out of the tea-towel and held it where Mello could see it. "It\'s all good."



"Did you have gloves on in the house when you were pouring it over dinner?"



"Erm..."



"No you didn\'t." Mello pulled up alongside that high wall and unsnapped his seat-belt. "Wait here." He was out and up, over the wall, leather catching in the streetlight. He had left the engine running in neutral, so Matt slid across into the driver\'s seat and watched the wall. The security alarm was still shrieking. It seemed to carry for miles. He could hear the sirens of police cars too, but this was the outskirts of Southampton. It was to be expected. Matt watched all three mirrors. He couldn\'t see any marked cars here or on the main road below. He wondered how Mello was going to leap onto the wall with an opened wine bottle in his hand. Just when it dawned on Matt that this wait was going to seem like forever, Mello appeared above him. He dropped, feline, onto the pavement and ran towards him. "Shift. You\'re not driving drunk."



Matt moved across again and took the wine bottle as Mello thrust it at him. "It\'s empty."



Mello flashed him a significant look. It communicated very well that that was not an issue that was open to discussion. "I left them fifty pounds for the church fund." He commented as he put his foot down on the accelerator again.



"What?" Matt stared at him. "You\'re retrieving bottles because of fingerprints, then leaving money!"



"I don\'t handle money without my gloves on, Matt. You should know that." Mello smirked. "They were already in there. The door was open and the light was on, but the bottle was still just inside the door."



"So you ninja-ed it out."



"I was fucking brilliant."



Matt chuckled. "I don\'t doubt it."