Watari Pt 2: Wammy's House

Matt pulled over into the carpark of a Little Chef. He had been steadily crying since the M25 and, even by his standards, he wasn\'t safe on the road. His goggles were in a permanent state of being misted up, so he\'d taken them off. Now he had a headache from straining to see the road, as well as from being so upset. He had expected that Mello might have called by now, if he was free, but he hadn\'t. Matt lit a cigarette, which he couldn\'t stop from becoming wet with two splashes of tears the instant it was in his mouth. He pulled out his mobile \'phone and texted Mello. \'I\'m sorry. I\'ve pulled over at the Little Chef. Just need to calm down a bit. Love you.\' Almost immediately a text was returned. \'Love you too, Mail.\'



He glanced out of the window, opened because of all the cigarettes he\'d been smoking, but the restaurant was indistinct through the blurring of his vision. A cup of tea could solve all the world\'s ills, but he couldn\'t go in there looking like this, all red-faced and snotty nosed, the tears still coming. It all broke through him again. Matt folded his arms on the steering wheel and sobbed like his heart was breaking, yet there was no relief in it. He kept trying to rationalise the situation or to think himself into happier times, but the crying refused to abate. He could hear the whimpering noises coming from his throat and he wondered if this was what a breakdown felt like. He hated the thought of people coming out of the Little Chef and seeing him devastated, but driving now felt akin to suicide.



"Stop." Matt gasped out, but his body wouldn\'t listen. It still shook and his eyes still wept. "DS, play DS." He gabbled to himself, sniffing and swiping at his eyes with the back of his glove. But the DS, when he fetched it out of his pocket, was smashed. Whole new waves of howling overwhelmed him and he tried to curl into a ball, but the steering wheel was in the way. He grabbed at the lever below his seat and rolled it back. Knees up to his chin, he turned onto his side and cried facing the interior of his car and the hedge outside. No more people to see him. Cigarette after cigarette burned away sodden between his fingers. There was no comfort to be had.



Traffic came and went around the carpark, so Matt thought nothing of the roar of a motorcycle approaching, until it parked up beside him and his door was opened. "Matty." Mello\'s helmet was on, but his visor was up. The redhead turned and immediately reached up, never so eager for a hug as now, when it felt like the world was ending. Mello held him close with one arm, the other employed in removing his helmet and dropping it onto the seat behind his lover. "Come on, it\'s alright. It\'s alright, baby."



"It\'s not, I..." Matt gasped into the motorcycle leathers, but he couldn\'t finish, his whole body shuddering with great sobs.



"I promise you it\'s ok." Mello soothed, rubbing the redhead\'s back. "I really do promise you it is. Come on, guapo, it\'s alright. It\'s certainly not worth all this." He kissed Matt\'s head, holding tighter. There was a catch to his voice. "I thought I\'d lost you. I really thought..." He stopped. Matt was struggling, starting to pull away. Mello understood. This was not his own time to crack. "Stop! Matty! Hey." He pushed the redhead against the car, trapping him with his own body. Matt clung to him again, sobbing his heart out. "Ok."



"How can you bear...?" Matt began, but the rest of his question was lost in his devastation.



Mello grabbed a handful of hair, forcing his husband\'s head roughly backwards, so he glare into those green eyes. Eyes so full of anger, hurt, betrayal and despair that Mello nearly flinched away. "I thought we got this established in LA. That first time, when I had you taken from home and put in that apartment." Matt was shaking his head in confusion, unused to an eidetic memory failing him. Mello smirked. "Maybe the sentiment only happened in my head then, but Matty, if you leave me, furious angels will run to defend me." Matt sagged a little. Still crying, but slightly less desperately, like it was more of a release than a raging against hopelessness. Mello was quoting from a song, from an album, Rob Dougan\'s \'Furious Angels\', which he was sure had more resonance for Matt than Mello could ever know. It dated from their time apart, between Wammy\'s House and the Mafia. Mello didn\'t know what that album said to Matt and, in truth, that irked him, because it was not something that they had shared. Matt should have no powerful influences on his mind or emotions that Mello had not been part of too, but this music was proof that such things existed and that that was Mello\'s fault for leaving him in the first place. When he\'d discerned that there was meaning, and feeling, then Mello had taken the album and listened to it over and over again, with an obsessive probing demand for it to yield its secrets. "\'And if you go, furious angels will bring you back to me.\'"



"Mello."



"You missed the point, Matt. I am not prepared to let you go. Not Near, not Wammy\'s, not this fucking war all the God damned time to prove ourselves the best, not God, not anything this whole bloody world could throw at us, is going to take you away from me. You are mine!" Mello had hissed the last into his face, eyes narrowing dangerously. "You have not got the right to endanger yourself, in any way, shape or form, and especially not to use my name in vain to justify it! Because, trust me, guapo, furious angels have nothing on me and I will stop at nothing to drag you back to me. You belong to me and I am never letting you out of my sight again. Do you understand?"



Matt nodded, mutely, but the edge to his distress was blunted. Mello could visibly see him emotionally clawing back towards him and so released his hair and held him tightly again, crushingly so, stroking the red hair against his shoulder. Long minutes passed in that fiercely possessive clinging, before the upset settled into sniffs and the occasional twitching. Eventually Matt rasped, "I need a cigarette."



Mello nodded, reaching across to bend into the car and retrieve Matt\'s smoking paraphenalia, with one hand retaining its grip on a section of the striped shirt. He took a cigarette out of the packet and placed it between Matt\'s lips, then lit it for him. Matt just looked drained, physically, emotionally, mentally, his face heavily stained with tears, puffy and red. "You\'re going to be alright."



"Thank you for coming for me." Matt inhaled deeply. "For coming here."



"You were here. Where else was I supposed to be?" Mello growled. "You underestimate what you are to me."



"I don\'t." The tears were falling again, unbidden. "Mello, I really don\'t."



The blond sighed. "You\'re not going to be in a state to drive for a while and I think that the sooner we get you home, the better." He glanced at his motorbike, but there was no spare helmet. His gaze took in the notice that stated free parking for only two hours. There was a fify pound fixed notice penalty for exceeding that time quota. Mello shrugged. It was worth it. He raised a gloved hand to wipe the tears from Matt\'s cheeks, more fell over it. "Get in the passenger side. I\'m going to drive your car home. We\'ll pick up the bike tomorrow."



"No." Matt moaned. "It\'ll be fuss and..."



Mello silenced him with a kiss. "Just do what you\'re told. I\'ll be a minute, no more." He repeated the kiss and several more, before pushing Matt in the direction of the hedge. "Get in the passenger side." As an afterthought, Mello leaned through the open driver\'s door and unhatched its opposite number. When he glanced back, Matt was opening it and getting in. Mello bit his lip and took his Honda to a spot with better lighting. He secured it with several chains and a quick prayer to Saint Columbanus of Bobbio, then walked back towards the car. Matt was sitting within, his boots braced against the glove compartment and his knees practically up to his chin. His head lolled listlessly against the closed door and sodden hair stuck to his cheeks on the silently streaming tears. "Alright, baby?"



"I\'m sorry."



"Mail, don\'t, ok?" Mello fitted his own seatbelt and checked that Matt had his on too. He wouldn\'t put it past the redhead tonight to leave it off in the hope that Mello crashed the car. But it was in. He closed the door and reached across to pat Matt\'s knee. "I love you. and everything is resolved now. No need to beat yourself up any more than you already have." His mind raced back just two days ago, Matt close to losing it then, begging him for violent sex just to make it alright again. With a presentient dread, Mello knew that the same request would be coming tonight. He switched on the engine. That bridge would just have to be crossed when they got there. Matt hadn\'t healed from the last time. He was in no state to be subjected to it again, whatever quick fix his psyche demanded in all its addictive nature. "What I want from you is just to trust me. I really do believe that you\'re at the end of your tether, which means that you aren\'t thinking straight and all those things you bury inside you are resurfacing. If this isn\'t a breakdown, then it\'s really fucking close and we both know how that works." Mello flashed a tiny smile and reversed out of the carpark. "You\'d follow me anywhere. LA. Japan. Croatia. But don\'t follow me into that abyss I fell into last spring. I think that the only thing more terrifying to me than going back into it myself is the thought that you might go there instead."



Matt\'s hands covered his face; he hiccuped for breath behind them. "I didn\'t want this."



"I know." The car slid out onto the dual carriageway. Mello drove steadily, but didn\'t speed. "I can count off about twenty things that must be doing your head in about this whole situation. I\'d be really fucking upset if I was you as well. It\'s ok to be upset, Mail, honestly. In fact, you deserve to be upset on your own behalf for once, it\'s usually all about me. It might not feel like it, but this is probably really healthy for you. You\'re getting it out finally." He glanced across, but Matt was still, curled up in himself like he expected a blow. "We\'ll untangle them, one by one, all the things that have hurt you. What\'s in your mind right now?"



"It\'s going to break you, Mello, it\'s..."



Mello sniggered. "Me? I\'d like to see \'it\' try." He unzipped a pocket and extracted the chocolate bar from within, unwrapping it with his teeth before licking an edge. "Ok, I concede that you\'ve seen me on the floor more times than I care to admit, but when did you ever see me not get straight back up fighting? Bring it on is all I have to say to that." Beside him, Matt dissolved once more into sobs. Mello frowned. "I\'m not talking about fighting you, Mail. Baby, the ring on my finger says we\'re together for the long haul. You were the one who married me knowing that I\'m Catholic. Absolutely no intention of divorcing you and couldn\'t even if it was in my mind to do so. I\'ve already told you that I\'m never letting you out of my sight again." He bit off the chocolate he had softened with his tongue and sucked the cocoa between his teeth. "I\'ve changed. I used to be obsessed with the succession and Kira. That\'s in the past. Now I\'m obsessed with you and you know that I let nothing stand in between me and the object of my obsession."



Matt turned suddenly, wiping at reddened eyes. The gesture knocked his hair away and Mello could see clearly the shocked intensity in that emerald gaze. "Mello." He leaned across.



"Don\'t molest me when I\'m driving, Matt." Mello smiled to take the sting from his words. "I know you. You\'re going to cycle through your escape routes now. Your DS is broken, so you can\'t play it. Your body has taken so much punishment recently that I want to be in control and in the light before I even contemplate giving it any more. Where are your goggles?"



"I don\'t know."



"If they are in this car, we\'ll find them when we get home." Mello held the chocolate between his teeth to free his right hand for steering. He reached with his left and took Matt\'s hand, squeezing it through their gloves. "I just don\'t want you in danger any more. I need you to take a break."



Matt snorted, ironically. "Then why are you driving us in a car rigged with explosives?"



Mello snatched his hand away, both white-knuckled on the steering wheel now, the memory of a building exploding loud in his mind. His eyes scanned for somewhere to pull over, but the road seemed interminably featureless, high banks lining its carriageways. There were many things that his spiralling emotions could have spewed from his mouth, but he settled for asking with just a tinge of acidity, "Where is the detonator, Matt?"



The redhead sniffed, wiping his eyes again. He didn\'t reply, but twisted, stretching out an arm towards the backseat. He couldn\'t reach. "It\'s in my bag."



"Fuck!" Mello shrieked and beside him Matt flinched, a sob escaping to be followed by more. "Ok, ok, ok! It\'s not your fault." Mello consoled, though they both knew that it was. "I just thought you would have disconnected them." Thoughts came fast and furious. "But why would you, you\'re fucking suicidal. Mail, please don\'t get into a state again, I\'m on it. I\'m going to deal with this and it\'s going to be alright. Right?"



Up ahead, Mello could see a turning. He didn\'t care where it led, as long as there was somewhere to park this car and render it safe again. He signalled and turned into a country lane, edged with trees and ditches, beyond which were fields. Where there were fields, there had to be gates and a trackway leading into them. His sharp vision raked along the hedgerows until he found one. He turned right, into a smaller lane and on, until they were away from a small cluster of houses and finally able to pull over. Matt was still choking back debilitating sobs, but he sprang his seat-belt with shaking fingers and knelt on his seat to gain the extra inches to reach his bag. "I\'ll get..."



"No, you won\'t." Mello schooled his features not to express the anger and anxiety inside. However, the intended sympathetic compassion didn\'t make it onto his face either. It flashed more like manic over-efficiency and Matt read it as a rebuke. "You will go and stand as far as from this car as possible, while ensuring I can still see you. Like by that lamp-post up there." He pointed to one thirty yards up the road. "And you will leave me to deal with this."



Matt collapsed in on himself, as distraught as he had been when Mello first found him, arms wrapped around the back of the seat. Mello closed his eyes and exhaled. Reason fed him the possibly false reassurance that, if the bombs hadn\'t detonated in the distance from London to this field, then they were unlikely to do so in the next few minutes. He found another silver lining in this ridiculous situation. There were two people in this world whose knowledge of explosives Mello trusted. One of whom had planted them in the first place and the other was himself. The bombs were probably not as precariously unstable as his imagination feared, they were just there. Mello sighed and opened his eyes. He took the bag which dangled from Matt\'s hands and opened it. Inside was the usual array of electronic devices, which Matt generally felt the need to take with him should he leave the house, but also a small roll of tools, wrapped in cloth, and a torch. He found the detonator too. There was a safety cap over the button.



"Baby, please stop crying and go stand by that lamp-post." Mello leaned across to rub his husband\'s back, feeling the great wracking waves of anguish tearing through the frame beneath his hand. "Mail, please? I\'m not angry with you. I\'m angry at the situation you\'ve been forced into, but not with you personally. Please do this for me?"



Matt shook his head, his words barely audible. "Want to stay."



Against his better judgement, Mello made a decision. "Ok, Mail. Whatever." He caught the edge to his voice and exhaled to soften it again. "If I go up, you go up. Probably for the best, because I don\'t know what either of us would do without the other. Come and show me where they are. I don\'t want you touching a thing though, because your brain\'s gone. You\'re trembling and you\'re not thinking straight. Any other time, I\'d trust you with my life here, but not tonight." He opened the door and climbed out quickly before he could change his mind. "Come on out of there though." Matt didn\'t open his door, but scrambled across the gear-stick and out the way Mello had just left. They stood together under the night sky and Mello felt his mouth become dry. "I wish you\'d stop crying. Nothing\'s broken that can\'t be fixed."



Matt nodded, but he still seemed desolate. He bowed his head, so Mello couldn\'t see the tears. It was the best compromise that he could make. His hands rose in a constant battle to wipe his cheeks dry. "Underneath."



"They are underneath!" Mello snapped around to face him, eyes wide with incredulity. "I thought you would have put them in the boot like normal people." He considered his statement. "Well, normal people who rig vehicles with explosives. Fuck, Matt! Where\'s the torch?" He didn\'t wait for the redhead to bend, but crouched himself beside the bag and rummaged through. "We\'ve been driving... you\'ve been driving from London with fucking bombs underneath the bastard car? For crying out bastard loud, you idiot! What if...? Oh, forget what ifs, they never get us anywhere." He slid down onto his back and shone the torch underneath. He knew what he was looking for and found them easily. His gaze inspected the wires and dread at what could have been flashed through his psyche. "I\'ve changed my mind, go and stand by that lamp-post. I don\'t want you anywhere near here. Fuck\'s sake, Matt!"



The crunch of boots on gravel did suggest that Matt was leaving, but he only got as far as the front wheel. The car creaked and lifted above Mello\'s startled gaze and he wriggled out to see what was happening. Matt had a jack under the bar and was levering it upwards. He had his back to Mello, but the sniffs were loud enough. "Jack." He whispered redundantly, miserably, as he felt Mello\'s stare boring into the back of his neck.



Mello sighed, struggling to suppress the anxiety-fuelled fury that wanted to break through him. He told himself over and over again that he loved this man; then a second voice inside reminded him that that was the problem. If he didn\'t, then he could just get the Hell out of here and let him detonate into a million pieces. He hunted through the bag for the tools and unwrapped them from their roll. "Baby, I\'m not angry with you." He snatched his chocolate out of the car and took it with him back underneath the vehicle. It dangled between his teeth, as he wedged the torch into the underside and glared at the first casing. His gaze followed, along the wires to the next, and the next. There was enough power here to blow up the street. The lamp-post wouldn\'t be far enough away. But then Matt had been seeking to destroy a building several storeys high. Mello wasn\'t convinced that that would have worked, unless it undermined the foundations. He glanced again at the explosives. They would have undermined the foundations. A shadow fell over his view. "Get from under this fucking car, Matt!"



"Circuitry. If you just..."



"I can work it the fuck out! I am not stupid."



"I know, but..." Matt was paused with a glare, the intensity of which he had not seen since Mello was heavily involved with the Mafia. Any other time, he might have brazened it out on the basis that it was just Mello, however menacing he might seem, but right now his nerves couldn\'t stand it. He backed out and carried on walking until he reached the gate several feet away. There he held onto the metal, bowed over as the sobs increased in hopelessness; wracked in self-disgust and loathing, as he berated himself his inability to help his husband in the mess that he, himself, had created.



It took nearly an hour before Mello emerged finally satisfied that all bombs had been defused. Matt watched him, listlessly, from the ground beside a gatepost. It had taken the blond far longer to remove them than it had Matt to install them, but then he had had the bombs ready to go in a safe storage in his workshop. It had only been a matter of adding some screws and connecting the wires. Mello had taken the whole things to bits, taking no chances, even when it was clear that the fuses couldn\'t connect. He strolled across now, rubbing dust and oil flakes from his hair and eyes, and held out a hand. "Let\'s go home, Mail. Love you."



Matt nodded and took the hand. Mello gathered him into a tight embrace, his hand roughly rubbing across the jacket at Matt\'s back. "I\'m sorry."



"Please don\'t be. I told you that we\'re going to sort this out. You got cornered and reacted. You\'re a clever, crazy bastard, but the blame lies in a lot of places. I think you\'ve been keeping far more hurt inside you than even I was aware of. Let\'s get you home, so we can find out how much of my conjecture is right. Then let me sort it out for you." He reached in to kiss Matt tenderly, lovingly. "You\'re not alone anymore."