Christmas 2002

It was technically Christmas morning, though Ann had warned them that it was still the eve until they went to bed and slept. Mello stood staring out of his bedroom window, still in his jacket and boots, shivering slightly in the draught from the failing seal at the edges of the windowpane. Years ago, when he\'d been a tiny boy, Christmas Eve had been the time for presents. Tomorrow was Christ\'s Mass, a day for celebrating the life of their saviour. He only vaguely remembered it, just in flashes of feeling and colour, though internet searches had confirmed many of those fleeting recollections.



Mello felt the grace upon him now, descended like a funnel of light around his soul. He fingered his rosary beads, wanting to hold onto the sensation forever. He looked across at the Anglican cathedral with its great belltower, now silenced in the dead of night. He half-heard some drunks singing and calling to each other, but their words were indiscernable and he could block them out. He felt a stillness in his heart, but it seemed beseiged on all sides by things that he couldn\'t control. The stress of his life and the blackness of his sins. They seemed darker in contrast to this little part of him that, he felt, if he could just surround and keep safe, it might grow into something good. He could become something good. God was so much closer tonight and, along with Him, were Mello\'s parents.



The window faced west. Mello knew that, yet, in his mind\'s eye, the lights of Winchester faded and he moved east. He crossed the crossed country and the English Channel, moved across Belgium, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. He had only seen the Adriatic Sea once, distantly from the plane that carried him to Great Britain, but he saw it again now, twinkling blue in daylight and dotted with small islands. He moved on inland, across the mountains, until his imagination took him home. Mello\'s throat burned and his lower lip turned inwards, pressed so tightly against his upper lip that his teeth hurt. His memory threw up something new. It was the Cathedral in his hometown, intact and filled with candleflame. He almost heard his Mama\'s voice and grasped at it, but it was gone. He couldn\'t even tell the word that she\'d been saying and hated himself for forgetting how she sounded. How they sounded. His Mama and Papa and all his family. Mello\'s heart ached. He wanted to go home, not to the wartorn destruction that he had silently watched on the news all of this life, but to that time and place when they were still there. He wanted so badly to go home now.



There was a flushing of the toilet in the tiny bathroom attached to their room. Mello snapped to the present and the emotion drained from him so quickly that he felt bereft all over again. He wiped his cheeks, surprised to find that he had actually cried, then kissed the rosary that was still around his neck. A moment later, Matt appeared, leaping onto his bed and crawling under the quilt in his red and blue SuperMario pyjamas. "Mello, I\'ve been thinking." His soft voice cut across the quiet room. "If we open just one present now, then we still have Mr Wammy\'s present in the morning. I think that if I give you your calligraphy set..."



"Ok."



Matt\'s head rose like a sentry merecat. "Really? Wow!"



Mello chuckled slightly, mostly to disguise the gruffness of his voice under the weight of suppressed sorrow. He swallowed and spoke steadily enough. "I guess you want your present off me then."



Matt blinked, his expression pensive as he evidently inspected the comment for a catch. He replied hesitantly, "Yes."



Mello strolled across to his bed and reached under it. He\'d wrapped the game up in red and green paper, decorated with holly leaves. It was only as he turned to cross to Matt\'s side of the room that the redhead dived underneath his bed and came out with the calligraphy set, wrapped in the same paper. They both knew what they\'d got, but it was still a thrill to swop gifts and hold their own in their hands. Mello stared at his, biting his lip as he ran a finger over the smoothness of the wrapping. Matt grinned up at him, slowly shaking his present. "We\'ll open them after three." Mello said, excitement taking hold and showing in his tone. "Three!"



In a ripping of paper, the pair quickly dispensed with the paper and held their prizes happily. "Thank you!" Matt managed not to shriek too loudly. "I\'m going to play it all night."



"I thought you might." Mello beamed. "I really need light to do my calligraphy, but I\'m going to look at the book." He reached down to hug his best friend. "Happy Christmas."



"Happy Christmas." Matt whispered back, already tearing into the cellophane to get at the plastic case beneath. Mello glided back to his own side of the room, reading the box to his set. "Mell, I\'m glad you got to go to Midnight Mass."



With a pang, Mello felt that original sensation. The grace and holiness that had burned as peace inside him. He glanced sharply at Matt and nodded. "Yes, me too." Mello caught the tiny crucifix at the end of his rosary on the transparent plastic lid in the centre of his calligraphy set. He stared down at the Christ and this time the link with home didn\'t hurt so much. It was a connection between then and now and the service they had just attended. It was a comfort. "Did you enjoy it?"



Matt was slotting his game into the socket of the Gameboy Advance and it took him a few seconds to answer. "Yes, it was good." He peered up under the length of his long red fringe, then his head followed until he was facing Mello. He didn\'t say anything, just stared with that keen intelligence that reminded Mello again that his friend was third in the Wammy\'s House rankings. Right behind Mello himself and Near. It was moments like this that made Mello sure that Matt didn\'t let on all the things that he knew. Right now, Matt knew not to ask Mello if he was alright, so he didn\'t. He just stared unblinkingly for a moment with huge, emerald eyes, then returned his attention to the loading of his game. "I wouldn\'t like to go every week though."



Mello laughed. It sounded light and he realised that he felt a little lighter, albeit strange, like he was living a second or two behind himself. "I doubt that Roger would allow it. You\'re off the hook." Matt looked back up and Mello winked. The redhead smiled and was soon lost in the new adventures of his favourite character. Mello sat and tried to become as absorbed in his own present. It was what he\'d wanted to receive, but he couldn\'t muster the excitement that he\'d experienced when opening it beside Matt\'s bed. Even the pen failed to ignite his spirit and that was the thing that had first attracted him to the set. It had a selection of nibs that could be dipped in ink for different strokes on the special paper. He held it and stared at it. It was a fine pen. He was glad that it was his pen. The more he held it, the more he wanted to try it out.



Across the room there was a sudden intake of breath. Mello looked up to find Matt deep in concentration. The reflection from the game lit up his face in bizarre ways and moved in his goggles. Matt looked like he couldn\'t have even told you his own name, let alone where he was and who was in the room with him. It startled Mello when his friend hissed in explanation, "Kumamon hit me with an ice blast and I lost a life. I bet I should have jumped over that."



"Ooops. Game over?"



"No. I just went back a bit."



Mello shook his head. "Don\'t beat it too quickly, Matty. You won\'t have it to play with tomorrow else."



"Yes I will. There are bound to be cheats that I\'ve missed and ways to fix it so you\'re playing ex-Agunimon. I\'ll find them tomorrow."



"Ok." Mello watched him play. It must be so simple being Matt. He was never bothered by anything much and what he did care about, Mello was usually able to fix for him. Sometimes there were little signs that still waters ran deep, but mostly Matt was laidback to the point of being literally horizontal most of the time. Mello envied him. "Can I come and sit on your bed to try my pen out please?"



"Yeah."



Mello repackaged his set and moved quickly across to sit beside his friend. The redhead was shivering with only the thin polyester of his pyjama top sleeves between his arms and the chill of the room. Mello was still in his jacket and hadn\'t noticed the cold since he\'d left the window. He placed his set carefully down and went to grab a jumper for Matt. His friend would likely die of hypothermia before it occurred to him to do that for himself. Besides, Matt always had a cold and his sniffing was annoying when Mello was trying to work. Matt paused the game and put the jumper on, staring at Mello all the time, before opening the GA up again and carrying on where he left off.



Mello smiled. Finally now, idly dipping his pen into the ink and trying each nib out to see what they looked like, he felt at peace again. With the light from the service on his soul; the closeness of a friend; and a present given on the right day, it finally felt like Christmas.