My Own Way

Matt glanced up from his laptop as Mello strode into the front room. He had been missing overnight and, as much as Matt had tried not to worry, it was difficult in the circumstances. The blond looked exhausted and his face was lined with pain. The dressings appeared to have been cleanly reapplied sometime recently though. They had been precisely arranged so that his left eye wasn\'t covered, which was a trick that Matt hadn\'t been able to work out. Matt had several things to say to him, but he settled for, "I\'ll get you some painkillers."



"Thanks, Matty." Mello flopped down onto the armchair and put his feet up on the coffee table. His gaze took in a pile of books beside the other armchair, which he\'d briefly mistaken for games. "You can read? Wow!" He scanned some of the titles and snorted, "What are you reading?"



"\'NYC2123\'." Matt returned with pills and water, then wandered off again.



"I meant the books." The blond swallowed pain-killers and rose again to have a closer look. "\'Brotherhood of Evil\' by Frederic Sondern, \'A Man of Honor\' by Joseph Bonanno... what did you do? Go to Waterstones and buy every book they had on the Mafia?"



"Smiths actually, but yeah."



Mello laughed, "But why would you...?" He turned and was silenced. Matt was standing just inside the room with a chocolate cake covered in lit candles. "Oh!"



"Happy birthday, Mello." Matt smiled at the look of absolute surprise on his friend\'s face. It was a wonderful minor victory to finally render the blond speechless. Matt would have sung to him, but he felt foolish doing it alone, so instead he carried the cake to the coffee table and placed it down with a flourish. "Make a wish."



Mello blew out the candles. His exposed cheek pinked a little. "That\'s really nice of you, thank you."



Matt hadn\'t finished. He opened the sideboard and produced a collection of presents. "I figured it might only be me who knew what today was, so I got you loads of little things instead of one big one, so you\'d have more to open." Mello\'s hands flew to his mouth. He looked a little scared. Matt smirked. "Take them off me then."



"T-Thank you." The blond stammered. He suddenly seemed a lot smaller. To say that he was childlike was stretching the definition, but he certainly looked younger than he had a moment before. He took the pile of gifts in his hands and just stared at their wrappings. He glanced up at the redhead and recovered his swagger again. "The things you do to ensure another kiss."



"Yeah." Matt grinned, sitting down. "Precisely why I did it."



Mello sat too and placed the pile daintily on his lap. He flinched slightly as a card careered through the air and clattered against his chest. He started there. The picture on the front was Friedrich\'s \'The Traveller Above the Sea of Clouds\' and Mello laughed. "Oh God! I remember that." Matt laughed with him. It had been a piece of artwork that Mello had fallen in love with when he was twelve. He had tried to reproduce it as an art project, but with himself in the place of the traveller. Only he had hated the finished result, declaring himself not dramatic enough for the scenery. Matt had had to snatch it from his fingers to avoid the artwork being screwed up and, though Mello had subsequently received an A for the piece, he had destroyed it as soon as he possibly could. "Fancy you remembering that." He opened the card. Inside, the redhead had written \'Happy birthday, Matt\'. That was all. No kisses. No verse. "I still love that picture. I should try doing it again, I could probably pull off the pose now."



"Please don\'t." Matt winked. "I\'m still recovering from the last time."



Mello bobbed his tongue out at him and stuck the card up on the coffee table. He ripped the wrappings from his presents, revealing an iPod, chocolate, pampering products and a Catholic Bible. He had lost all of his own things in the blast. "They are lovely!" He leapt up and hugged his friend. Matt carefully hugged him back. It wasn\'t so bad, especially when Mello seemed genuinely touched. "Thank you."



"I was going to get you a Man. United shirt, but you don\'t seem the type to wear them anymore." Matt shrugged. "I know you used to want one."



"What you got was perfect. I wasn\'t expecting anything." Mello leaned in and kissed him. For the first few seconds, there was no violence in it, just feeling, a taste of something a bit like attraction. It took them both by surprise and Mello overcompensated, tightening his grip around the redhead, crushing their lips together. Then he sprang away. "There you go. You got your kiss."



Matt sucked on his own lip. "Still saying it like it\'s all for me."



Mello stood a little straighter, but peered back flirtaciously. "I\'m not gay, Matt. Sorry. If I was then maybe I\'d give you a go, but..." He scooped up the bath bombs and scents. "I might go and try these out. A bath sounds great."



"Be my guest." Matt watched him from underneath his fringe. "So if you were gay, you\'d give me a go?"



"Maybe." Mello smiled.



"Pity you\'re not gay then."



"Yeah."



Matt frowned, pondering what he was being told. "So you\'re regretting not being gay."



Mello flicked his hair back. "Well, yes, if you won\'t have sex with me unless I am." He glanced back as Matt laughed. "Because I don\'t mind what I shove it in, really. It\'s all sex." He dropped the cosmetics onto the settee and picked up the chocolate. "I don\'t know if I can use my bath bombs yet. Didn\'t you say anti-septic or bland in the water? I still have open wounds."



Matt tore his gaze away from Mello\'s leather-clad arse and focused again on the face. There could be no accident about the way that the blond was eating his chocolate. The Cadbury\'s Flake advert women had been less blatant. It swam in and out between his teeth, occasionally it bobbed a little as he licked the tip in his mouth. Melted chocolate ran down his chin and he made no move to stop it. There was the faintest of smiles. He knew precisely what he was doing. Matt bit his lip, watching in fascination, feeling the blush creep across his own face. "Does that taste like chocolate never tasted before?" He countered, telling Mello that he knew too.



The blond sucked the square of chocolate into his mouth and a tongue snaked out to swoop down on all that covered his chin. With a huge smirk, he sat down and picked up the Bible. "This was really thoughtful. I had one but it got lost in the fire."



"I do think about you." Matt replied levelly, though the exact thoughts he was having at that moment owed more to the chocolate than the Christianity.



Mello peered up from under his fringe, eyes flashing with promise. "You look very hot. Would you like me to turn the heating down for you?"



"Would you like me to take you out for a drink or a meal or something?"



The blond practically purred. "I\'d rather stay in with you. I want you to show me something."



Matt bowed his head, dreading what was coming next. "What do you want me to show you? Bearing in mind that you have a Bible in your hand."



"Oh Matt." Mello sighed, placing the book onto the arm of the settee, his hand laid on it. "I\'ve tortured people to death with the Holy Mother Herself looking on. Do you think the touch of a Bible will save you?"



Matt stared at the carpet. All logic and moral imperative told him that he should be shrinking away. Mello was telling him dreadful things that there could have been no justification for. It was the Mafia, it was probably just about money. But the suggestions were all working on him and he was too turned on to even linger on what was being said. Mello could go into denial all he wanted; he could try to make himself out to be an absolutely villain; but he was up against two facts that had lodged now into Matt\'s mind. The first was that Mello probably was gay and the second was that all this talk of death and torture was, shamefully, very erotic. "Have you eaten?"



Mello laughed. "What twisted train of thought got you from the threat of being tortured to death to \'have you eaten\'?"



Matt blinked and looked up. "What would you like to do tonight?"



The blond rose from the settee and prowled the short distance to the armchair. He towered over Matt, a leather gloved hand uncurling to touch his cheek. "I\'m sure you never used to blush so much." Mello\'s lips parted. There was chocolate in his mouth. Matt watched him turn it over on his tongue and rub it against the roof of his mouth. Then it disappeared from view. "I want you to teach me some things, Matty."



"Like what?" Matt hated the fact that he sounded so breathless. He was attempting to be cool and laidback under this onslaught.



Mello reached behind the chair and picked up the bag that he had dropped when he first came in. "When I received reports of you from my men, they told me that you did something very interesting. I know how I\'d do it, but I want to see how you do it." He rose from the bag with handcuffs, yanking the chain between them. "Give me your wrists, Matt."



The sight went from Matt\'s eyes directly to his groin. It was becoming extremely uncomfortable to be in his jeans. "You want me to teach you how to escape handcuffs." The blond nodded. "I could show you, but then I\'d have to kill you."



Mello shrugged, sitting down on the arm of the chair. Matt was facing him, his own back against the arm of the chair and his knees up beside his friend. Mello used them to languidly rest his own arm. His fingers lightly touched Matt\'s thigh. "The thing is, Matty, any idiot can escape handcuffs in front of them, but Bulmer and Rhodes swore that yours were behind your back. The hairgrip trick isn\'t going to work there, because the lock\'s turned away. The size of your boots, I think you would have struggled to bring your hands to the front to work on them there." He brought the handcuffs around to drape them along Matt\'s thighs. "Please show me, just in case I ever get taken."



Matt\'s mouth was very dry. "You want me to submit to you handcuffing my hands behind my back?"



There was a delighted grin on Mello\'s face. "Yes, please."



Matt sighed and extracted himself from the chair. The really frightening thing, to his mind, was that he would no longer have his hands to cover his groin. Mello was going to spot his arousal. He turned away, presenting his wrists, crossed, behind his backside for Mello to secure them. The metal clamped over them and Matt pulled. They were tight. "Are you going to time me?"



"Thank you for showing me wonderful things on my birthday, Matty." There was breath on the back of his neck and the barest touch of leather laces against his cuffed hands. "I really appreciate it."



Matt took a step forward. "Right!" He said, firmly. "Any hostage or kidnapping situation, stay calm. Observe everything. Learn everything you can about your captors, but co-operate. Remember two important things: the first few minutes are the most deadly. If you are going to be killed then it usually happens then and generally as part of an escape attempt. The adrenaline is pumping and your captors are at their most jumpy. Right now, you are a random person and they can objectify you. The other important thing is that the majority of people do survive these situations. If you keep calm and co-operate, use those minutes to observe, then the odds of surviving jump from possible to being likely." He heard the snap of chocolate, followed by sucking noises. He ignored them. "So what I\'m saying is don\'t try this trick in the first few minutes, unless they try to remove you from the scene. Just observe, observe, observe. The information you are gathering now will help you and any potential rescuers. Look around you, can you escape? How many of them are there? Are they armed? Are you injured? Are they injured? What\'s their emotional state? What\'s their motivation? If you don\'t co-operate, you are more likely to get killed. If you don\'t observe, you are less likely to be able to form an effective escape plan."



"When did you actually regain consciousness?"



"About ten miles away from my flat." Matt smirked. "I used the journey to listen to their conversation and work out their intentions. I could have escaped the handcuffs then, but I was in a moving car. They were both armed. I didn\'t know if the doors had childlocks on and so I couldn\'t risk just escaping at traffic lights or something. I only had the element of surprise for a few seconds and if the doors didn\'t open, I\'d have been dead."



"Ok, good so far." Mello smiled, stepping forward again to touch his arms. "Just so you know, these are double-locked."



"Do you already know all of this shit I\'m telling you?"



"If I\'d been taken, then there\'s generally more to it than what you\'re saying, so I\'d have had to operate within certain other considerations. But please carry on. It\'s interesting to know what you know."



Matt nodded. "By the time we reached the airfield, I knew that this was the end of the road. Both of your men left the car, which was brilliant from my point of view. So I got out of the handcuffs. They weren\'t even looking at me, but I knew that leaving the car would attract their attention. They had guns, so I\'d have been shot the second I ran. There was no shelter, but they\'d left me in a car! My record for hotwiring a car is twenty seconds, so I could have done it."



"I\'m fascinated by where you learned all of this."



"Wammy\'s House." Matt smirked. "Project I did when I was fifteen. I mean, we all had to do the basics, but I developed mine a bit. Roger\'s face was good when I submitted my requests: handcuffs, cars, cages, guns, knives, ropes. You get the picture."



Mello laughed. "Probably more than you do yourself. So you\'ve turned into Houdini in my absense? I\'m just fascinated on whether you viewed it as a game or just an excuse to take things apart to see how they worked. I strongly suspect another motive though."



"Which is?"



Mello slinked around him, pressing himself against Matt\'s chest and leaning in for a crushing kiss. One hand curled around the back of Matt\'s head and the other around his arse. "So, say that the motivation for your captors is sex. What do you do then?"



Matt was melting in Mello\'s arms. He could feel himself doing it. His heart pounding and his dick aching. The psychology of escape was not the foremost consideration. "You keep calm. You keep your dignity. You attempt to humanise yourself. It\'s harder for your captor to do anything if they see you as a human being and even harder to hurt or kill someone calm and dignified. The mind shuts out hysteria far better than dignity. Give them reasons not to touch you."



"Like what?"



"Mello, I\'m your oldest friend. I\'m your only friend. You touch me like that and you\'re going to have to start denying you\'re gay." He smirked as the blond stepped away. "I\'m Mail. You protected me against the bullies at Wammy\'s. I respect your mind so much."



Mello frowned, "Stop using your real name. Kira kills with real names."



"Harder for you to touch me now, isn\'t it?"



"Not really." Mello advanced again, reaching for a kiss. "You forget that I\'m a vicious bastard." His fingers pressed into the bulge at Matt\'s groin and the redhead nearly came there and then. "Oh! You like that, Matty!" There was a delighted snigger. "Sorry, please do continue trying to humanise yourself, with calm and dignity. I\'m just roleplaying the predatory, sexual attacker."



"Thanks, Mello." Matt gasped. "You\'re doing a great job." He froze as his belt buckle was unhinged. His voice emerged a touch too shrill. "Ok, here\'s how I got out of the handcuffs!" Matt reached around to the chain dangling from his waistband and threaded it upwards until his key-ring emerged from his pocket. Mello watched with interest, his hands still holding the flaps of Matt\'s flies. The redhead took the bunch of keys and other objects behind his back and fixed his gaze on Mello\'s gaze. "Mell?" Mello glanced back at him. "Hi." A click and the chain dropped again. Matt\'s hands emerged freely to cup either side of the blond\'s head. He planted his own kiss in triumph and Mello blinked. "Sorry. Was I too fast for you?"



Mello pulled away and circled him. He scooped the handcuffs up from the floor. "Show me again."



"No, you had your chance." Matt began, but Mello pushed him against the wall, manhandling his arms back behind him. The handcuffs clicked around his wrists again. "Don\'t think I don\'t know that you\'re getting off on this."



"Not half as much as you are, you masochistic whore."



Sighing, Matt collected up his chain again and felt through the objects attached to it, until he found a small collection of keys. "Roger agreed to the handcuffs. He arranged for every make, every model, to be delivered to my room. There isn\'t a set of handcuffs in existence that I can\'t get out of now, because I have the keys for them all." He inserted the key from the very end of the collection into the keyhole and turned. "These cuffs are the most commonly used, so the key is very easy to find."



"Clever." Mello grinned. "Show me one more time." He caught Matt\'s wrists before they could leave their position behind him and fastened the handcuffs around them again. Mello pressed himself against those trapped hands, rubbing his groin into them. A gloved hand unhooked the keychain, throwing it across the room, then continued around to pull down Matt\'s jeans and boxer shorts. "Show me, Matty. How are you escaping now?"



Matt moaned. "You\'re assuming that I want to escape now."



"Now, come on, Matt. You said you\'d fight me all the way." Mello\'s hand stroked down, over his hips, fingertips grazing his pelvis. "You said, \'there isn\'t a set of handcuffs in existence that I can\'t get out of now\'. Undo my laces please."



Mind frantic with lust, Matt did as he was told. He could worry about losing ground and backtracking on convictions later. His fingers fumbled blindly with the woven threads at Mello\'s groin. He couldn\'t get so much as a fingernail under them. For several minutes, he tried, unable to even find where they ended, his pride crumbling and his need rising, all the time feeling Mello\'s consent hard behind the fastenings. Meanwhile, Mello was occupying himself with butterfly soft touches everywhere between Matt\'s naval and thighs, except the one place where he would have come like a shot if the blond had so much as disturbed the air around it. Eventually, in desperation, Matt gushed, "I can\'t do it!"



Mello snickered. "Not so easy to get into, am I?" His face appeared inches away, leaning over the redhead\'s shoulder. "And you called me a slag."



"I didn\'t!"



"You insinuated it." Mello growled. "Yet here we are and it\'s you with your trousers around your ankles with a boner, begging me for sex."



"I\'m not!"



Mello smirked. "Then maybe you should."



Humilitation crashed through Matt\'s psyche. Mello was right. The blond could seduce at a glance, but he was just fumbling like an adolescent. Mello could just walk away now without breaking a sweat. He would leave Matt as a quivering wreck with an urgent need to go somewhere private and deal with the throbbing in his balls and dick. But first he would have to get out of the handcuffs. Mello would laugh at him the entire time. "Mello, please fuck me."



"Pardon?"



"Please fuck me."



"You ask like you\'d ask for a cup of tea." Mello trailed fingertips over Matt\'s throat. "You want something from me, whore?"



The twin demands of excruciating embarrassment and the need for this to happen fought in Matt\'s cringing mind. He swallowed. "Mello, I\'m begging you for sex. Please will you fuck me? I lost, you won." Mello wasn\'t moving. He was just smiling in cruel delight, his gloved fingers travelling over Matt\'s throat and spine. "I\'m at your mercy. You got me. Please, I\'m begging you to do this to me."



"Do what, Matty?"



"Fuck me. Please."



There was a deep sigh. "Ok, seeing as you asked me so nicely and you\'ve put me up and all." Mello disappeared behind him and there was a rustling noice. Matt twisted around to see the lubricant being taken from Mello\'s bag. The bastard had planned this all along! "See how easily I can take you over? I will always win, Matt."



Matt frowned, wondering if Mello even knew that that statement made no sense in this context. If the issue was whether or not Mello was gay and, more specifically, if it was possible for them to become a couple, then all of this ran counter to all that Mello had been saying. Matt was winning. But then Mello was squirting lubricant all over Matt\'s arse and wriggling out of his leather trousers and Matt didn\'t care for any semantics of power politics now. He tensed as the blond positioned himself and stifled a shriek as he pushed himself in. "Fuck!"



"Relax for me, Matty." Mello purred. "You begged for this, now take it."



His knees buckled, but Mello held him up, pounding him against the wall. Just as a couple of days before, the surrender came within Matt\'s body at some cue that seemed not to originate in his mind. When it did, the pleasure overtook the pain. It was sensual and rough, his unprotected head knocking against the wall so often that his cheekbone would be bruised and his nose screamed in protest from the pressure of his goggles against it. His wrists sore against the small of his back, where he held them awkwardly so to keep them out of Mello\'s way. The blond\'s caresses, which had always been weapons of seduction, had given way now to painful gripping and scraping, facilitating the furious thrusting deep into Matt\'s arse. In a torrent of moaning and obscentities, Mello came inside him, the warmth inside flooding over the surreal ecstasy of having his prostrate repeatedly chafed by Mello\'s dick. Then Matt was being supported, pulled back to lean with his full body weight against Mello\'s body. It only took the barest of touches and he was coming too, bucking in Mello\'s arms and screaming his name.



It was over in kisses. Matt turned so that his back was against the wall and his arms feeling like they were about to break, but the kisses were probing, invasive and all the more erotic for it. "I guess..." Mello gasped between fevered puckering, "this makes us lovers. But," Another kiss, heated and rough. "don\'t go around telling people that you," His tongue raked across Matt\'s, moaning slightly as Matt did the same back to him, "are my boyfriend. Even if," This kiss held finality in it, "you are." Mello stepped away and Matt slid down slightly, all of his senses reeling. "Now, where\'s my chocolate gone?"



Matt exhaled, "Did you just ask me out?"



"No, stupid." Mello frowned, straightening his clothes. "I don\'t ask. I take." He swooped down on his chocolate bar and munched on a corner of it. "I\'m just telling you that you aren\'t free to sleep with other people, because you\'re now my private preserve. Read into that what you like. I\'m going in the bath."



"So you are gay?" Matt spluttered, still bound, still dazed.



Mello glared at him and walked away.