Poisoned Rationality

They were transported home behind the darkened windows of the institution\'s limousine. Passing the distance in silence for the most part, except for the incessant clicking of buttons on the PSP. Mello had expected to feel relief at the sight of the tower block, but instead it loomed like a sacrificial megalith, something darkly Pagan to be confronted. Across the vehicle, Matt just stared out of the window now. He was smoking, despite Roger asking him not to before they\'d left. Passers-by congregated to stare, especially as their driver opened their door for them, bowing slightly, "Sirs."



Mello emerged first, carrying off the celebrity status that such a vehicle implied in on a council estate like this. Despite the dullness of the February afternoon, he wore sunglasses, gazing about him with an air which warned others to keep back. Inside the limosine, Matt pushed boxes down to the door with his feet, then took Mello\'s hand as support in stepping out. Their driver produced a trolley and stacked the boxes on it, along with Matt\'s rucksack. Mello carried his own bag, tucking Matt\'s arm under his before conveying them forward. Mello might have been walking into the Ritz instead of a tower block, so confidently arrogant was his gait.



They took the lift up to the fifth floor, trailed by the driver, who had had secret instructions of his own. If either one of the Wammy alumni before him suspected as much, they didn\'t speak it aloud. At least until they reached the front door. "Thank you." Mello deposited Matt against the wall and turned to grip the handle of the trolley. "We can take it from here."



"Sir would like me to carry the luggage inside?"



Both Mello and Matt smirked, but it was Mello who responded. "Roger will have asked you to follow us in there and report back on what happens when we see how trashed it is. Truth is, that\'s mine and Matt\'s mess and we will deal with it on our own." He had dismissal painted across his expression and air. "Thank you for your assistance in getting us home." There was a movement behind one of the doors. At least one of their neighbours was listening in. Mello rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and raised his voice. "Right everyone, I know you\'re listening. The spoiled, little, rich kid is back from his Daddy\'s house to plague your pitiful existence again." He opened his bag and took out an envelope. They had apparently been allocated money for their part in defeating Kira. Some of it was here. He counted doors and then money. "Come on out and speak to our retainer. He will give you what Daddy sent for you. Yes, it\'s silence money. Yes, guncrime is getting so terrible around these parts, it\'s almost as bad as London!" He yanked the trolley closer to the door and avoided Matt\'s bemused eyes. "Wow, kids today, showing off pretending they are in the Mafia. Going to get killed, the lot of them." Mello jabbed the key into the lock. Remarkably, it went in first time. "Give them £100 each." Mello opened the door and pushed it against the debris behind. The trolley followed, catching on the threshold, but Matt lifted it to get it over and sneaked in after it. Mello slammed the front door behind them and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. "How am I doing?"



Matt shrugged, "You role-play Mello very well." He peered through the spyhole. "The woman from next to the lift is out there with him."



"I can hear her."



They waited until all conversations had ceased and everyone had slunk back home. Matt reported that they were alone and only then did Mello push himself up from the wall. His troubled gaze took in the smashed furniture littering the hallway. "You ok, Matt?"



"Yes."



"Right, I\'ll tell you now that I have no idea what it\'s like in there. " He held out his hand and Matt took it. "Here is what I want to happen next. I want you to take me into every room and tell me precisely what the Hell I did to you in there. I want to know all the hotspots that are going to bring on a panic attack in you. I want to know which rooms are going to freak you out."



"To be honest, I only saw the bedroom and bathroom. You never took me into any of the other rooms." Matt lit another cigarette. "You shot the statue of the Virgin Mary."



"What?" Mello jolted.



"We could always go and get a hotel room."



"No." Fierce resolve settled itself onto the blond. "Show me. I need to see everything."



"Right." Matt tried to control his own trembling. "Here is where you built a barricade, then tore it to shreds when you thought Near was outside."



"I can see that, Matty." He nodded towards the rest of the flat. "Come on, I want to see."



Matt led them down the passageway, opening the door of the spare room. It had survived intact. It appeared that Mello had not stepped foot in there. Both the bedroom and bathroom doors were closed, but Matt pulled Mello past them into the front room. This was the most trashed room of all. The television, games and all computer equipment sat in shards of broken glass and plastic, their wires sprawling like tendons. The settees and armchairs had been slashed repeatedly, their stuffing oozed from gaping fabric. The curtains dangled down crookedly from the rails, which themselves hung from their screws. The table was upended and the fireplace was in pieces. Every door and drawer in the sideboard was opened. The contents covered the floor in a carpet of paper, glass and assorted odds and sods. The mess was sticky and stained, stinking of the alcohol which had plastered it. A \'Final Fantasy\' poster was shredded; the statue of the Mother shattered. Even the carpet was torn. "Erm, I think this is the room you had a bit of angst in."



"I don\'t remember doing this." Mello whispered, but when he closed his eyes, he saw flickers of things. Not enough to fit together into actual memories, but enough to place him in a time and location. "I don\'t know why I did this."



"You were looking for bugs." Matt supplied, quietly.



"Right." He gripped his lover\'s hand. "Shit, Matt, it must have been Hell."



Matt shrugged again and leaned back to switch the kitchen light on. "The fridge-freezer had already defrosted by the time we left. Roger switched it off. There\'s nothing perishable in there. In fact there\'s very little in there at all." Except for a smashed mug and general untidiness, the kitchen had also survived. "Remind me that if I ever need to bug you, I should put it in the kitchen. Apparently it\'s only front rooms that are ever bugged." He smirked and pulled out a chair to sit down. Mello stood in the doorway, still tightly holding Matt\'s hand, while staring from one room to the other. "You ok, Mell?"



"I will be." He lifted his rosary with his free hand and kissed it. "Matt, are we going to be alright?"



"Yes."



Mello nodded, then gently tugged on his arm. "There are two rooms we haven\'t been in yet. I need you to tell me everything." He watched his lover shakily stand. "You role-play my Matty brilliantly by the way."



Matt flashed a wane smile and led him to the bedroom. He opened the doors and it was all there, exactly as they\'d left it. Roger had unlocked the shackles and helped him dress. The rest was just as he\'d left it. Beside him, Mello had a quick intake of breath, taking in the chains and fitting it around his memories. "Here\'s where I was."



"I remember." Mello squeezed his hand. "At least I remember you being there. You were like a little ray of sanity."



"I was?" Matt tried to reconcile that statement against all that had happened. He reached a conclusion. "You want me to get back there?"



"What?" Mello wrapped his arms around the redhead. "No. I want you to do whatever you feel comfortable doing." But Matt seemed frozen to the spot. "Can you tell me all the things that you couldn\'t say in front of Roger, please?" Mello noted Matt\'s tiny nod and led them both to the wall, facing the bed. They sat on the floor and, with cigarettes and chocolate, hands held between them, spent an hour or more with Matt telling him everything. Several times, they had to pause with one or the other crying. Mello mostly listened, occasionally interjecting with a question or a flashing remembrance of his own. "I can see how I fucked with your head." He commented finally. "Mail, what I did to you was wrong. It was brainwashing. I know that you are scared. You have every right to be and I\'d be scared in your position. I know that nothing I could ever do would erase it. But me and you are not going to make it if..." He faltered, realising that what he was about to ask was impossible. How could Matt forget all that had been so brutally hammered into him? Mello knew that he had to be strong, but he couldn\'t. He broke into tears again.



Matt stared at the bed and reached a resolve of his own. "Mihael, we are going to make it, because there\'s no other option." He put his hand on his lover\'s shoulder and used him as a crutch to stand. From the chest of drawers, Matt took out handcuffs and one of Mello\'s belts and dangled them in front of his lover. The blond looked up, eyes blurred with tears. "It was so gentle, Mihael. Every touch, every kiss. Towards the end, a bit more, you know, but that\'s what is staying with me. It was so gentle. Like you weren\'t even there." He bit hard on his lip and the items in his hands shook. "I had to, because it was you, but it wasn\'t you and..." Now Matt was crying, leaning on the bedstead with his face in his hands, the handcuffs and belt still clutched there.



"So it was rape." Mello spoke finally.



"No, because... Oh God."



"What are you asking of me now, Mail?"



Matt shook his head for a moment\'s grace, fighting to keep his balance. Eventually the words came out. "On there. Where it happened. I need to trust you again. Have me, Mello, like it\'s you. Have me so it hurts."



"You want me to handcuff you down and hit you?" Mello stared in horror. "Now?"



Matt fell against the bed, his legs giving way, yet he still scrambled towards the door. Mello watched with his hands over his mouth. The redhead had made it to the doorway, where he used the wall to regain his feet, stumbling out into the passageway. A loud sob ripped from his throat and Mello realised that his Matt was running away. Without thinking, Mello leapt to his feet and caught up with him in the hallway. "Mihael, I can\'t! I can\'t!"



"You can\'t what?" Mello had grabbed him, pressing him against the wall, "Mail, tell me what I need to do. Please, I\'m... please, just tell me."



Matt went limp in his arms, bringing them both crashing down to the carpet. Splinters of furniture lay all around them. "Shout at me! Scream at me! Hit me! Do whatever you want, but don\'t ask me to go back in that room and... fuck, no..."



Mello moved back, just a foot away, raised his hand and brought it crashing down across Matt\'s face. The redhead sprawled further away, a handprint angry against his cheek and shock reverberating through his eyes. "Like that?" Mello screamed.



"You bastard." Matt shouted back, but he was calmer. Mello saw it even if Matt hadn\'t. The redhead launched forward, his fist clenched and now it was Mello careering into the toilet door. "Oh my God, I..."



Mello was back, tustling him to the ground, his fist connecting with Matt\'s stomach and Matt was clawing upwards, grabbing an ear and twisting it. Mello stepped away, kicked him in the ribs and then pinned him to the ground. "Fucking stop it!" Eyes flashing, glaring down.



"Urgh." Matt tried to curl over his stomach, but Mello had him too trapped. "I\'ve stopped." He peered upwards. "We haven\'t had a good fight in months." Then he brought his knee up and caught Mello in the kidneys. The blond released an arm to rub it and Matt used the error to punch Mello in the stomach too, but his swing lacked strength and his lover caught his wrist. "\'kay, owned."



"Mother of God, I could kill you sometimes." Mello perched, breathless and bruised, upon him. "Are you ready for my suggestion?"



"I\'m ready for any suggestions around now."



"Ok, number one, stop freaking me out. I\'m doing my absolute best here not to start panicking." Mello exhaled the breath he had been holding. "You and me could always cope if just one of us went down. Please try to remember that it\'s as fucked as it is because we both did at the same time. I hate to lay this on you, but I need your help here." He paused for another breath. "I\'m not doing so well, ok?"



"Right." Matt concentrated on his stinging cheek as a way back to the centre of himself. "It\'s ok, Mihael."



"Number two, I want you to have me." Mello gulped. "As in, I want us to swop roles. I want your cock in my arse. In there, on the bed."



Of all the things that Mello could have said to him, that one came out of left field. Matt just stared, his mouth open. "What did you say?" He blinked. "I\'ve never done it before, I wouldn\'t know how."



"You\'ve had front row tickets to this show hundreds of times. I\'m sure a fucking genius like you could work it out." Mello snapped and sat back off him, releasing his wrists and taking his hand. "Will you do it for me please?"



"Erm." Matt scratched his head. "What?"



"Will you stop looking at me like I\'ve grown two heads please?" Mello\'s eyes filled with tears, but his actions belied them. He reached down and pulled Matt to his feet. "Unless you can\'t bear to... with me."



"This is going to bring a whole new meaning to the term \'backseat driver\'." Matt smiled, though his heart was pounding. The blond in his arms was not right. He was approximately sane, but the vunerability was too close to the surface. He was too prone to tears. Too soft. Mello was trying so hard, but wasn\'t right. Even after the explosion, all those months ago, Mello had run the show. He\'d snapped vicious comments from the settee and gave every impression that one false move would result in a loss of someone\'s limbs - or life, it was all the same to him. All of this while his body was so ruined that he could barely move without intense agony. He certainly couldn\'t lift a finger to kill someone. He\'d blazed like a comet, bigger! He\'d crashed through life like a meteor, leaving craters the size of continents. Now it was like watching embers remaining after a bonfire. You could pile on more fuel for a few temporary flames, add oxygen to see them glow, but the only way anyone was going to get burned is if they pressed their naked skin really hard into the remnants. Right now, Matt knew that he\'d risk immolation just to see the inferno of Mihael Keehl again. "You want me to fuck you now?"



Mello gave him a withering look. "Yes, now." His gaze locked onto Matt\'s, trying to divine the depths of him. Mello\'s mind raced through the facts at the speed of knots. The hard facts first, name, important dates, IQ and every place where his intellect could be ranked, history, likes and dislikes. The more subjective, mutable facts second, his personality, his outlook and philosophy, the ways in which he was likely to react in any given situation. Mello gasped. He had thought like this before. He let go of Matt\'s hand and fled into the front room. Keen eyes took in the debris, but removed it from his vision. Aware that Matt had followed, Mello rushed over to a pile of papers near to the devastated electronic equipment. He quickly sorted through until he found a pad. It was covered in circles. "Fuck! I did."



"Did what?" Matt asked, leaning on the torn armchair.



"God, Matty, I\'m so sorry." Mello sat on the edge of the settee. "I worked out how to destroy you."



"I\'m amazed it took you this long." The redhead lit a cigarette and experimentally pressed the cushion of the armchair. It appeared to be stable enough, if a little bumpy. He sat down in it. "I\'d have thought you would have had that sorted out by the time you were five."



Mello stared pensively at the pad in front of him. "Matt, it might come as a huge surprise to know that I\'m actually quite fond of you. No, I\'ve never planned on defeating you." His eyes took in the circles and the words written within them. "Well, not before this."



Matt smirked. "Was the ultimate conclusion that you just had to actually fire the gun instead of just posing with it?"



"No." Mello faced him, courage rising. "I didn\'t mean your life. I meant your whole personality. Your mind. I meant destroy everything that makes up Matt. I was trying to create a body that I could keep safe." Despite himself, the goosebumps rose on Matt\'s arms. He didn\'t know what to say, so said nothing. "I was insane, Matt. This!" Mello smacked the pad with the back of his hand. "This is insane. This is the most... evil thing I have ever done and I did it to someone I..." He started pacing, beating himself up. "I love your mind! It fascinates me, stimulates me, inspires me, challenges me. It... oh God! Do you know how utterly bored I was in the Mafia? Without you there to talk to? When Near came back on the radar, for one stupid moment I nearly contacted him just to have an intelligent conversation! I didn\'t, of course." Mello lost his footing on the shell of a PS3 and had to grab the top of the blasted television to remain upright. "You! You keep my brain sharp and you stop me sinking underneath the sheer banality of other people. Even when you\'re distracted by your games and muttering something to make me go away, your one-liners are perfect. You can\'t help genius. You fucking breathe it in every word and thought, even when you think you\'re not. Neither can I, that\'s why we fit together so well. Wammy knew what he was about when he collected us all up from the four corners of the world and put us all together. It stopped us all losing our edge before we were educated, simply because we were so bored." Mello leaned up against the wall. "I\'m ranting again, aren\'t I?"



"Yes, but go on." Matt exhaled smoke. "I\'m picking out the inadvertent compliments and using them to boost my ego."



"They aren\'t inadvertent, you freak!" Mello held aloft the pad again. "This here is the greatest example of my utter stupidity! If you were some kind of bimbo, yes, you would still be gorgeous and I would still want to shag the arse off you, but I\'d be so bored an hour later. If you were merely very good with computers, then I could set you onto some tasks and I\'d probably never want a proper conversation with you. You are both of those things..."



"A bimbo?"



"No, idiot, gorgeous. But there! Did you see that?" Mello beamed, triumphantly. "You didn\'t hesitate! I said a lot of things right there, but the second my grammar was marginally ambiguous, you exploited it. You didn\'t even reason it out, did you, Matt? It was just there. This is what I\'m saying!"



"So your whole argument is leading up to proving that I\'ve got a reasonably high IQ?" Matt replied, drily. "With respect, Mell, isn\'t that, well, taken as read?"



"No!" Mello flared, tottering over the trashed floor to reach the relative safety of the settee again. He perched on the arm, with his boots on the spilling cushion and waved the pad around. "It\'s leading to the fact that I was trying to remove very aspects of you that I need." He frowned. "Not need, that sounds too mercenary. Want, love, cherish... shit! What\'s the word?"



Matt\'s hands rose in melodramatic expression, his tone in accordance, "That sings to your very soul. Oh! Heathcliff! Cathy!"



"Shut the fuck up." Mello glowered, then relaxed. "Actually yes, sings to my soul would cover it. Bit flowery, but yes." His fingers traced the circles. "And thank you for taking the piss out of me. I\'m sorry I told you to shut up. You\'re acting precisely how I really need you to act, because I\'m seeing you returning to me and that\'s a massive relief." His eyes had never left the paper. "That\'s why this represents the biggest fuck up of my life. Why on this God\'s earth would I want to destroy that?"



"Because while I can think, I can thwart you." Matt lit another cigarette from the embers of the last. "I can go out there and do things like drive cars suicidally through city centres and get shot. If I\'m just your pretty bimbo and a bit good at computers, you can stick me in a room and I\'ll be safe and sound."



Mello stared up in horror. "That makes a kind of fucked up sense."



"Mell, it was precisely what you were doing! You said it often enough."



"I told you that I was trying to destroy you?"



"No, you told me that you had to keep me safe."



"Which is why you flinch everytime I say that you\'re safe now." Mello tore off the paper and scanned the next page, before tearing that off too. "Give me your lighter. I want to burn these."



"Hell, no." Matt snapped. "I want to read it first." But when Mello looked at him, he threw the lighter. Mello caught it and surveyed him for a few seconds before carrying both papers and lighter to him. "Thanks."



"This is wrong. This is fucked up on so many different levels." Mello took his hand off the papers. "If anyone else had even thought of doing that to you, I would have personally carried out the hit."



Matt\'s eyes widened. Looking up, he was glimpsing Mafia Mello, it was as frightening as it was exhilarating. "Yeah, well, don\'t zero yourself. I need you around too for all the same reasons you just said you needed me."



Mello nodded. "I\'m going to get the milk and stuff that Roger had packed for us and sort out the kitchen, while you read that."



"I\'ll help."



"No. I need to do it." Mello marched away down the passageway, before Matt could protest. He returned a moment later with the trolley and abandoned it in the doorway. "I\'m also going to make a list of all the things that I need to go out later and shop to replace." He climbed over the contents of the sideboard to reach the rest of his pad, then picked through the mess at his feet until he found a pen. "I\'ll patch up the flat. Then I\'ll shop. Then I\'ll make this place fit to live in again. Then you can tell me if you want to even stay here tonight. Then, if you don\'t, we\'ll get a hotel. I promised you a place of our own for your birthday. I haven\'t forgotten that." He disappeared into the kitchen and started clattering around in there.



"Mell, since when did I get a running commentary on your thought processes?" Matt was studying the papers, trying to discipher a particularly scrawled bit of handwriting.



"Since my mind shattered and I need someone to be monitoring it." Mello called back. "Shit, I think water got in the plug socket."



Matt rose from the armchair. "Do not touch the electrics!"



Mello appeared in the doorway, one hand on his hip and a scowl on his face. "Jeevas, I have wired up an entire derelict building. I have configured explosives throughout. I have created several computer networks and organised the building of safe rooms. I have hacked banks, airports, corporate headquarters and, on one notable occasion, a garden centre. Don\'t ask." His hand rose and his eyes narrowed. "Now sit the fuck back down and credit me with the intelligence to unscrew a socket!"