My Own Way

Matt wrapped himself around and around in his quilt, freeing his arm just long enough to tuck in the edges, then wriggled down until it covered his head. Most nights, Mello had appeared at his door, unless he was working late on the Kira case in his room. He didn\'t so much ask to sleep in his bed, as shrugging and getting in with barely a bye or leave. Despite the blond\'s almost manic obsession with bonding just because the calendar said that they should, he hadn\'t joined him thus far. But then, it was technically Boxing Day now, so they could get back to normal. Matt laid his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.



He had been yawning over his Gameboy Advanced, but now he lay with an insomniac\'s twitching, his mind racing over trivalities. Matt sighed, debating whether to unfurl himself from his cocoon and play more games until he was certain to sleep, or else wait here to see if he could. This was his worst-case scenario, being trapped with no distractions. He didn\'t generally let it happen. He touched his thigh, where a bruise from the table was stinging. Things which had seemed so erotically charged in the kitchen now assailed him with regrets. He opened his eyes, exploring his feelings. No, no regrets. If Mello came in now and dragged him back onto the table, he would enjoy every second of it.



Mello. Matt\'s thoughts drifted to where they so often lingered. Mello. The last few weeks felt like a lifetime, but also too flimsy a reconnection. So much had happened, but there was still the high likelihood that, as soon as the blond was well enough, he would blaze back out of his life without a backward glance. Like a comet, puncturing the atmosphere to brightly illuminate the world below, then fading out of sight. Matt\'s breath caught. He was playing a dangerous game trying to pin his friend down, he knew that. Mello had to believe there was a point to something even to pay it attention; to maintain that attention, faced with an intellect as vast as the blond\'s, was a daunting feat. Matt gulped, sleep receding ever further away. He had to keep Mello\'s interest. He had to ensure that he appeared useful in the Kira case. Seducing him was unforeseen and Matt wasn\'t entirely sure it was him in control of that situation. He couldn\'t determine his strengths there. There was a huge chance that Mello was just using him in the absence of someone more... like Mello.



Matt blinked into the darkness. What would be Mello\'s ideal partner? Someone in leather; someone fiery, who could challenge him intellectually; someone who knew a lot more than Matt did about sex. He bit his lip, hands rising from within the quilt to rub his face. He needed a cigarette. He wriggled into a sitting position and switch on the lamp. The subsequent inhalation of nicotine soothed but didn\'t eradicate his doubts. His strengths. He needed to isolate his strengths before he slipped into that overwhelming feeling that led directly to cutting. His strengths were his history with Mello; his long-term friendship... but that hadn\'t stopped Mello leaving before. Matt sucked on his cigarette, staring into space. The friendship wasn\'t a strength. What was? What did Mello need.



Mello needed intellectual stimulation. Above everything else, that\'s what Mello valued. Matt swallowed. He could do that. Mello would always out-manoeuvre him on mindgames, but Matt knew he could come close enough for it to at least look like a race. As long as he spent the time they had apart cramming information and revising Mello\'s favourite theories and writers, then he might even beat him occasionally. Matt froze. No, never, ever beat him. It was a delicate balance that held the twin pitfalls of a rivalry on one side and desertion on the other. He had to be just clever enough to engage and just stupid enough to fail. Matt\'s mouth went dry, but it was an old game. He\'d done it for years.



His memory slid back to Wammy\'s House, as it had several times today. While Mello seemed intent on forcing a wonderful Christmas onto their day, Matt had been remembering those past ones. Congregating in the dining room for breakfast, then free time in the morning, which most people had filled revising for the January exams anyway. Somewhere around noon, they would meet in the common room. Early on, Mr Wammy himself had been there, playing Santa Claus and speaking with each child in turn. Matt had dreaded those moments, because Mr Wammy wasn\'t as dense as Roger. It was more difficult to deflect the questions. It had always turned into an endurance test, whereby he had to assure Mr Wammy that he was intelligent enough to stay, whilst explaining so many anomalies in his results. The constant promises, hand over heart, that he would play fewer games and focus on his studies instead. Mr Wammy smiling at him, like there was some huge joke that Matt would never get. Only then would he produce something lovely, like an XBox or a stack of the latest games, handing them over with a wink. Matt always left feeling as though his flesh was crawling, though he respected the old man a lot. It had been less intimidating when Mr Wammy had been busy with L and so Roger took his place. Roger was easy to distract.



Then came a light lunch and the afternoon activities. Carol singing, readings, tableaus and plays, which every child had to contribute to. Matt still cringed with flashes of having to do that. Mello had loved it, taking centre stage and delivering with perfection whatever he had chosen to do in any given year. But then Mello had always been a prima donna. Matt took a drag on his cigarette. No, that was wrong. There had once been a shy, insecure, half-frightened out of his wits, little boy, who had one day snapped and grown into Mello. If Matt closed his eyes, he could see that small child clear as if he was standing in the room with him now. Big, blue eyes peering nervously around the room, hands twisting, playing with the paper of his chocolate bar long after the contents had been demurely nibbled away. It was difficult to align that with Mello, even in the mind\'s eye. Matt shook his head. No, that child had been Mihael Keehl and had died a long time ago.



There was a soft knock on Matt\'s bedroom door and he looked across as it opened. Mello walked in with his quilt bunched up over his right arm. There was a tiny smile, then Mello closed the door behind him and walked around the bed to lie down beside Matt. The redhead released the smoke he had just inhaled and glanced at his lover. "Orly?"



"Yarly." Mello smiled. "What are you thinking about?"



"Nothing much."



"Can I think of nothing much with you?"



Matt shrugged, "I don\'t think you have the tools to do it."



"Eh?"



"Your brain thinks. You have to have one of the versions that can switch off." Matt smirked. Beside him, Mello finished arranging his own quilt, so that it fell over both himself and the roll of redhead. He glanced at Matt with amusement across his features and unfolded the wrapper on his half-eaten chocolate bar. "Just had the ghost of Christmas past in here. Said you had to do a reading or something to entertain the children."



"Did it really?" Mello laughed. "Did it say what it wanted a reading of?"



Matt thought again of that tiny Mihael, clutching his favourite book, even when he should have been reading other things; this being before the days of Near, when Mello read everything he had to just to stay in the running. "Yeah. He wanted something from \'Wind in the Willows.\'"



Mello raised his eyebrows. "That\'s a blast from the past." He licked his chocolate. "\'The world has held great Heroes, As history-books have showed; But never a name to go down to fame, Compared with that of Toad!\'" He grinned happily and Matt watched him, trying to see the boy who had first memorised that. It was impossible. Mello now was just too large a personality, filling the room with inherent crackling danger. This Mello killed without blinking. There was blood on his hands. Matt batted that thought away, he didn\'t want to consider it. But it refused to budge. This Mello had raised his fists at Wammy\'s House, but never with his friend. Matt was the protected one, able to walk safely in the blond\'s shadow, because who would touch him there? This violence between them was brand new, merely weeks old. "\'The clever men at Oxford, Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much, As intelligent Mr. Toad!\'"



"Yeah, but Mr Toad had never met you." Matt stubbed out the butt of his cigarette and sat back staring at the jumble of computers at the foot of the bed. If Mello was going to make a habit of coming in here, then those could be moved to the front room. It would make more room for other activities. "What did Mr Wammy used to say to you?"



"When?"



"Christmas."



"Which Christmas?"



"Eh?"



Mello frowned. "Matt, I think you had an important part of this conversation inside your own head, where I couldn\'t hear it." He inspected his chocolate. "Bring me up to speed and I\'ll attempt to remember."



Matt blinked. "It made sense from where I was sitting."



"Well it would, wouldn\'t it?" Mello replied, patiently. "You had a context and everything. I just had \'what did Mr Wammy say to you at Christmas?\' I don\'t know. He likely said, \'Merry Christmas, Mello.\'"



Matt glanced at him, rolled his eyes and then shuffled back to lying down. He peered up from the pillow at the blond. "Did you have a nice Christmas today?"



"Did you?"



"I asked you first."



Mello looked at him. "Stop being childish. Did you have a day where you weren\'t on the outside looking in? It was a proper family Christmas, wasn\'t it? With me. You looked excited about your games and the meal was nice. It was fun playing cards and watching the television."



Matt stared. The pieces slotted into place, but the conclusion made no sense. It sounded to him remarkably like Mello was thinking about something other than Kira. Moreover, the blond had been not only considering the feelings of someone other than himself, but had been attempting to do something nice for his lover. Mello had been like a cat on a hot tin roof, obsessing over creating the perfect day according to some unspecified rules as to what should happen, and Matt had assumed it was a reaction against the implied horrors of Mafia life. "You did that for me?"



The blond reached down to lay a hand over Matt\'s cheek. "You\'re so cute."



"Is that another Americanism?"



Mello returned to eating his chocolate. "Maybe." He fiddled with the dressing on his chest, then shook back his hair, before looking back at the redhead. A laugh lined his tone, "What?"



"I can\'t work you out."



"Good."



Matt pulled the quilt closer to his chin. "You tell me that there\'s nothing left of my friend from Wammy\'s, but here you are. You tell me that you\'re not gay, but my arse is really fucking aching from when you had me over the table. You live your life around mortal sins and yet I\'ve never known you so overtly Catholic. You act like you don\'t need anyone and yet you keep coming to sleep in my bed. I mean, you\'ve always been a contrary fucker, but there is such a thing as..."



"Matty." Mello warned coldly, his expression matching. "You\'re doing that thing where you get over-tired and start talking shit. Put your lamp out and go to sleep." He emphasised the point by dropping his chocolate onto the unit beside him and lying down himself. A moment later, he half-sat again to remove his rosary, draped it over the bedpost, then lay back down.



Matt sighed and reached out to do as he was told. He recognised dismissal when he heard it. He snuggled back down, tucking back in the edges that had worked loose. "Yes, it was a good Christmas."



There was a shuffling in the darkness and Mello\'s arm enfolded Matt\'s cocoon of quilt. Their lips found each other\'s and closed in a lingering kiss. Matt smiled inwardly, the dreams of a thousand teenage nights realised and soothed in the improbable proximity of the blond, and the fact that he evidently felt the same way. Mello here with him, plucked back from the wilderness, as large as life. Larger than life. Mello changed practically beyond recognition, but still carrying within him that rich seam of things that had defined and so driven the boy. Matt wondered at himself now, at how easily he could embrace the things that Mello had become, the violence and the murders, the seeming lack of morality and the Mafioso stain; but in every way he considered it, there was no choice other than acceptance. Everywhere he looked around him, at his world and Mello\'s, it appeared as a desert with themselves as the oasis at its core. Matt half-suspected that he and Mello, in their own ways, had caused the scorched earth surrounding them; each of them single-minded in their pursuits, as befitted good Wammy\'s House children. Matt tracking Mello; Mello chasing Kira. Matt had given up his anonymity, to a certain extent and only for those with the intelligence to follow the clues, by scattering flares all over cyberspace highlighting the location of Mariomatt. His plan had worked and there could be no turning back now. One goal reached and the other inevitably to come, because Matt knew that, as long as Kira remained at large, little pieces of Mello would erode under the acid formed in his own mind. All Matt could do was cling on, tag along for the ride and hope, that when this was all over and Kira was gone, there would be enough of Mello left to fit together again.



"Night, Matty." Mello turned away from him, onto his right side where he could have a chance at comfort enough to sleep without knocking his injuries.



"Night Mell." Matt whispered, his lips still tingling with the kiss that had seemed to say all that could never be spoken aloud. "Mell?" There was a grunt in reply. "Thank you for coming back."



There was a pause, then Matt felt Mello\'s hand reaching back and so extracted his own from the quilt. Their palms met and fingers wrapped around the other\'s, squeezing in reassurance, before being mutually retracted. Mello spoke gruffly. "It\'s alright." Matt nodded, his eyes already closing in sleep and his mind settled at last.