The Mello Code

Matt reached across the table and took the book off Mello before he could open it. The blond looked surprised, but Matt tucked it into his own carrier bag of shopping. "It\'s bound to talk shit about you, so just enjoy the moment without knowing the details."



Mello pouted but shook back his hair and leaned back on his chair. They were in an alcove in the pizza restaurant. A half-moon padded bench afforded them a view of the whole place. Mello\'s gaze shot across it constantly. His whole stance threw off an aura of danger. "You haven\'t had a fun day, have you, Matty?"



"I don\'t know. It\'s had its high points." Matt smirked, though his back was still on fire. A wooden toothpick hung from his lips. It was already frayed at one end. Tiny splinters kept lodging between his teeth. "Have we actually received a threat that I don\'t know about?"



Mello stared at him. "No, why?"



"Because normally, when you\'re posturing like this, there\'s a don sitting at the table with us." Matt brought a knee up, his boot on the chair beneath him. "I mean, it\'s hot as fuck and all, but what are you actually scared of?"



"I\'m not scared of anything." Mello sounded indignant, but his eyes were hardening. "Matt, please chill out. We\'re on a date. We can have heavy conversations back home."



The waiter brought their pizzas, still sizzling from the pan. They accepted them with politeness and a pause in their conversation. Matt waited until they were alone again before responding. "If you\'re feeling overloaded, then give me things to do. I\'m better now, but you\'re treating me like porcelain. Let me take Hal\'s questions for a start."



"I don\'t feel overloaded."



"Ok, go into denial then. Work all day and half way through the night; don\'t get enough sleep; get irritated over little things and detonate all over me; panic yourself into debilitating paranoia; then cripple yourself with guilt over the things that that makes you do." Matt picked up a piece of pizza and studiously did not look at his husband. "Alternatively, admit all of these things are true, then ask me to help you."



Mello growled back. "That would require you to get up off your bleeding arse once in a while."



"My arse is only bleeding because you hit it repeatedly with a belt." Matt smirked. Now he risked a glance up. Mello was surveying his spinach and feta cheese alfredo like he was trying to divine the ingredients. He wasn\'t smiling. "I bought some Pokemon tree decorations."



"Oh joy."



"Want to see them?" He reached into his bag and pulled the box out. All the games and the book sank to the bottom. "Look, little Eevee, Squirtle, Munchlax, Mew, Pikachu..."



"Very nice."



"I won\'t put them up until the 14th." Matt stared across the table, but Mello was still inspecting his pizza. He hadn\'t yet taken a bite. "The pizza is really good. You should try eating it." He tried, unsuccessfully, to slot the decorations back into his bag. He abandoned it on top and returned to his own meal. "Are you sulking because I took your book off you? You were fine until then."



"I\'m not sulking."



"Much!" Matt reached inside his bag and took out \'In Search of Kira\'. He threw it the short distance across the table and Mello caught it easily without looking up. But he placed it on the bench beside him, unread. "Ok, tell me why I\'m wrong about Heaven being a paradox."



Now Mello stirred. He took a bite out of his pizza and smiled. "You haven\'t got the context yet, baby. I can see how you arrived at that conclusion, but you\'re deducing things about Heaven and Hell from an atheist perspective. The very crux of religion is faith. You have to first believe in the existence of God. Once you have that, then it\'s only logical that He has a plan for us and for everything. How can we know what that is? We\'re only human. You say that those who have lived a good life and made it to Heaven should feel pain for those in Hell. Why should they? Those people are in Hell for a reason. Put it this way, if you\'re at a party, having a good time, you\'re not worrying about people in prison for murder, are you? Same principle."



"Yeah, but in prison they get parole eventually." Matt shrugged. "Just saying."



"Hell isn\'t forever either, Matty. Not if the individual truly repents. In fact, if just one person is praying for them, they\'ll eventually make it to Heaven." He lifted his rosary and smiled. "You know what this is? Each bead is hope. As I pray and count my beads, I\'m guiding a soul out of purgatory towards Heaven. God knows our toil. Our job is to remember the one who created us and to move ourselves back towards him. It\'s God\'s job to judge and help those in Hell. He\'ll take them back. My God has infinite love. He\'d even forgive the likes of me, which is a pretty big bit of forgiveness, don\'t you think?"



"No, I don\'t think." Matt took his own new rosary out of his pocket and inspected it properly for the first time. "I think you\'re a lot harder on yourself than you actually deserve." He held out his rosary for Mello to take. His husband did and ran it through his fingers, looking at it a lot more closely than Matt had himself. "You\'re a lot nicer than I am. You have a really good heart, whereas I couldn\'t give a shit."



"Alright, let me put this in terms that you can understand. What you hypothesised was very ego-driven. You\'re telling God that He\'s doing it wrong, despite Him having the bigger picture and you knowing a tiny portion of it. Now apply Gestalt Theory to it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts." Mello held up Matt\'s rosary, until the light reflected off the beads. "Remember a couple of months ago, when you were having a laughing fit in your room and couldn\'t stop long enough to tell me what was so funny? It turned out to be a noob trying to tell one of your elite hacker friends that she had messed up a bit of code. You were all patiently explaining that this was php, not html, and he was having none of it? That\'s the same situation here. You are the noob and God is the Leet programmer. He has haxored code that you don\'t even suspect is there. In fact, He doesn\'t need to haxor it, he wrote the thing. You were all \'stfu I is teh pwnage\'. You try going to Heaven and telling God that He\'s got it wrong allowing people to be in Hell and He\'d say, \'stfu I is God.\'"



Matt was watching the rosary sparkling, as it swung beneath Mello\'s hand. He realised that his husband had stopped talking, so shifted his attention to the smiling face above it. "\'kay, I get it now."



Mello laughed. "Thank you for taking an interest, Matty. Would you like the shiny, pretty thing back now?" He held it out until Matt took it. "Good choice. It\'s a lovely rosary."



"Am I supposed to wear it around my neck?"



"Not unless you\'re making a fashion statement." Mello winked. "Before you ask, no I\'m not. I just don\'t trust this not to be out of my sight. You know it\'s got sentimental value."



"I know." Matt dropped his own rosary into his pocket and ate more pizza. He tried to think of something to say that would forestall Mello disappearing back into the murky depths of his own head again. The silence stretched out. Mello didn\'t fill it either. Matt figured that he might as well take the bull by the horns. "Are you thinking about the case?"



Mello shook his head. "I\'m thinking about you."



"Anything good?"



Mello met his eyes and the honest intensity in the gaze shook Matt. "Always." The blond smiled. "I do respect you, Matty, even if it might not look like it at the moment. When I talk about protecting you, I\'m not necessarily saying that you can\'t protect yourself. In fact, you might even be the most dangerous of the pair of us, because no-one sees it coming from you." He sat back again, arms and legs sprawled, as he surveyed the restaurant. "I can\'t think of a threat that could walk in that door, that you and I couldn\'t handle. Moreover, I\'d be fighting with you at my side, not behind me. Our partnership was forged in friendship; it\'s been comradeship in a warzone and, on occasion, still is. All of that exists underneath the marriage. I think I do sometimes lose sight of you, but not when it matters. I respect your mind. I respect your skill. I respect the fact that should anything kick off, your shot would be considered and true. I don\'t mean to imply disrespect when I get paranoid about you leaving the house."



Matt had been watching him carefully throughout this speech. There were elements to it that patently referenced private doubts and conversations which had occurred only in the blond\'s head. There had been no talk about protection, unless Mello meant the loud and clear communication of his actions. But there was something about the tenor of his words that sparked disquiet in Matt\'s mind. Nevertheless, he answered in kind. "Thank you. That\'s reassuring to know, though I didn\'t doubt it for a second. The feeling is entirely mutual."



"I trust you, Mail. That isn\'t to say that I don\'t think you\'re an unstable, crazy fuckwit at times. You can totally over-react. Case in point, that time you threatened to ignite the infirmary at Wammy\'s House, just because you were being held separately to myself. They were just trying to establish some truths and you..."



"Got us out of the situation."



"Granted, you did that." Mello smirked. "I\'m saying that I trust you, not always your methodology, but I trust you." His gaze lingered on a large man heading in their direction. His whole stance stiffened almost imperceptively and even Matt would have shrunk from picking a fight with him at this moment. But the man was merely joining his family at a table a few feet away from them. Mello relaxed again, his eyes sliding sidewards to view his husband. "I\'m sorry if the way I\'ve been acting recently has made you doubt that."



Matt frowned slightly. "No, it hasn\'t. You have no reason not to trust me, therefore I wouldn\'t believe that you don\'t."



Mello nodded and rose from his seat, in one smooth feline movement. He stood over Matt and smiled down. The redhead looked up at him, trying to deduce what was going on. Mello\'s hands rose and he lifted his rosary over his head, placing it around Matt\'s neck. "I trust you."



Matt\'s breath caught. The thing seemed to burn him, as Mello returned to his seat. In any ordinary situation, Matt was mindful of the rosary. It was more than merely an instrument of Mello\'s faith, it had belonged to his mother. Matt recalled the frenzied panic, when they were about nine or ten years old, when it had gone missing from their room at the orphanage. After checking the floor under the bed and the rest of the room, Mello had rampaged through the institution, threatening any child hapless enough to enter his path, demanding its return. It had eventually turned up under the mattress in his own bed, where it had slipped down and caught on the wire struts. Then, in their adult life, there had been times when it had caught on things. Only last week, it had been the handle of a drawer in their bedroom. Mello always instantly froze, before removing it from harm. Matt no longer ever draped his goggles around his neck, because of one occasion when, in the midst of a heavy fondling session, the rosary had somehow become entangled. They had both had to keep still then until it could be extracted. The first thing Mello did every morning upon waking was to take his rosary off the headboard and place it around his neck; the last thing he did upon getting into bed was to hang it there, safe from the rigours of sex or turning in his sleep. Now the bloody thing was around Matt\'s neck and it suddenly felt far more fragile than it ever was around Mello\'s.



"Right." Matt lifted it and tucked it under his shirt, against his naked chest. Right now, he knew that he would die to protect it. "I feel trusted. Thank you." Mello was watching him like a hawk. Matt patted it. "Safe and sound." He picked up another slice of pizza. "I appreciate the gesture, but what is it in aid of? Mello, you\'re changing again, right in front of my eyes. You have been for days. You\'re going to need to let me in, angel, because you are now actually starting to scare me."



Mello blinked his confusion. "Scare you? Why?"



"Because you\'re acting like we\'re at war. We\'re not, incidentally. We are still in the peacetime." He pointed with his slice of pizza. "You\'re testing your barricades. You\'re re-evaluating your defences, checking out your men," Matt frowned and glanced at a piece of pepperoni floating across a sea of cheese, "well, in this case, man. Me. You\'re arming for war, but you can\'t form your strategy yet, because, and this is very important, there is no actual threat. Are you going mad on me, Mello?"



"Can I have my rosary back now please?"



Matt briefly considered saying no, just to see what Mello would do. Then he answered his own musing in his mind\'s eye and replied, "Hell, yes." He expected the blond to jump up again to take it, but Mello just sat there, smirking at him. Matt rolled his eyes and took a bite of pizza before it disintegrated in his hand. He dropped the remainder on his plate and wiped his fingers with a napkin, before standing and sauntering to Mello\'s side. The blond looked up at him, eyes narrowed, but shining, the smile utterly serpentine. There was obviously some kind of mindgame going on, but Matt couldn\'t be bothered to deduce what it was. His hands sought out the rosary and he was about to lift it over his head, when a memory flashed. "Got it!" Matt hissed. "My God! I\'ve got it!"



"Got what, baby?" Mello\'s eyebrows were raised. He just seemed infinitely amused.



"With the greatest of respect right back at you, probably more than you\'ve worked out yourself." Matt grinned. Mello\'s case had its roots in the Mafia. Matt had seen this stance before. It had been with that pilot, Procter, back when the pair of them were fleeing Los Angeles in the wake of Kira\'s massacre of the gangsters. He had seen it occasionally since, as an aftershock in Mello\'s attitude in their early days together in the flat and, more recently, in the presense of the Yakuza in Japan. Matt realised that, on a purely instinctive level, he had been discerning this for days, ever since Hal\'s initial phone call and Mello\'s first reading of the outline of the case. Mello was reverting. He was becoming an older, more mature version of his eighteen-year-old self. The manic stare was in evidence and the posturing there in spades. Matt had missed it, because Mello, in truth, had been paranoid as Hell before this. The secretiveness and the state of being in denial about his own emotions, that was all so reminiscent. The sex had been great then too. "Yes."



Mello chuckled. "I love watching you think. You don\'t do it this openly very often, but when you do, you kind of shuffle around on the spot and your fingers wriggle a lot."



Matt ignored him, following the lightning strands of his own disparate thoughts coming together to form a whole picture. He doubted very much that Mello even knew he was doing this. The blond probably just thought that he was in danger of bringing Mafiosos back into their lives or, more to the point, taking himself back into their fold. It must have been Mello who had once said that no-one ever left the Mafia. People retired or slipped beneath the radar, but they didn\'t just resign. It was not that kind of career path. So Mello investigating equated maybe placing himself back where he could be seen again. There was possibly a family out looking for their prodigal son. That was the threat! Consciously or subconsciously, Mello was reacting with swathes of testosterone fuelled attitude and a surge in an already unhealthy dose of defensive over-protectiveness.



All the pieces now in place in his own mind, Matt knew precisely how to respond to Mello\'s little game. He released the rosary, so that it fell back beneath his own shirt. Green eyes trained upon Mello\'s face, he saw enough uncertainty flash through to know that this Mafioso veneer was, at best, only skin deep. Matt bent his knee and took Mello\'s left hand. Just as Matt had once seen in \'The Godfather\' trilogy of films, he bowed his head and kissed the wedding ring hidden under the glove. He stood, smiling at Mello\'s startled expression. "I\'m going to the toilet. Be right back."



Mello gasped, as if to speak, but he did not. His gaze bore into Matt\'s back all the way across the restaurant, but the redhead did not look back. Matt half expected to hear the running feet and Mello\'s breath behind him. If he had, then what then of trust in their relationship? No, Matt reminded himself. This had nothing to do with trust. This had to everything to do with whether Mello was going to let his own inner demons implode them and all that they had built together. If he appeared then Matt knew that their next stop would be Wammy\'s House, because he would either drag Mello kicking and screaming for an evaluation with the new psychiatrist or else would need the infirmary for himself.



Matt reached the toilet and stepped inside. He used the urinal and waited, watching the door through the mirror. They were in phrase two here, because both he and the rosary were out of sight. He washed his hands and only then did the door burst open. Icy cold dread drained through Matt\'s body and he quickly looked across. It was a young child, being followed more sedately by, presumably, his father. Matt smiled, the relief washing through his entire being. He left the toilet and gazed across the restaurant. Mello wasn\'t even looking. He was sitting, facing inwards, towards the empty space where Matt had been sitting. He was eating his pizza and reading his book. Matt nearly laughed aloud. He had to hand it to his husband, the man had style.



Matt threaded his way back through the diners. As he drew close, he removed the rosary and dangled it in front of Mello\'s eyes. The blond affected not having seen him coming, smiling sweetly as he took the article back. Without ceremony, it was returned to its usual position around his own neck. Matt sat, nodding towards the book. "Did they get anything right about you?"



"Not really." Mello replied airily. "But then, it\'s always nice to know what people are thinking about you, even when they\'re wrong."



"And when they\'re right?"



Mello\'s eyes rose to fix upon him. "Then it\'s essential to know what they\'re thinking."



Matt nodded and ate his pizza.