Watari Pt 2: Wammy's House

Still half-asleep and drowsily waiting to just turn around and go back to bed, Matt relieved himself in the toilet. The early hours had settled on the house like a veil; strange creaks and the sighing of masonry heard in ways that never were when it was simply an all nighter being pulled. But Matt\'s eyes were closing even as he flushed the chain and he had to force them open to turn and pull back the door. Then, out on the landing, moonlight shone through the stained glass, draining the colour from the carpet and washing the whole area with a sense of loaded emptiness.



Matt paused. His whole body suddenly and instinctively tensed in red alert. Sleep flew from his vision with an influx of adrenaline, though what had sparked it, he couldn\'t say. His gaze took in the whole landing, then the stairs. He moved to the bannister to look down into the hallway below. All remained silent. No alarms triggered, and he would defy any intruder to break through the security systems created through his and Mello\'s combined paranoid applications. Matt\'s mind flashed through rational explanations for what had woken him and settled on memories of yesterday. Anxiety broke over his state of readiness and he pushed it away. There would be no sleep if he dwelt there. He walked softly, padding across the carpet in bare feet, back towards the open door of their bedroom.



"You really are quite stupid, aren\'t you?" The sneering tone cut like a bullet through the half-light.



Matt froze and turned. It was Mello, standing there with dead eyes glaring. He was fully dressed, though he had been asleep, naked, in their bed only a couple of minutes before. Black leather trousers, boots and his red jacket zipped up, fake fur touching the tips of his raggedly cut blond hair. The moonlight darkened his scar, making it seem almost new again. The air about him practically crackled with danger, not helped by the semi-automatic clenched in his fist. For the second time, adrenaline rushed through Matt\'s body and he swallowed. "What\'s happened?"



"You really thought I would let you get away with that?" Mello smile was venomous. He lifted his chocolate and the crack of his teeth around it seemed to echo down to the tiles far beneath. "It\'s been so much fun playing cat and mouse with you, Matty."



Matt felt the world tilting on its axis. He stared, breathlessly taking in the utter hatred on his husband\'s features. "What?"



The smirk became manic, a hint of madness in the tilt of Mello\'s head, as those emotionless eyes stared back. "I take from you, Matty, you do not take from me. I will be number one, whether it\'s Near or," He paused and the smile dropped, "you that I have to take down. You will not stand in my way." The gun rose suddenly, pointing straight at Matt\'s head, the face behind it screaming fury. "You betrayed me!"



Matt started to raise his hands, fear and devastation crushing him, but this was Mello. Staying calm had saved him more times in the past than freaking out too. "It\'s just me. It\'s Mail. I know you\'re hurting, but deep down..." He paused, his genius mind failing him. "I know you\'re hurting."



Mello growled, "You have no idea what happens inside my head. I am not the person who left you. Don\'t look for your pathetic Mihael inside me. He died years ago."



"He didn\'t. He\'s still there!" Matt took a few steps forward and held out his hand. "Do whatever the fuck you want to me, just don\'t do anything you won\'t be able to live with later." Mello responded with a tightening of his grip around the gun. It shook with the ferocity of emotion behind that grasp and his cruel eyes flashed. Matt bit his lip, tears forming in his own gaze, but he didn\'t want them. Mello would never be calmed with tears. He\'d laugh at the perceived weakness and find it even more easy to destroy the source. "Don\'t..."



"Don\'t what, baby?" The voice, shockingly, came from behind Matt. He whipped his head around to see Mello, standing in the doorway. The gun in his hand was half-hidden behind his naked thigh. There was compassion on Mello\'s features, his gaze soft, speaking more of love than outrage. Matt gasped and turned back. The landing was empty. Fear drained the heat from his body, ice in his veins causing goosebumps to tingle on his skin. Every hair stood on end. "Who was it, Mail?"



Matt reached out to steady himself against the panelling. "How the fuck...?"



"Was it your Dad?" Mello touched his arm and Matt instinctively pulled away.



"You\'re fucking with my brain, Mello. You\'re fucking with my brain." Matt pushed past him, holding the side of his head like it was going to explode. "I don\'t know how you just did that, but you\'re... oh my fucking God!"



Mello took one long, searching look at the empty landing, then turned his attention back to the redhead sitting, stunned, on the edge of the bed. "It was me. What did I just say to you, Mail?"



"How the Hell did you do it? Projector? Was it some kind of fucking hologram?" Matt covered his face with his hands, visibly shaken. "Mirrors?"



"I was terrifying you." Mello whispered. He glanced down at the semi-automatic in his hand, then raised it. "Like this?"



Matt held his breath. "Fucking stop it. Mello, just tell me how you did it?" He stared back, at pity gazing over the barrel of a gun. "You are doing my fucking head in!"



"Baby, what did I say to you?" Mello lowered his arm and leaned up against the doorjamb again. The moonlight made his pale skin seem silver. His scars were mere shadows, barely seen, not like they had been outside. "Just tell me that and I\'ll tell you how I did it."



Matt closed his eyes, then covered his face with his hands. "You were pointing the gun at me and telling me you were going to kill me. You said I betrayed you." Tears were freely falling now. "You said I don\'t take from you. You\'re going to be number one, even if you have to take me out."



Mello nodded. "That\'s pretty much what I thought I\'d have said." He bit his lip. "One more thing. Was it me now?" He crossed the distance between them, gathering his husband\'s head against his chest. "Think, guapo, was it me now?"



There was a catch to Matt\'s breath, as confusion over-rode all other emotions. "Oh! My fucking God, what just happened?"



"It had to be close enough for you not to know the difference." Mello spoke carefully. "I know when it was. It was when we were eighteen. When you brought me back to England after I got burned. Either that or..."



"Your injuries were new!" Matt pulled away. "That\'s why they were so dark!" Terror blazed through the tears in his eyes. "Tell me how you did it Mello, because this is seriously doing my head in."



Mello caught his cheeks between his hands and peered into his green eyes. "I didn\'t do anything, you did." He smiled reassurance. "It was eidetic projection. I know it looked and felt real, but it was memory. What were you thinking immediately before?"



The redhead stared, his mouth gaping. "What?"



"Come back into bed. You\'re freezing and so am I." Mello pulled him to his feet and pressed him back onto the mattress, pulling the quilt over him. Matt stared at the open door until Mello closed it, then the blond leapt over him to scramble beneath the covers. There was a slight thud as he dropped his gun back into the drawer. "Matty." He wrapped his arms around the redhead and pulled him close. "I know of this happening twice before, but even with a memory as astounding as yours, I\'m not sure you would recall them. Think for me, baby, however strange this sounds, was your Dad ever at Wammy\'s House?"



"Don\'t be ridic..." Matt began, but a flash of memory came. He was in the common room, playing PacMan, and his Dad had been sitting on the settee. He breathed. "What...?" As he thought about it, the more scenes piled on top of each other. His Dad getting up to change the television channel over in Mr Wammy\'s office, while the great man himself was talking to him. Night times, curled up in his bed, his Dad standing in the window drinking his beer. But the windows had been Wammy\'s House windows. The sound of the bells intersected the memory. Goosebumps rose on his skin again. "Suggestion. You\'re doing some kind of suggestion."



"No. It was in your records." Mello kissed him. "When you were four, Roger came across you working and asked why you were alone. You responded in Spanish that you weren\'t and pointed to a chair. Roger asked who was there and you told him that it was your father, but he doesn\'t speak to you. It freaked Roger out enough to mention it to Wammy, who responded that it was just a kind of invisible friend and recommended that you be tested for an eidetic memory. Roger made a note that you were too young, as most children your age have eidetic memory. You didn\'t get tested again until you were thirteen and the results were inconclusive. You and I both know that you deliberately messed that one up, because I remember you doing it. The second time was just a few days ago. You were having a conversation with Mr Wammy, while you were in the infirmary after being pulled out of the caves."



Matt frowned, recalling their benefactor coming to sit beside him, then disappearing a moment later and Mello fading into view. "It was hallucination! I was dehydrated!"



"Matty, listen to me. There was another time, which threw me so much that I just let it go. When we were doing A-levels, I left you to go to the library. When I came back, you were still on your bed, where I left you, but you were having a conversation and it was patently with me. I stood in the doorway and listened to you answer a couple of questions that I hadn\'t asked you. You were really stressed out about the exams and bitching me out. You said, \'Ok, Mello, just shut the fuck up and let me concentrate on this.\' I got the shivers right up me and just quietly walked on in and sat back at my desk. I just figured you were going mad."



"I feel like I\'m going fucking mad now." Matt turned and stared at the doorway, daring it to open and admit Mello\'s younger self. "I think you\'re talking crap. I\'m not..." He let it fall, realising that he had no other explanations to counteract Mello\'s deductions.



"When I was doing neurology, I found the reason why it happens to you. Will you also note that it only happens when you\'re deeply stressed? Where is memory stored, Matty?"



"Hippocampus."



"And before that?"



"Amygdala."



"Why is there a switch?"



"Because the amygdala deals with basic memory. It\'s a throwback to our earlier evolutionary..." Matt paused. "God gave it to us when he first created us, then upgraded to version 1.2, which is the hippocampus."



Mello sighed. "I do believe in evolution, Matt. It\'s not incompatible with creationism. So yes, the amygdala served us well as fish, lizards and primates, but as humans we needed a little more. As baby humans, we still only need the amygdala, so we don\'t develop the hippocampus until we\'re 3-5 years old. Right?"



"How is evolution compatible with creationism? The Bible teaches that we\'re only about four thousand years old."



"Stop changing the subject." Mello glared. "You\'re born with an amygdala and you grow a hippocampus later on. What\'s the difference between the two?"



"The amygdala deals mostly with the senses. You remember things on a purely sensory level." Matt blinked at the blond, but all the academia was calming him down, so he let it happen. "The hippocampus allows us to reason things out based on memory. We can compartmentalise things and rearrange them to reach other conclusions."



"Why do some infants have imaginary friends?"



"I hope I get a certificate at the end of this, Mello." Matt sighed. "Because they are working with only the amygdala, which can have a side-effect of externalising memory."



"And what causes an eidetic memory?"



"When the amygdala doesn\'t shut down completely once the hippocampus has formed."



Mello grinned, smugly, "Ergo?"



"Ergo both the amygdala and the hippocampus are storing memories. The amygdala snap-shots it and the hippocampus can use it for deduction purposes." His breath caught again. "So it\'s entirely possible for an adult, with an eidetic memory, to externalise memories."



"Especially if they are stressed." Mello kissed him. "And you, my beautiful eidetiker, are fucking stressed." He kissed him again. "Stressed and secretly still believing that I give a shit about the Mario Clause. You also have some really terrible misconceptions about what I was like when I was eighteen, though granted I gave you cause to believe them. The one saving grace in all of this is that you don\'t think I could kill you now." He kissed him long and hard. "What changed, guapo?"



Matt stared back in disbelief. "Your bloody mind! How the Hell did you just put all of that together?"



"Thank you for the compliment. What changed to make you understand that I couldn\'t kill you? You believed me capable of it once."



"You fell in love with me."



"Too bloody right I did." Mello smiled. "But then again, I\'ve always been in love with you. I couldn\'t admit it, not to you or to myself, but I reckon I\'ve been in love with you since I was four years old."



"Romantic bullshit, but if it makes you happy..."



"It\'s true."



Matt frowned, his gaze travelling back to the door. "I find it hard to believe that that was the inside of my mind."



"A truly wondrous place that I don\'t get access to very often." Mello nuzzled at his neck. "But nevertheless, I am 98% certain that I\'m right. Eidetic projection, calling up your greatest fears and playing them out in reality."



"That was not my greatest fear." Matt pointed towards the door. "You flatter yourself too much."



Mello immediately rolled back from him and reached into his drawer for the gun. He extended his arm and pointed it at Matt\'s head, then smiled. "I care about the Mario Clause."



Matt turned away and snatched up his cigarettes, lighting one with shaking hands. "Fuck you." He inhaled deeply, as the firearm was withdrawn and dropped back into the drawer. "That is still not my greatest fear. Even adding that fucking clause into the equation."



"Well," Mello shrugged, "if I was you, I wouldn\'t even think about your greatest fear then, or else you could open that door and see it happening on the landing outside." Matt gasped and turned so suddenly that Mello was taken unawares. He grabbed the blond and hung on, pressing his whole body weight against him. Fear had turned his muscles rigid. Every inch of exposed flesh crawled with goosebumps under raised hair. "You know, if it scares you this much, I don\'t think I want to know what it is. You never scared easily. Well, you know, apart from..." An image came unbidden into his mind. "You saw me hanging out there, didn\'t you?"



"Shut the fuck up."



"I always loved you, Matty. Always." Mello rubbed his back. "Please don\'t burn my hair with your cigarette."



Matt drew back and kissed him, hard. "If an exploded building couldn\'t mess your hair up, my cigarette isn\'t going to make a dent."



Mello flinched, the reference scratching against one of his fears now. "Now that we\'ve successfully freaked the crap out of each other, how about we try and get some more sleep and discuss this when it\'s sunny over a nice cup of tea?"



Matt shifted out of his arms and sat back against the headboard, staring pensively back towards the door. He had never believed in ghosts and had never been afraid of his own home, even in the depths of night. As he smoked, he dared himself to get out of bed and open the door, to prove to himself that there was nothing out there. But his insidious mind supplied the realisation that there might be and that, if the cause was internal, it could happen anywhere. Reason told him that Mello was right. He hadn\'t been wearing his goggles, he couldn\'t have seen the younger Mello in the detail in which he had. He\'d been standing too far away. At any time, for the rest of his life, he could turn around, or open his eyes from sleeping, and find something terrible right there, looking back.



He tried to make it happen. He created a mental image of Lawliet and tried to project it against the doorway. The white, long-sleeved shirt, the jeans and black, unkempt hair, eyes dulled and slowly blinking with an insomniac\'s weariness, dark bags laden with sleeplessness, all of this he tried to force into forming in the air between his bed and the door. It didn\'t come. He did not see the super-genius standing there. Mello had hypothesised that it was caused by stress. Why then had it not happened when he had been in those dangerous places during his recent past? Why hadn\'t a caring face from his childhood not appeared in Near\'s headquarters or in his car when he broke his heart with crying? He stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his goggles, slipping out of bed before Mello could react. "I know. Don\'t say a word."



"I won\'t." Mello followed him out, half a beat behind as Matt yanked open the door and stepped out onto the landing. It was empty as all, but a momentary note of panic as he\'d touched the doorhandle, had told him it would be. He nearly collided with the blond as he turned again. Mello hugged him close, then found his lips for a probling kiss, before guiding him back to bed, kicking shut the door behind them.



"Can the fucking amygdala be removed?" Matt asked, as he lay beneath the quilt again, its edge tucked up around him.



"And lose that awesome memory of yours?" Mello smiled, reaching out to hold his hand. It was grasped hard. "I\'ve never known you so rattled. Where\'s my fearless, fuck the world Matty gone?"



"Freaked out by the inside of my own head. Stop taking the piss."



Mello chuckled. There was silence as they lay with their own thoughts. Eventually Mello broke it. "I was never that person, you know? The one you thought I was. When we got back together, I was more insecure than I let on."



Matt shrugged, "Then that\'s pretty badly insecure, because you radiated insecurity at the time."



"I did?"



"Post traumatic stress disorder. You left Wammy\'s and went to war, then came back with post traumatic stress disorder. That\'s how I saw it."



Mello bowed his head, half off the pillow. "I terrorised the crap out of you." He squeezed the hand tightly gripping his own. "Thank you for staying."



"You say that like I had a choice."



"You did." Mello peered back up. "That girl, what was her name? The one who wanted to throw me out."



"Aimee."



"Yes, she could have saved you from me."



Matt sighed. "Mello, if I\'d have wanted you out of my flat, I\'d have fucking kicked you out myself."



"No, you wouldn\'t. I frightened you." There was no response, just a huffing that was Matt\'s way of saying \'bullshit\' without being drawn further into the conversation. Mello pressed on. "I did frighten you. You wouldn\'t be projecting terrible memories of me threatening you, if you weren\'t frightened deep down, where you won\'t admit it."



The redhead turned his head away, his eyes closing. "For God\'s sake, Mihael, shut the fuck up and go back to sleep. I\'m sorry I woke you up."



"I don\'t know where your psychology is, Matty. I get it in glimpses like what just happened. Little clues." His thumb stroked the hand still holding his own. "Twice I\'ve used techniques to brainwash you into obeying my will. At different times in our lives, I\'ve verbally, physically, emotionally and sexually abused you, then asked you to tear down the mental defences that you\'ve erected to survive the life you\'ve had. I\'m in love with you, pure and simple, and I\'ve grown up a lot, but how can you even begin to trust that? You\'ve a strong mind. You\'re resilient as Hell, far more resilient than I am. You\'ve bounced back from things which would have had half the monkeys I met in the Mafia crying for their mothers. But occasionally, I see things and I know that it\'s not all water off a duck\'s back with you. What am I to make of it?"



Matt squeezed his hand. "Start from the fact that I haven\'t got a mother to cry for and work outwards from that. I survived the past. I love you to bits. I\'m falling asleep now. Night."



"Deep, deep inside you, I know you\'re frightened." Mello whispered back. "What terrifies me is that the person you\'re most frightened of is me."



"If I stop answering, will you stop talking?" Matt replied.



"But how much of it is an act?" Mello bit his lip. "You\'re mutable. You fit around whatever I want you to be. If I need you to bleed for me and beg to be hurt more, you\'d do it; if I need you to..."



Matt opened his eyes, "You have my attention." He grinned in the darkness, peering down to meet the blue eyes staring pensively back up at him. "If I let you do the angst thing, will there be hot sex at the end of it?"



"Mail, please stop. You\'re doing my head in."



"Then there is your answer." Matt leaned over to stroke back a side of the tousled blond bob. "You own me body and soul, but as long as I can keep doing your head in, then you know it\'s consentual. Now, unless you\'re going to fuck me until I bleed, shut up and go to sleep."



Mello frowned, "But I want you to challenge me. I want us to be a partnership. I want you to tell me to shut up and go to sleep. You know I want this and so that\'s how you are with me. If I grabbed you now and shackled you to a post for the rest of your life, you\'d do that too and suddenly there would be none of this lip. You act like I need you to act at any given time in our lives, because you\'re frightened of me." Tears pricked at his eyes. "I don\'t want you to be frightened of me."



Matt pulled his hand away and lay staring at the ceiling. "You realise that there\'s no answer to that, don\'t you?"



"But how do I know when the real Matt is showing? How do I know that I haven\'t already beaten and terrorised the real Matt into not even being there any more? You\'re a genius, you know how to read me and be exactly what I want you to be."



"Mihael, you\'re doing this to yourself." Matt sighed. "You\'re talking yourself into a corner that has no verifiable evidence to convince you to come out again. You could order me to submit, I would tell you to fuck off and you\'d argue that that\'s only because you need me to demonstrate my independence now. There is nothing I can say to convince you on it, so you\'re just going to have to have faith that it\'s not as bad as you think it is."



"But what if it is? I\'m the only person in the world who could help you, because you wouldn\'t admit something like that even to, well, especially not to Roger."



"Mihael."



"You certainly wouldn\'t tell Near."



"Mihael."



"Maybe Ann?"



"Mihael, you\'re fucking your own head up. Stop thinking now."



"Who have you got, Matty? Who\'s left to help you?"



Matt sat up suddenly and opened his bedside cabinet drawer. He pulled out a semi-automatic and pressed it into Mello\'s forehead. "I would so get away with it being a crime of passion. In fact, right now, it would probably count as humane euthanesia." Mello blinked up at him, droplets of tears lining his eyelashes. "And for the record, you\'ve finally pulled off being Lawliet. You\'ve come to bed with eye-liner on and it\'s all smeared, like little bags under your eyes. Now, are you going to shut up or do I have to pull the trigger?"



Mello frowned, "The gun isn\'t loaded. I can see the empty cartridge from here."



Matt began to laugh. "Well, can you at least try to look a little fazed?" He solicited a tiny smile from the blond. "That\'s much better. Give me a bigger smile and I\'ll stop threatening you with an unloaded gun."



Mello grinned and reached up to pull him down into a kiss. "I do love you, Mail. I\'ve messed you up big time, but I do love you."



"Yeah." Matt kissed him again. "I put up with you because I\'ve been terrorised into it, but God, it was amazing as it happened. Do it some more when I\'m less tired."



Mello laughed, covering his mouth with his hand. "Ok, I\'ll let you get some sleep, but let me hold you while you\'re dropping off." He took the gun from Matt\'s hand and skimmed it onto the top of the cabinet. "I know you don\'t think you need the comfort, but maybe I do." Matt gave him a hard look, but eventually moved into the cuddle. "And maybe you need it as well. Deep down." As Matt opened his mouth to reply, Mello kissed him. "I\'m being quiet now. Goodnight, baby. I love you."