Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

Mello loitered in the doorway of the little chapel in their house. This was the room that had endeared him to the property, yet it was the only one he hadn\'t yet touched in some way. It was funny, because it was so small. Just enough room for a handful of people and an altar, with an air of such utter peace that Mello was afraid to breathe in there, in case he unsettled it. He didn\'t need to do much to it at all. Add some flowers. Dust it. But mostly he hung around in the doorway, feeling too awed to step over the threshold, and instead saying his prayers at the Marian Shrine in his study, before going to bed. Feeling annoyed with himself, Mello stepped into the chapel now. His fingers brushed the woodwork and found them clean. Matt must have polished, because he knew that he hadn\'t. He bent his knee and bowed with an audible creaking of leather, crossing himself before the altar. It felt false. Wrong. He didn\'t deserve to be here. Not yet.



Mello heard an approaching car and peered out of the tiny window. \'The white lights mean you\'re coming home\', he thought, misquoting the Arcane Fire song in his head. "Your headlights like diamonds, Mail." Mello released a breath that he hadn\'t known that he\'d been holding. He glanced back at the statue of the crucified Lord. "Thank you for bringing him home safe." Then Mello ran, out of the chapel, along the narrow passage and out of the backdoor. The red car rushed past him, only stopping at the eleventh hour to be eased between the walls of the converted outhouse. Mello raced inside and opened the door. "I said I\'d go!"



Matt\'s first reaction was to flinch away, which surprised them both. He disguised it by using the movement to unclick his seatbelt, then reached into the well of the passenger seat. "I bought you flowers." They were slightly wilted carnations, with their stems wrapped in cellophane, still dripped with water from where they had sat in a bucket outside the garage all day. He thrust them into Mello\'s hand and picked up the carrier bag. "I got milk." He stood up, trapped between the door, the car and Mello. "Sorry they\'re a bit battered. It\'s all they had."



Mello repeated, more subdued, "I said I\'d go. We don\'t know what\'s happening out there. It looks like fourth generation Wammy people are being picked off though. It might be dangerous."



"Yeah." Matt leaned in to kiss him. "But you\'re fourth generation too, Mell. We could have argued for hours over who is more expendable or I could just go to the garage."



"I love you, Matty. Do not leave this house without checking with me again." He sniffed the bouquet. "Thank you for my flowers."



"You\'re welcome." Matt locked up the car, as Mello stepped back to allow it. The blond held out his hand and Matt took it, holding it all the way back to the house and inside. "I got some other stuff too, perishables mainly. I got thinking though, we\'re going to have to watch out for the supermarket delivery, if we\'re going to keep the electric fence activated. Plus that\'s going to take a lot of electricity. Can we afford it?"



"Yes." Mello let go of his hand once they were in the kitchen and stood staring down at the carnations. "Have we got a vase?"



"Vase?"



"You put flowers in them."



"Vase." Matt looked thoughtfully around the kitchen, then smirked and extracted one from his carrier bag. "This do?" He smirked as Mello took it off him and walked by with a sassy gait. "See I can do forward planning as well." He shoved cheese, milk, pasties and several bars of chocolate into the fridge, then opened the cupboard to put away a multipack of long-life milk. Taking the last item out, he hid it behind his back, while pushing the carrier into the recycling. Not that they ever actually recycled the plastic bags. The container was overflowing with the things.



Matt crept behind Mello, as he arranged his flowers as best he could at the sink. One arm slid around the blond\'s waist and a beanie bear walked up his back and onto his shoulder. Glass bead eyes peered around the fall of Mello\'s hair to survey him. Mello smirked. "What the fuck is that?"



Matt held it further out. It was tan coloured with a big loveheart on its belly. The legend read, \'Never doubt I love you\'. It had a red ribbon around its neck. "I bought you a teddy."



Mello giggled. "My hands are a bit wet at the moment, but thank you." He peeped back over his shoulder. "You\'re attempting to be romantic. Thank you, Matty."



"You\'re welcome."



Mello watched as Matt drifted away from him, sticking the beanie bear into his jacket pocket so that the head and arms leaned out. He took a can of lager from the fridge and wandered into the pantry to reactivate the electric fence and outside sensors. Mello inwardly kicked himself. He should have remembered to do that, rather than getting side-tracked with flowers. Matt was making him soft, careless, right when they should be on their guard. The redhead reappeared, his hair catching the lights and seeming to dance with a vibrant fire. The rest of the kitchen, bright and calm, reflected in his goggles. The way his sleeves creased and slid down slightly, as he reached up to open a cupboard door... "Shit, Matt."



"What?" Matt looked over his shoulder to see him.



"I don\'t just love you. I\'m in love with you. Don\'t break my heart."



The redhead stared back blankly, then scratched his nose and turned back to the cupboard. A moment later, he was looking back. Mello hadn\'t taken his eyes off him. "Sorry, Mell, you lost me. What?"



"I would kill anyone who laid a hand on you." Mello growled, trying to speak in Matt\'s language. "Anyone who tried to take you away from me, in any way."



"Right." He continued searching through the cupboard, moving tins around. "Have we got...?"



"No, I mean it." Mello put his vase onto the workshop and strode across the kitchen. His hand covered Matt\'s shoulder. "I would kill them."



"Ok! I get that anyone trying to take me out is in mortal danger. I thought that was always the case." Matt was tensing underneath Mello\'s hand. "Have we got a tin of hot dog sausages?"



"I don\'t eat that shit, how should I know?" Mello leaned across so he could meet his lover\'s eyes. "I don\'t just mean someone trying to kill you. I mean if you ever left me for someone else. I would kill them."



Matt bowed his head, staring at the worktop. "Right. Let me just work out whether to be flattered or freaked out." He looked up, his gaze searching Mello\'s eyes for truths. "Has someone said I\'m shagging around or something?"



"No." Mello grinned. "I\'m just saying."



"Ok." He returned his attention to the cupboard, puffed out his cheeks and blew. "Noted." He ducked away and added \'hot dog sausages\' to the list on the noticeboard. Mello followed him. "What? Mell, you\'re being scary and invading my personal space. Stop squashing me. "



Mello laughed. "Personal space?"



"Yes." Matt extended his arms. "This two foot block of air around me that currently has a leering Slav in it, pawing me when I\'m trying to find something to eat." His chin disappeared under his collar, then a strategy occurred to him. Despite not actually wanting one, Matt lit a cigarette. Smoke filled the space around him. He stood against the radiator and smirked.



Mello grinned and took his beanie bear. "What am I supposed to do with this?" He carried it across the room, smiling at it. "I\'m out of your personal space. Please carry on. I\'ll just stand over here and watch you being gorgeous and sexy and... I do love it when you blush."



"I don\'t know what the fuck has gotten into you." Matt returned to the cupboard. "We urgently need a grocery delivery. I\'ll place one tomorrow." He took the list off the wall and started adding more items to it. "Everything you eat has to be put in the fridge, so you shout out what\'s missing from there. Will you please stop looking at me? It\'s really off-putting."



"Aren\'t you warm in that jacket?"



"Yes." Matt replied pointedly. His mouth only emerged to speak or smoke, otherwise he sank within his collar right up to the bridge of his nose. "Who killed Jonny and Nathalie, Mell?"



"Top suspects? Hollow, Deontic, Luigi or Lamond. Minor suspects are Near, Century, Chrissie, Salvo, Mairoo or Fenian. It\'s a Wammy person, but it\'s not us." He played with the bear, flapping the arm upwards and pressing the beads inside. "Motivation, if you can\'t beat them, kill them. Which puts a tidemark where Jonny and Nathalie were. Fifth and sixth. If this is going in order, then Deontic next, then you, then me, then Near."



"So you\'ve already solved it." Matt smirked, adding tuna to his list. "Presumably Hollow was seventh? The other three being the remaining ones with access to my dodgy foreign cigarette butts."



"Croatian equals dodgy and foreign now does it?" Mello looked up sharply.



"Undoubtedly." Matt pointed with his pen to the sink. "How are we doing for dishwasher tablets? And may I share an opinion on your conclusions please?"



"Yes, you may."



"You\'re reading it like Mello. The motivation, I mean. You\'re obsessed with the rankings, so you\'ve got that as the important factor and worked out from there. You\'ve named four suspects, but you are actually convinced it\'s Hollow. She wasn\'t even there, so couldn\'t have got hold of my cigarette butts without visiting Nat the next day. If she did, then Nat might have noticed her rifling through the bins. Ok, that\'s a motivation for taking Nathalie out too. You said that the blood and everything meant she had been dead for some hours before Deontic alerted us. That doesn\'t mean that Deontic hadn\'t been there for some hours and was pulling an act with all that fear stuff." He paused to write down popcorn. "Only if it was Deontic, your ranking theory falls down a bit. Unless she was taking out the people nipping at her heels. Why isn\'t anyone hearing gunshots?"



"They were killed where they fell, the colour of the corpses and the staining around them proves that. Must have been a silencer."



"You can still hear it with a silencer." Matt shrugged, then gripped the worktop. "I\'ve gone really light-headed." He staggered over to a chair and sat with his head between his legs.



"I\'m not surprised. You\'ve got your jacket on and it\'s really warm in here. You said yourself you\'re hungry." Mello carried a glass of water across and took the cigarette out of Matt\'s hand. "What drugs are you on?"



"Nothing."

Matt replied, irritated, but the colour was returning to his cheeks. He took his gloves off and unzipped his jacket. "You haven\'t even given me my anti-depressants today."



"I did. I gave them to you when we were having a cup of tea, before I went to the chemists." Mello touched his skin with the back of his hand. "Honestly, Matt, I did."



"You didn\'t. You said you were going to, then had a rant about the economy because it got mentioned in the news. You told me precisely how raising the rate of inflation isn\'t going to work to reduce mortgage rates, then said you needed to get going if you were going to find a chemists in time, and left."



Mello thought about it, recalling the scene precisely. "Ok, I concede that that might have happened."



"But the whole reason you were going to give me them was because you\'d forgotten the night before and you get angry with me if I ask for them."



"Ok, so we\'re back on track." Mello sighed. "Matt, you\'ve effectively missed one day, that\'s all. Stop panicking, please. I\'m going to get them now." He ruffled his lover\'s hair and jogged out into the hallway. He was halfway up the stairs, before he remembered that he was still holding Matt\'s cigarette and the teddy bear. The former was nearly burned out, so he just flicked the ash onto the stairs and had to stop to tread on it when the whole ember flew out. Crouching down, it turned out that the mark was ash, not the vanish being marked. Standing up again, he was confronted with the landing. The landing was really bugging him. Mello\'s mind flew through the usual questions: what could set off a motion sensor in an inner room, without activating the same in the rooms around it? There were windows, but they were stained glass and didn\'t open. Every exit and entrance led to a room that was covered by the surveillance system. It could be a ghost, came that same unsettling conclusion.



Mello glanced down and was embarrassed to discover that he was cuddling the bear with one hand over his heart. He lowered it and compensated by carrying it dangling beside him by one paw. He refused to personify the tacky thing. It was placed on a chair in his study until he could work out what to do with it. The monitors still showed all the latest files that he had been working on. One screen showed Near\'s people picking over the crime scene, Nathalie covered up now. It had been going on for hours and Mello was recording it. He glanced at the statue of Mother Mary, the prayer barely articulate in his mind. He crossed himself and tried to remember what he had come up for in the first place. It occurred to him that he was exhausted.



"Pills." He opened his bag and rooted through for them. Guilt and irritation spiked again, that Matt felt the need to take the anti-depressants. It had been months! The redhead had not been depressed today. In fact, he had been very laid-back at times and hadn\'t freaked out over the murders. Mello frowned, he had been more emotional than Matt over it. "Yeah, but that\'s par for the course. Over-emotional Mello." It dawned on him that he was talking to himself.



Mello forced his mind to return to Matt. The redhead had appeared much more stable over the past few weeks. There was still the occasional stench of cannabis on his clothing or in his study and he had definitely been on amphetamines recently. Mello didn\'t kid himself that there weren\'t more drugs sneaked into their relationship than Matt had confessed to. It was the secretiveness that was worrying. No, it was the drug-taking that was worrying. Mello knew from his Mafia days what went into those chemicals, anything to bulk out the sales. His lover had never been overweight, but at the height of his drug-taking, when they had met back up after years apart, Mello had been shocked at how skinny Matt had become. The interim had filled him out a bit, but the redhead had started losing weight again in Japan. If it carried on, he\'d end up looking like Lamond. It was already possible to count every rib and to tell, at a glance, if any were broken.



Mello fled down the stairs, rushing into the kitchen. He surprised Matt in the act of grilling some cheese on toast. "Are you anorexic?"



Matt glanced from his lover to the grill and back. "Erm. No."



"Ok." Mello felt himself flush. "You can have your anti-depressants, but we need to have a conversation about this tomorrow. I\'m too tired and over-emotional now."



"\'kay." Matt paused with the cheese in his hand. "Did you want cheese on toast?"



"No, thank you." Mello shook out two tablets and closed the lid again.



"\'kay." He wandered across to collect his anti-depressants. "Thank you."



"Matty." Mello caught his shoulders, forcing him to meet his eyes. "If I lose you to drugs, I swear I\'ll kill you myself."