Watari Pt 2: Wammy's House

Mello had left the lights on when he had left the house. They illuminated the windows and made their home look welcoming as they stepped out of the car and crossed the yard. Inside the kitchen, two mugs waited by the kettle. Mello had had them ready, just needing boiling water, so he walked over now to finish the job. Matt waited, just inside the door, smoking a cigarette and looking around like this was someone else\'s home. He had finally stopped crying.



"Why don\'t you sit down?" Mello nodded towards the table and the chairs lining it. The redhead nodded and hurried to claim a chair. Ash fell from his cigarette to the floor. He didn\'t notice. Mello exhaled. "All my life, I wanted to be the best. I almost was, then Near came. Every time he beat me, no matter what it was, a piece of me got eaten up inside. It turned my stomach. It was worse because it was always by such a tiny margin. I thought that if I could just push myself that tiny bit further, then it would happen. But for all that frustration, all that crap that I put myself through, it didn\'t matter, because there was still time." He turned, leaning on the worktop, his eyes in shadow as he surveyed Matt. "I believed in L. I knew without a doubt that L would beat Kira, like he had all those thousands of other criminals. When he died, my world flipped on its axis. My faith in L was shattered and that scared the shit out of me. If someone that big, that intelligent, that competent could be beaten, where the Hell did that leave us?"



"I\'m sorry."



"Hear me out, Matt." Mello found his chocolate and licked a corner of it. "I could have gone to pieces. I wanted to. The enormity of it hit me like a ton of bricks and the world felt like a really fucking scary place. You know what stopped me freaking out like the child I was? Near. Of all the motherfucking arseholes, it was Near. He was doing his usual calm reason and, of course, I didn\'t know then what I know now. I just saw him beating me right at the eleventh hour and my anger welled up, I can tell you. It was fear and fury that carried me out of Wammy\'s House, but underneath that, it was denial. I couldn\'t face up to the fact that L was dead and the burden now fell to us. That had not been my world." He reached behind him and brought out Matt\'s tea, placing it on the table in front of him. "I then spent a lot of years learning not to cripple myself with fear. I took what it was doing to me and I recognised it as a weapon. I turned it around and I used it." A gloved hand stroked down the side of Matt\'s face. "I\'ve used it against you before now. The psychology of fear is such a fascinating subject."



"Mello, please..." Tears etched out familiar lines from the corners of his eyes again.



Mello gently turned Matt\'s head to face him, then bent down to kiss him, gently, lovingly. "I got scared again. In three different countries. You were there when each of those crippling moments happened and you brought me back. You made me believe in myself again and more than that, you made me believe that I could succeed where L failed. I would have given up, if you hadn\'t been there."



"No, you wouldn\'t." Matt bit his lip. "You just wouldn\'t."



"I wanted to." Mello shrugged and sat down. "I changed, Mail. You might not have been looking closely enough to see it happen, but I did. You want to know why rankings produced at Wammy\'s House don\'t matter to me anymore? Because this is one of the many vital reasons that I\'m not upset that you were named number one. I\'m pissed off that you lied to me and that you kept this hidden from me, but I\'m more pissed off with myself and the system for forcing you into doing that than I am with you. I\'m angry that you endangered yourself and got so frightened of me that you went to those lengths to resolve the situation, but I understand why you did it. I\'ll get over it. Whomever Wammy\'s House database lists as the number one means jack-shit to me. Can\'t you work out why?"



Matt wiped his nose on his gloves, blinking his vision back. "Because it\'s out of date."



"That as well." Mello smirked. "The vital point is that the game moved on. The number one was the person who beat Kira. When I stood in the Yellow Box and saw him for the first time, it stopped being a game. It came to me so hard just how formidable our opponent was and I got scared again."



"In the warehouse?" Matt stared. "You did not look scared to me."



"That\'s because I\'m good at fear, Matty. It\'s one of my specialities." Mello narrowed his eyes, then smiled, evilly. "I know how to take fear and reflect it right back out again. I have made men twice my size beg on the floor for mercy, without me needing to lift a finger. In the Yellow Box, I was terrified and so I was terrifying. I was afraid of Kira; I was afraid that Near was going to just pip me to the post again; I was afraid of you being in that room, with all the guns and the Death Notes; and most of all, I was shitting myself about the Shinigami. Has it never occurred to you how a Christian views those demons? How that fits into my perception of the vast scheme of things? You\'ve never asked me." He gestured as Matt made to speak, to dutifully ask the question. "Forget that for now, just let me finish. I hit a point in that room when another strong fact made it past the notion that this was the fight of our lives. That fact was this - we were beating him. Three Wammy geniuses all playing our roles to the best of our abilities. And Christ only knows, I was proud of our little army.



"I knew you would be watching the bigger picture, so I knew my back was covered. I could have spoken out and damned him, but I\'ve been on the receiving end of Near\'s big prosecution speeches more times than I care to remember. I let him do it, because he felt like a weapon that I could use. I used him to do the verbalising, so that I was freed to use my arsenal of non-verbal weaponry. I could intimidate and break his concentration in a way that Near had no hope of achieving. It felt like it was me placing the final pieces down on the chessboard; me moving them to checkmate Kira." Mello smirked over the top of his chocolate bar. "I could have shut Near up. I could have physically overpowered him. I could have directed you, in whatever way I wanted to, and don\'t tell me that I couldn\'t have. I let it play out as it did, because there was no need for me to alter it. It was working perfectly as it was. In terms of sheer genius, I doubt that you, Near and I can actually be compared. We are all clever fuckers, but it spikes in different ways. Yet I realised, in that warehouse, that I had an edge that neither of you had. Power. Learned the hard way, but there in droves. Do you get what I\'m saying, Matty?" He snapped off the chocolate that he had been melting with his tongue. "I don\'t care about the rankings anymore for one simple reason. I won."



Matt had been sitting with his head bowed and his chin hidden deep within his jacket. Towards the end of the speech, his hands had risen to cover his mouth, pressing fake fur into his lips. He shook his head now and rose from his chair, stumbling towards the sink. He peeled a glove off to dip his hand into water pouring from the tap, then splashed that onto his face, rubbing hard enough to leave red patches across his cheeks. His tone was tight as he finally replied. "Yes, Mello, you won. Then magnamiously gave up the title for Near to use." He sniffed. "And the little shit set me up. Put me through all that Hell. But I\'m still the third and that\'s fine. But don\'t tell me it doesn\'t matter to you, Mello, where we all finished up. You\'ve just told me that it does. You won." He dipped into his pocket for cigarettes. "Hu-bloody-ray."



"I\'m not dismissing your role, Matty. I was proud of us all."



"Yeah." Matt loitered by the sink, smoking his cigarette. He spoke without emotion, defeated. "I made you a promise. I said I\'d tell you if it got so bad that I felt the need to cut."



Mello nodded, "I figured you would have. Your DS was broken, I wasn\'t there for violent sex and you don\'t look like you\'ve taken drugs. The cutting was the only thing left."



"No." Matt breathed. "I haven\'t. I\'m going to."



The blond blinked, startled, then the words stabbed straight into the heart of his self-esteem. "You are telling me that I\'m not enough to calm you down. Nothing I can say or do can make you feel better."



"This isn\'t about your inferiority complex, Mello." Matt threw his cigarette into the sink and watched it sizzle out in a small patch of water. "I\'m just being honest."



Mello nodded, trying to keep the frown from his face, trying to be supportive and grown up about it. "You said you had some questions you had to answer before you cut. Where are the questions?" By the sink, Matt started to crumble again, sucking in air to stave away tears. "Ok, do it. But don\'t slink off and hide. If you need to do this, sit down here in front of me. I want to watch you do it."



Matt stared back in horror, green eyes glistening through his damp fringe. "What?"



"I want to watch you cut yourself. I don\'t want you hurting alone in this house, where I feel I can\'t hold you. If you need to do it, then I won\'t stop you." He patted the back of the seat which Matt had just vacated.



"Why are you punishing me? You said..."



"I\'m not punishing you, Mail." Mello fixed his gaze on the redhead. "You feel the need to externalise the hurt inside. You need to get it out. I\'ll even hold your hand while you do it."



Matt shook his head slightly, trying to rationalise this out. "It\'s not comfort and hurt. It\'s not," He frowned, "something to fuel your sadistic... it\'s not a turn on. It\'s fucking ugly. I hate myself for doing it. I.. fucking Hell!"



"I know." Mello replied, carefully. "It\'s not something that turns me on. In fact, it\'s something I\'d rather not see at all, but I married you yesterday. I\'m here for better or worse. In sickness and in health. Now please sit down and do what you need to do." Matt didn\'t move and Mello released a long breath. "I need to know precisely what\'s on your mind so I can fix it. Until now, you\'ve been crying too much to tell me. Right now, you\'re like a cat on a hot tin roof. If this fixes you, so you can at least talk to me, then do it. In truth, I was expecting you to ask me to beat you up and I was struggling with how I was going to tell you no, because I don\'t think you could physically or emotionally take it right now. Cutting yourself is the better option, so do it."



Matt closed his eyes. "You\'re talking rings around me, Mello. I can\'t keep up with you."



"Yes, you can. You\'re a genius, Mail."



"Not like this." Matt slid down the cupboard to land on the floor. He brought his knees up and sat there with his face buried in them. "Oh fucking Hell! Fucking Hell!" There was a long moment of loaded silence, then he reached down for his key-chain, dragging it up until the bundle of items, tools, memory sticks, pieces of metal and keys landed in a clattering mass in his lap. He found a small box and slid back the lid. Inside was a razor, which he held and did not look back to where Mello was watching him. He held it aloft, both arms covering his face, a loud sob sounding from behind the stripes of his biceps. Eventually he cried out, "Mello, please don\'t watch me doing this. I don\'t want you to see it."



"Would it dignify it if I left?" Mello replied.



"No." Matt moved his head, wiping his eyes against the top of his sleeves. "Which is kind of the point. It\'s not fucking dignified and I don\'t want you to see me like this."



"How about if I did it for you?"



The arms were lowered. "What?" Matt stared, his face hot and clammy, as Mello rose and crouched beside him on the floor. "It\'s not sex, Mello. It\'s..."



"Sssh." Mello closed his finger and thumb over the razor and their eyes met for interminable seconds before Matt relinquished it. "I know. It\'s in another category entirely." He pulled off the other glove and rolled up the sleeve on the arm that still bore the faint scars from previous dark hours. There were lines here which Matt had cut in the cave only three or four days before. There was nothing else to suggest that he had cut since Japan. "Does the size or depth matter?"



"I can\'t believe you\'re..."



"I love you."



Matt turned his head away, biting his lip as the tears flooded over his distraught face. They dripped from his chin, into the lining of his jacket. Mello grit his teeth and locked his jaw, but took the arm and sliced into it with the razor. Blood welled up immediately, running down to stain the denim, and Matt gasped. Mello glanced up, watching for any sign that this was helping his husband, then he moved to do it again. "Mello..." Matt rubbed his face and took the razor from him. "I need to do it. It\'s about control too."



Mello nodded rapidly and sat back. "Ok." He brushed his own hair back with his fingers. Swift movements to disguise the fact that he was feeling very unsettled by this. His face paled despite his resolve, as Matt pressed the razor three more times into his own brutalised flesh. Then he stopped and Mello understood that whatever psychological balm had needed to form, it had done so now. It was over bar the anti-septic. "You ok, Matty?"



Matt nodded and he did seem calmer. He lit another cigarette and Mello watched him, seeing distance between them and wanting to smash it down. Instead, the blond stood and rushed into the pantry, where a First Aid box nestled amongst the monitors and security switches. He paused to wipe his own eyes, before tears could properly form, then steeled himself for his return into the kitchen. Matt was sitting where he had left him, but with his eyes closed and his injured limb resting across his stomach. Blood clogged the fake fur and fleece of his jacket. The cigarette travelled to his mouth, held in a hand that had been dangling from his knee. He sounded steadier as he spoke, far more so than Mello himself felt, "I\'m sorry you had to see that. I\'m not proud of it."



"Can you talk to me now?"



"Yes."



"Then it served its purpose." Mello knelt beside him and opened the box. "Is it ok if I clean you up and put dressings on them?"



Matt\'s head twitched in the faintest of nods. Mello sorted out the anti-septic wipes and ripped one from its packet. He bent over to reach the wounds, but Matt\'s undamaged arm locked around Mello\'s head. He guided him to his face instead and brought them together for a kiss that communicated reassurances and affirmations of love. "It\'s going to be alright, Mihael." Matt whispered between grasping kisses. "We\'re not out of our depth anymore."



"We never were." Mello smiled, claiming another kiss. "It\'s just that we didn\'t know that. I believe in us and I believe in you. There aren\'t depths enough to hold us."



"I\'m sorry I frightened you."



Mello shrugged, his gaze sliding away. "It takes a lot more than you to frighten me, Mail Jeevas." He kissed him quickly and pushed back. "Now, come on, let\'s get this cleaned up and we\'ll put the world to rights over a nice cup of tea. Love you, baby."



Matt allowed the tiniest of smiles to linger on his lips. "Something I never did work out. Do you even believe your own crap, Mello?"



A wipe forged a path through the blood. Mello\'s face broke into a sassy grin as he glanced up. "Yes. Of course I do." Then he winked and, for a moment, the world seemed ok. But there was a conversation to be had and neither one of them was looking forward to it. His face fell and he concentrated on the job in front of him. "But I do love you, Mail. Love you to bits."