The Mello Code

Mello waited in the car at the foot of the hill. Paving slabs carved a pathway up it, ending with a floodlit depiction of Mother Mary holding the infant Christ. It seemed to take an age before the people started to emerge. The quick hugs and excited chatter pointed more towards this being a family group, or old acquaintances at least, but Matt appeared in the midst of them. One or two called \'goodnight\' to him, their voices carrying on the wind down to the open window of the car. Matt just raised a hand in farewell, then slowly ambled down the path, smoking a cigarette. Mello didn\'t need to see an expression nor hear a word to know that his husband had not had fun.



Mello inwardly cringed, but smiled brightly, as Matt climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door behind him. "How did it go?" Matt didn\'t say anything. His jacket collar covered that portion of his face that the hair and goggles didn\'t already conceal. His mouth emerged only to receive drags off his cigarette. He did not look back towards the church. "Right." Mello bit his lip. "You don\'t have to go again. It\'s alright. How\'s your back?"



"I said I\'d go." Matt replied softly. His hand slid out of his pocket and he showed Mello what he had acquired this evening. It was a small rosary with dark blue beads. "I passed."



Mello blinked. "What do you mean you passed?"



"They are coming down the stairs!" Matt spoke with some urgency. "Drive!" Mello started the car and took them away from his fellow conversion students. "Thank you. I swear if one more person tries to hug me," he said the latter as if it was the most heinous crime he had ever encountered, "then you\'re baptising me in the kitchen sink and fuck the lot of you. Your religion is fucked up, Mello, I swear."



A flash of feeling brought a lot of conflicting emotions with it. Mello settled upon sympathy. After all, Matt was doing this for him. "They hugged you? The heartless bastards."



"The deacon is really touchy-feely. I thought Catholic clergy had stopped all that because they kept getting accused of touching kids up." Matt glowered at the dashboard. Beside him, Mello bit his tongue, though the silence was eloquent enough. "He said we had all made a huge step in accepting the light into our lives and should hug each other. Freaking fifteen people all coming to hug me."



Mello swallowed, imagining the scene in all its darkest potential for disaster. "What did you do?"



"Hugged them."



"Thank you." Mello considered the story so far with the stark realisation that his husband was never going to make it all the way to baptism. "I\'m sorry that the Catholics made you hug them. We are quite evil like that." He drove towards the large games store on the outskirts of the city, discerning that some reparation was required. "Your conclusion, that my religion is fucked up, was that entirely based on people hugging you?"



Matt sighed. "Ok, I shouldn\'t have said that. Your faith is clearly," He considered his words, "faith. It gets you through and that\'s good. That\'s very good. I\'m glad you have it."



Mello couldn\'t stop himself from snorting out a laugh. "Your political correctness and overwhelming tolerance of other people\'s right to spiritual belief is duly noted, Matty. Love you for it. What did you mean by \'you passed\'?"



"Well the ceiling didn\'t come down my heathen scum head and I repeated back the rosary that I had to have memorised before I turned up."



"I didn\'t know you\'d memorised the rosary." Mello was impressed. He hadn\'t seen Matt do anything but play games, mess around on the internet and a minimal amount of housework ever since he\'d been well enough to regularly get out of bed. It might have been a struggle to force Matt to rest in order to regain his health, but once he\'d been persuaded, he\'d taken to lazing around like a duck to water. It was convincing him to look at anything vaguely requiring thought or a bit of work that was now the issue. "When did you do that?"



"In there." Matt gestured vaguely back along the road. "I didn\'t realise I was supposed to do that, so I told them I was nervous and asked if I could just glance through it again. Memorised it and repeated it. You\'ve got homework."



Mello nodded. "What\'s my homework?"



"Considering what Heaven and Hell means to me."



"And what does Heaven and Hell mean to you."



"You don\'t want to know."



Mello smiled. "I\'m actually quite interested to know."



Matt glanced sharply at him. "Well there\'s a really big, fucking paradox there, isn\'t there, Mello? You get into Heaven by being a compassionate individual, who cares about the world and loves your fellow man. Ergo, Heaven is full of people who get upset by anyone being out there in need of help. However, Heaven is also supposed to be a paradise." He shook his head. Mello nodded agreement trying to imagine where this was possibly leading. "You can\'t see the problem there?" Mello shook his head, biting his lip. "Ok, right now you are living on faith that Heaven exists, kay? You might believe it to the bones of you, but you have no empiricial evidence. Fine. You just live like it\'s going to be there, then you can be as smugly relieved as you like when you turn up. But there\'s the problem, right there. Proof of Heaven also implies proof of the existence of Hell. So you have all these people, who would give the shirt off their backs to help other people, knowing with absolute certainty that there are people subject to eternal torment. No more faith, it\'s a fact. So how can they live in a paradise, with that knowledge hanging over their heads? It might look like fucking marble and golden lights and shit, but it\'s going to be full of really miserable people. Either that, or the people suddenly stop being so compassionate and caring, in which case they have no right to be in Heaven in the first place, because that was their ticket in and now they\'re just hypocrites. So it\'s either not a paradise or it\'s not full of people who deserve to be there. And what happens when God spots them at it? There\'s probably some kind of elevator, chute or something, in constant use, throwing people out of Heaven into Hell." A realisation occurred to him. "That\'s why it\'s a paradise! There\'s no fucker there! They\'ve all been kicked out into Hell, where at least they can continue with all the Christian values that made them deserved of Heaven in the first place."



Mello waited, but Matt had evidently finished ranting. "Right." He licked his chocolate, wondering how to explain the blashphemy of Matt\'s theory. "Thank you for that insight. You haven\'t taken into consideration, well, a lot of things. You didn\'t actually mention any of this in that classroom, did you?"



"No."



"Thank you. I will do your homework for you." It was with some relief that Mello pulled into the carpark. Matt spotted where they were and sat up a little straighter. "I thought I might treat you to a couple of new games."



"Pwnage!" Matt\'s mouth, now visible above the rim of his jacket collar, was stretched into a broad grin. He looked at Mello. "Sorry for bad-mouthing your faith."



Mello shrugged. It was actually milder than he\'d been expecting, as Matt\'s usual propensity to icy silence would have been much worse. "I thought, afterwards, I\'d take you out for something to eat. I have been keeping you cooped up. It might be nice for you to get out a bit."



"Cool. Nice one." Matt opened his door and climbed stiffly out. He pressed the catch in, then shut the door. Mello waited for him just past the bonnet, wincing with a smile at the sight of Matt twisting an arm back to support his own back. As the redhead drew alongside though, he shoved his hands in his pockets and gave no outward indication that he was at all sore. Mello glanced at the bright lights and the late night shoppers, then decided that he was a long way past caring what anyone thought of them. He felt a stab of perverse pleasure in reaching out to place an arm around his husband\'s shoulders, walking with him towards the games shop straight ahead. Matt looked at him and smiled, then, usually for the redhead, leaned in slightly and stole a kiss. Mello winked and linked arms with him. Together they strolled into the store. "Any restrictions on time or money?"



Mello considered just how many games could be coming home with them. He blinked. "No, go for it, but remember that anything you buy now you can\'t then request for a Christmas present. If I get bored, I\'ll go to the book store."



"\'kay." Matt picked up a basket. "You\'re letting me out of your sight?"



Annoyance flashed through Mello, but he suppressed it. "I\'m working on my paranoia, baby, just like you asked." Matt smirked, pulling his arm away from Mello\'s, and meandered off towards the latest releases. He was soon pulling boxes off the shelves and, with a quick glance at the back, dropping them into his basket. Mello followed him, but there was nothing for him to do here. This wasn\'t his world. He considered leaving, going to the book store like he said he would, but anxiety balled up inside him and he quickly had to look up to see where Matt had gone. Mello saw him quickly enough. The store was open-plan with aisle displays only to shoulder-height. He would be able to see him wherever he wandered in this shop.



Matt was right. Mello knew that he was paranoid. He knew that if he ran over to the other side of the carpark, he would barely make it into the book store before wanting to turn around and ensure that no-one was maiming, attacking, abducting or otherwise threatening the life of his Matty. It was almost worth going, just to prove that he could. Mello sighed and leaned up against a security post. He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and activated the trace programme stored on the R4 inside it. Matt\'s signal showed up precisely where he was supposed to be. Mello dared himself to leave. This was turning into a phobia. He had to nip it in the bud. He looked up and Matt was watching him from the other side of the store, with a smirk on his face. Mello straightened, waved, turned and walked out of the store door.



He made it to the book store. This was no different to sitting outside the church for an hour. Matt was outside the house and out of sight, but Mello could cope. What he couldn\'t do was cope and browse book titles. He stood beside the best-sellers and instore Top Twenty books, looking like he was considering buying one, but in reality only sheer bloody-mindedness was stopping him bolting back across the carpark. Then one title caught his eye, \'In Search of Kira\' by Frances Govier. He picked it off the shelf and flicked to the back to see if there was an index. There was and so he found the \'M\' listing. He was there. Mello. There were several pages referenced and, when he turned to look up the first, he realised that there was actually a whole chapter about him. He quickly checked for Matt\'s name in the index, but it wasn\'t listed. He checked for Near\'s name and there was nothing.



Caught between crowing and panicking, Mello bought the book. He was almost out of the shop with a legitimate excuse to go running back to Matt, when he remembered why he had wanted to visit this store in the first place. He dashed back until he found the mind, body and spirit section. It irked him a little that they placed serious tomes, like the Bible and the Torah, alongside the cheap pap, like \'Love Spells to Make Him Love You\'. Mello quickly skim-read the titles, but they didn\'t even stock a Catholic Missal. He knew that it was the sort of gift that was usually given for First Communion, but he\'d thought that having something tangible in his hand might get Matt through at least another class.



"Good book." A teenager commented beside him.



Mello glanced at her. He was the only person in the aisle with her. "What is?" He rasped, hoping that it wasn\'t going to be the velvet covered \'Hocus Pocus\' in her hand.



"\'In Search of Kira\'. I\'ve just read it and now my Mum is reading it."



"Right." Mello smiled despite himself. He had to fight against the urge to just burst out, \'I\'m Mello and Matt\'s over the road. We caught Kira, though Near helped. I know him too.\' "Who do they think he or she was?"



"It goes through all of the theories." She picked out. "I think he was probably male and probably American. A lot of the action took place in America and you know what they are like for God complexes."



Mello raised his eyebrows. "I lived in America for a while. They\'re normal people like you and me. Some of the nicest people I\'ve ever met actually." She didn\'t seem very convinced, but then anti-Americanism was running rampant around Britain right now. Mello glanced at her again. In many ways, America was his adopted country and, if it hadn\'t been for Matt arguing the toss to stay in England, Mello would have happily migrated back there. "People are not their leaders. People are fundamentally people, regardless of their nationality. I\'ve had far more conversations with random people in the street in America than I have in Britain. I\'m assuming that you\'re a nice girl and that if someone slagged off another person because of their race, you would stand up and be counted?"



"Yes, but it\'s not..." She sighed. "The Americans had the clout to stop Kira and they rolled over and played dead."



"Granted, America\'s too big for its own good. It can\'t do right for doing wrong." Mello picked out a Bible, but it was Church of England, so he put it back. "In the first two world wars, it got rich with supplying arms to both sides, but everyone criticised them for staying out of it until it was obvious who was going to win. In the third world war, everyone criticised them for not supplying the arms and for being the aggressor from the beginning, then stepping out of the fray. So what is the correct route for them? Take an isolationist stance and everyone\'s screaming for help; go with being the \'policemen of the world\' and everyone\'s calling them tyrannical expansionists."



The teenager was staring at him. "You really know your stuff, don\'t you?"



Mello smiled. "I did \'Politics and Social Science\' at A-level. But just because America is big and has power, it doesn\'t mean that slagging them off isn\'t a form of racism. Not entirely, of course, because they aren\'t a distinct race. More xenophobia."



Matt suddenly appeared at beside him. "Hey."



Mello looked at him, startled. He glanced down at the darkened screen of his mobile phone and realised, with a jolt of panic, that he hadn\'t been watching the progress of Matt\'s dot upon it. He forced a veneer of calm onto his features and smiled charmingly. "It\'s been lovely talking to you, ma\'am."



She raised her eyebrows at the honorific, but smiled back. "Yes, it has been." Her gaze lowered to where Mello had just slipped his hand inside Matt\'s and she looked a little disappointed.



"Incidentally, I also did \'World Religions\'." Mello pointed towards the books in her hand. "I\'d suggest anything by the Farrars over Laurie Cabot, if you\'re interested in that sort of thing. As for Kira, my guess is that you\'re right, he was male; but I reckon he was Japanese."



Matt stiffened and stared at him. The teenager sighed. "I don\'t know, I read the arguments for him being Japanese, but they aren\'t very convincing."



Mello was amused. "You don\'t think that the huge clue was in the fact that every Kira spokesperson was Japanese?"



"That\'s a very good point." She peered behind them. "Erk! Sorry, got to go, my Mum\'s here." She flashed one last smile and walked away towards a middle-aged woman who, otherwise, could have been her twin.



Matt waited expectantly, but Mello just grinned at him. "Mell, what was that all about?"



"I\'m in a book!" Mello showed him. "I haven\'t even skim-read it yet, so I don\'t know precisely how badly they\'ve got it wrong, but I\'m in it. Near isn\'t."



Matt laughed. "Oh good."



"Come on, let\'s go and get something to eat." Mello felt the tension of the past few weeks dropping away from him, as he towed Matt towards the door. Though no-one could possibly know a thing, there was still recognition out in the world. A whisper of his name alongside Kira\'s. It was a glorious feeling.