My Own Way

Matt manhandled the long, unwieldly white box out of the lift and into the landing hallway. He hadn\'t bothered with Christmas much since he had left Wammy\'s House and had barely participated in it there, but for the excitement of receiving games or money. However, he now had a Christian in his house and supposed that he had better make the effort. There had been an infectious bonhomie out in the town, with the lights cheerful in the darkening day and a Victorian fayre throwing out the scent of roasted chestnuts, hog-roasts and candy-floss. He\'d paused to watch some kids waving to their parents around the temporary merry-go-round that had appeared in the town centre, mixed emotions prompting a vague wondering about what could have been; but then he moved on, it occurring to him that he probably looked like a paedophile standing there.



Mello was home, as Matt knew he would be from the text messages that had dragged him back from the shops. The blond looked up from his armchair, frowning in curiousity at the purchases. "It\'s an artificial Christmas tree." Matt informed him blankly. "I\'ve got some decorations too." He propped the white box up the wall and dropped the carrier bags into Mello\'s lap. "I waited until after your birthday, because we don\'t have Christmas until the 13th has passed." He smirked in memory of the annual rant of their childhood.



"Nice." Mello peered into a bag catching sight of shiny baubles and coiled tinsel.



"And I\'ll leave the rest to you." Matt lit a cigarette and strolled into the kitchen to fill the kettle. "It being the Christ Mass and therefore fuck all to do with me."



"You want me to put up the decorations?" Mello asked incredulously. "I\'ve never put up a tree in my life!"



Matt rolled his eyes. "Well, call me if you can\'t understand the instructions. They are in little pictures on the side of the box." He took out two mugs and began preparing their drinks. There was a pause then a rustling noise. Mello walked into the kitchen and opened a drawer, taking out the large carving knife. He crossed to where Matt was standing and kissed him before returning to the living room. There was a tearing as the tree was freed from its packaging. "I\'ll clear some room by the desktop. If I move it across a bit, I can kick some games into a pile by the telly. Should fit."



"Yeah." Mello agreed, assessing the space against the dimensions printed on the box. "You alright?"



"Eh?"



Mello leaned back to see him through the kitchen door. "I haven\'t seen you for two days, I\'m just checking on your health and well-being."



"I haven\'t cut."



Mello frowned at him. "That\'s not why I was asking. Wow, you\'re prickly today."



Matt glanced at him. Mello carried with him ripples of the Mafia, like the scent of blood sensed but not smelt by the nostrils or a shadow half-seen around him. It was sometimes hard to equate him with the headstrong boy who had walked out of Wammy\'s. Matt would have found it difficult to articulate his thoughts to the child, but couldn\'t even contemplate the man hearing them. Any other day, Matt would have rolled his eyes to hear them himself. What could he actually say? \'Oh! I was in the town centre and there were parents playing with their children, and it got to me a bit, because I never had it; and I was, unfortunately, so clever that the authorities shoved me in a house where the wardens didn\'t believe in teaching fairy tales, so we missed out on experiencing the magic that I could see sparkling in the children\'s eyes.\' Matt sighed and turned back to the boiling kettle. "Town was full of screaming kids and I\'m just a bit tired."



"Yes, I noticed that you aren\'t high. Thank you, Matt."



Matt poured their drinks. Despite its foolishness, the whole family/Christmas/oh dear me, I\'m an orphan thing was growing like a bruise on his psyche and it was worse when he looked at Mello, because he was an orphan too. In fact, it was much worse, because Mello had been a nice kid until Near had arrived; then he\'d been a slightly deranged, short-tempered nice kid. Matt doubted very much that Mello would have ended up part of the Mob, with half his face blown off, if his parents had died on him. He\'d have probably been a missionary, saving starving children in some poverty-striken terrain or using that startling intelligence of his to invent a way of irrigating an entire drought-ridden nation; or become a priest or something. "That reminds me." Matt spoke aloud and Mello raised his eyebrows with a smile. "I got you this." He fished in his back pocket and extracted a leaflet. "It\'s the Catholic church in town. Tells you when the midnight mass will be held. It\'s surprisingly not midnight."



Mello took it from him gingerly, a strange look flashing across his features. "Thanks." He whispered. "But I don\'t think I\'d be welcome in a Church these days."



"They went to Church in \'The Godfather\'."



"It\'s not like \'The Godfather\', Matt." Mello snapped, but flicked his head back and leaned up against the doorframe. His expression dissembled. He was evidently not in the mood to become angry. "What reminded you of this?"



"I don\'t mind coming with you to the Mass."



"I\'m not going to the Mass."



"Right."



Mello switched tack. "What do you normally do for Christmas?"



"I don\'t." Matt frowned. "Christmas is for families and Christians, what the fuck have either of those things got to do with me?" His eyes met Mello\'s and Matt exhaled, acknowledging inwardly that he was being awkward. He didn\'t want this visit to turn into another argument or else the blond really would disappear into the Underworld and never come back. "Ok, the latter maybe has something to do with me, on the basis that you\'re one, but..." He paused, realising that he\'d talked himself back onto shaky ground. "It hasn\'t really applied to the past few years."



"I see." Mello reached out to the unseen Christmas Tree box and came back with a bar of chocolate. He chewed on an edge of it looking thoughtful.



Matt placed the hot chocolate on the table and sipped his own tea. Making an effort to be conciliatory, he asked, "What do you normally do for Christmas?"



"Watch a lot of sweaty gangsters get drunk." Mello smirked and, when Matt glanced up at him, the blond winked. It broke the ice before it could properly form. "But this year, I get to spend it with my family." He reached out and touched Matt\'s arm. "You never know, if we\'re really lucky, \'Oliver Twist\' might be on the telly."



Matt stared. Mello was telling him that he knew. It was like the man was psychic or something at times. He sighed. "How do you...? I mean, what do you think you\'ve concluded about me?"



"I nearly succeeded the greatest detective in the world and you\'re asking me to reveal my methodology?" Mello grinned. He was enjoying himself. "The case, your Honour, will be won like this. Our hero arrived home looking downbeat, so the scene of the crime was probably outside. He noticed \'screaming kids\', but this is Matt! He is accomplished at ignoring children at any volume, having grown up in a house with another fourteen of them, including one really loud one in the same room. Suspicious, yes." Mello raised his chocolate in the air, warming to his theme. "Then, I submit to you the clinching evidence! There was a definite sneer to his tone on the word \'families\'. I also have a witness, who can testify, should the court require it, to just how fucking annoying it is walking through the town centre and having to stand on the outside looking in, on something you feel like you probably should have had."



Matt smiled. Had Mello spoken that last with sadness, the redhead probably would have allowed the pathos to really sink into his mood, but Mello was smirking at him. "Sorry, I\'m acting like a Hillyer, aren\'t I?"



Mello laughed and shook his head. "The last thing you\'d ever be is a Hillyer, Matty. Never even close." James Hillyer had been a ten-year-old who had been at Wammy\'s so briefly that he hadn\'t even chosen nor been assigned a new name. He had cried over the loss of his parents from the second he had arrived to the moment he\'d left. In an institution where every child was an orphan, and therefore tried to outdo each other in displays of mature stoicism, Hillyer had first been ridiculed and then villainised. There were children in Wammy\'s, who had never known the boy, who still referred to cry-babies as Hillyers. It was a crime worthy of ostracisation to miss your parents, even if Roger had tried to tease such emotions out of them during counselling sessions, and every child knew it. To be called a Hillyer was the worst insult of all. "So, am I a great detective or am I a great detective?"



"You\'re not bad, Mello." Matt grinned. "Oh God, man, it was so bloody annoying. The trees were right by the Santa Claus grotto thing, so the queue went all the way around it. All the adults looking bored and the kids looking like they could have done with a good smack, then they\'d get to the front and it was so obvious the parents were trying to steer their kids into asking for what they must have already got them. It was all, \'ask Santa for that game you want. What\'s it called again?\', then kiddie would say it and the parents would either be going, \'no, you wanted that other game\' or they would be practically wetting their pants encouraging the snotty-nosed brats. I was there for fucking ages, because all the trees were stacked on pallets and the bottom layers had all gone. Think I could find a stool or ladder to get to the top layers? Or an assistant would have been nice? But fuck no, I was just there to spend my money, not see a mythical being; who is probably a Christianisation of Woden facing us from the other side of a Coca Cola ad. campaign. Hardly important. Bastards."



Mello applauded, his suppressed chuckles erupting into full-blown laughter. "I think that\'s the most I\'ve ever heard you say. That was a brilliant rant! Carry on."



"Mello, you are really not in a position to talk to me about rants. You mastered them years ago."



"I don\'t rant."



"Like fuck you do."



"Ok, occasionally." Mello grinned. He shifted position against the doorjamb, licking his chocolate as he surveyed the redhead. "So, little boy, what games would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas?"



Matt hid a smile under a bitten lip. "Stop making fun of me."



"I\'m not. I\'m trying to work out what to get you for Christmas." He waved an arm behind him. "I\'m not hunting through all of them to see what you haven\'t got. Obviously I am making a huge assumption here that you\'ll want games."



"I\'ll make you a list."



"Good."



"You have to make me a list as well."



Mello shrugged. "I\'ll have \'Oliver Twist\' on DVD."



"Fuck off." Matt stepped forward and playfully smacked his arm. "I\'m going to get it for you now, just to..." Mello caught his arm and dragged him into a kiss. He tasted like chocolate. There was chocolate on Matt\'s lips as he drew back, which Mello dived in to lick off. Matt laughed. "Did you nearly lose a bit there? Oh dear." He pulled away and wandered into the front room, sipping tea as he inspecting the space he needed to clear.



Behind him, Mello had chuckled and returned to stripping the netting from the artificial tree. He had finished long before Matt had manoeuvred the desk to one side and finished kicking games in the direction of the television. "Will you help me decorate it?"



"No." Matt caught Mello\'s frown. "For the simple reason that you\'re a perfectionist, so wherever I stick a bauble, you\'ll end up moving it somewhere more symmetrical or aesthetically pleasing or shit."



Mello looked slightly hurt, but he conceded the point. "Ok, but you take them out the wrappers and pass them to me then." He manhandled the tree into place, bending to tighten the pegs at the base. "I know you\'re looking at my ass, Matt."



"Arse."



Mello peered back and smiled. "I\'m so sorry, I\'d forgotten that I\'m not in LA anymore. Let me try that again. I know you\'re looking at my arse, Matt."



"I wasn\'t actually. I was looking at the tree lights." He held up the box. "But stay there, I can adjust my view."



Mello straightened. "Why am I putting up your tree, in your flat, anyway?"



"No, honestly, Mell, you can stay bent down if you like. I missed it."



"Well, you should pay better attention then." He fluffed down the branches and held out a hand. "Lights."



"As for it being my flat..." Matt handed over the string of lights and began singing, "\'Consider yourself at home, consider yourself part of the family, I\'ve taken to you so strong...\'"



Mello stifled a chuckle. "Idiot." They exchanged glances, smirking, then Mello strode across the room to pick up his empty mug. He cupped it in both hands and didn\'t even have to say \'can I have more please?\', before both he and Matt were laughing. "That\'s a no, then?"



Matt bobbed his tongue out. "So if you\'re going for Oliver, does that make me the Artful Dodger?"



"I think I\'m more Artful Dodger than you."



"You\'re the blond." Matt pointed out reasonably. "I\'m definitely getting you that DVD for Christmas now, and the soundtrack, and I\'m going to make you watch it."



Mello raised his eyebrows. "You\'re going to make me do something? Go on then, it\'ll be interesting to see you try." He snatched a kiss on the way past and began work on the tree. "This is nice."



"What is?"



"Feeling easy with you in the room again." The silence which followed threatened the fledging equilibrium that had formed between them. "Come on, Matt, don\'t go back into your shell. I\'ve found it strange as well, that\'s what I was saying. We both grew up and it\'s just nice to know that the groove is there to fit back into. It feels more like old times now than it has since we got back together, that\'s all."



"I\'ve got a Mafioso draping tinsel in perfect loops on the branches of my new Christmas tree." Matt grinned. "It\'s a good job I love the surreal." Mello laughed and the encroaching tension receded again. "Brain the size of a planet and he\'s using it to plan where to stick baubles."



"Don\'t tempt me." Mello winked and Matt blushed. "You want surreal? How about my world? I\'ve had sex, twice, with my best friend and I appear to be going out with him. Now that is surreal."



"I can top that one..."



"Try it and die."



"Surreal is meeting up with Mello and finding out that he\'s been surgically removed from his books and has found out about sex." Matt reached to tuck a loose end of tinsel under a branch. "And God! Has he found out about sex!"



Mello stood and shimmied a little, before reaching to take the decoration dangling from Matt\'s finger. "No, surreal is this. Matt, when was the Battle of Shrewsbury?"



"1403."



"There. That\'s surreal."



Matt frowned. "The Battle of Shrewsbury is surreal?"



"No. Let\'s put it another way. Would you say that Kira has forced a period of post-modernity onto the world, creating a blending of cultural norms transcending boundaries of location, nation, age, class and other traditional classifications?" Mello caught the redhead\'s frown. "Just humour me."



"I don\'t know, because you\'ve started with a paradox. If we\'re living in the post-modern, that\'s..." He paused. "No, actually, you\'re right, if we take the norm as pre-Kira, then this is probably the only time in history that we could say we\'re living in a post-modern age. I think that the second part is bollocks though. You can have everyone focusing on the same thing, but everyone interprets it in different ways and their background has to have an influence on that."



"Example?" Mello shot back.



"Normal people don\'t find \'Oliver Twist\' funny."



Mello laughed. "True." He peered from around the tree. "Surreal is being able to ask a question like that and have someone be able to answer it. Even if you did get it wrong. How can you possibly say that this is post-modernism? It\'s arguably a reaction against Kira, but that makes it modern."



"No, because we\'re trying to return to modern." Matt shrugged. "Therefore it\'s post-modern."



"Fuck off. If you go by that reasoning then any major war was post-modernism."



"Mello, do you even know what post-modernism is?"



The blond straightened. "I studied Samuel Beckett for A-Level and got an A for it." He glared. "A war is not a social or political innovation! Kira\'s got a philosophy behind it, even if..."



"Does it matter?"



"Yes. You said I didn\'t know what post-modernism is."



"How did we get to this from you knowing about sex?" Matt handed over another bauble. "In fact, if you\'re going to start ranting about Becket, I\'m getting my Gameboy out."



"Yes, but Matt," Mello stepped across to slap his hands against the redhead\'s cheeks, "the point is that you know who Becket is! If I prodded you enough, we could even have a serious debate about modernism, post-modernism, culture, anti-culture." He sighed, happily. "It might even segue off into philosophy per se, or architecture, drama, literature. You have a mind! Oh God! I\'ve missed conversations with someone with a mind." He cocked a leather-clad leg and climbed onto Matt\'s lap, pushing him backwards onto the settee. Kisses rained down, as Mello held Matt\'s head in both hands. "Talk to me about Satre and Camus."



"Toynbee said that the First World War led to post-modernism."



"Yes, Matt! Talk to me about the challenge-and-response development of civilisations!" Mello moaned breathlessly.



"Will I get a shag out of it?"



"I\'ll even tie you down for this."



"Kira will win if the leaders of civilisations stop reacting creatively. Toynbee waffled on, at great, tedious length about how civilisations can\'t be murdered, but can commit suicide by not responding to a challenge..."



"Yes! Yes! Yes!"



Matt laughed. "You really have been starved of intelligent conversation, haven\'t you?"



Mello scrambled amongst his belongings on the floor and came back with a gun. He held it to Matt\'s head. "More Toynbee!" He smirked, resuming his position on top of the redhead. "Apply Trevor-Roper and Geyl to the Kira situation too, they make more sense than Toynbee, and don\'t stop talking until I say you can." He cocked the trigger and carried on kissing.