Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

The machine buzzed like a dentist\'s drill, which didn\'t help calm the butterflies in Matt\'s stomach. He glanced down at his right arm, suddenly and irrationally nostalgic about the unadorned skin there. This was the last time in his life he would be able to see it as it was now, ordinary. Max, the tattooist, had already cleansed and sterilised that arm and he approached now with a professional concentration, the electronic needle held poised in his hand. Matt looked away. His gaze locked onto Mello\'s and the blond smiled.



No amount of website searches had prepared Matt for the pain. It felt like miniature nails being hammered into the bones of his wrist, over and over again. He had to fight the instinct to pull his hand away and, instead, clenched his fist. Mello was biting his lip, looking slightly ill, which, given his sadism, was as surprising as it was unsettling. His blue eyes fastened on Matt\'s face again and his expression rearranged itself into another smile. Mello\'s tongue slipped over his lips in silent flirtation. That was better. Matt tried to relax, to allow the bio-energy and endorphins to do their work on his nerve-endings. The intensity of pain was only because the tattoo was over his bone. It would be less when the padding was muscle. It was not going to be this bad for the next two hours. Focusing on Mello\'s eyes really helped, even if it meant that his lover couldn\'t read the Russian literature in his hand.



"Hurts like a bitch, doesn\'t it?" Max commented without obvious relish. "You\'ll get used to it. Just let me know if you need to move or you go light-headed."



"\'kay." Matt watched Mello bow his head to hide a grin and could have hit him for it.



"You understand that this is just the outline. Purdy told you the craic about coming back in four weeks for the next layer?"



Matt nodded, but didn\'t reply. It was Mello who responded to the tattooist\'s glance upwards. "Yes, he\'s been in e-mail contact with her for weeks. She thought six or seven sessions, including this one, but the others will only be an hour."



"All depends how the skin takes the ink." He paused to wipe away the blood. "Then you were enquiring about the one for your back? Sorry I haven\'t been the one in touch. I\'ve been travelling for a few weeks."



Matt saw Mello frown and mentally kicked himself. The proposed tattoo on his shoulder muscle hadn\'t been mentioned, let alone discussed. He hadn\'t got permission for that one yet and he needed Mello to just keep looking at him. Not fly off the handle, not storm out, definitely not read his book. The Slav did meet his gaze, a quizzical look in his eyes. Matt flashed what he hoped was an apologetic smile and was rewarded with a wink. "That\'s fine." Mello replied. "Purdy passed your comments onto him. He\'s going to think about the second tattoo after he\'s finished having this one." Silently Matt thanked him and the outlining didn\'t feel quite so bad anymore. Then Mello added, conversationally, "How long do you think it will take to do the second one?"



Max shifted position slightly and continued piercing Matt\'s skin. "The M is ornate, but it shouldn\'t take too long. I might be able to do that in one session. It depends on whether you\'re adding the rest and what you decide to put there though. Purdy told me that you\'re considering the cross, the halo or the Virgin Mary?"



Matt closed his eyes. He didn\'t want to see Mello\'s reaction. He was pretty much decided on the M, which was ambiguous enough in the unlikely event of anyone but Mello seeing him topless, but extremely unsure of the wisdom of adding anything to his back which would remind Mello that he was a Catholic. The addition would also, of course, remove any doubt from anyone\'s mind what the M stood for. There was a tapping against his foot and Matt cautiously opened his eyes again. Mello was smiling prettily at him, his whole stance coquettish. Whatever he was thinking, it didn\'t involve disembowelling his lover.



Over two hours later, as they left the tattoo parlour, Mello pounced. "We are having that conversation now!" He insisted, grabbing Matt\'s hand. "I\'ve never seen anything like that! For the first half an hour, I thought you were going to topple over. I never thought I\'d live to see the day that you got squeamish."



Matt had been anticipating this. Mello had spent the entire session watching with endless fascination and grinning. "Maybe I only like pain when you\'re delivering it."



"Let\'s go and eat." Mello rushed on, unabashed. "Over there, it looks nice." The restaurant had a balcony, with large sun umbrellas, and an airy whiteness to its decor. "How does your arm feel?"



Matt glanced down. When \'outlines\' had been discussed he had thought it would literally be just that, but there was a lot more of his arm covered than he\'d imagined. Where it wasn\'t tattooed, his skin was bright red, but it looked more sore than it actually was. The last hour or so, the rhythm of the needles and their attendant pain had been almost hypnotic. "It\'s going to look alright, isn\'t it?"



"Yes." Mello replied brightly, leading the way into the restaurant and heading straight outside for a table in the shade. He surveyed the menu, smirking happily. A young girl arrived to take their drink orders. "I think I\'ll have the feta cheese and spinach risotto. There\'s not much here for you though." He commented once she\'d gone. "Savoury pancake, maybe?"



Matt laughed. Mello always did this to him. It could be take-away, frozen meals or going out to eat and Mello would select something for him. It wasn\'t like his lover was even trying to foist an healthy option onto him, it was simply conversational fussing. The trouble was that whatever Mello suggested sounded so nice that it sneaked into Matt\'s brain. He fancied it and nothing else seemed so attractive, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mello could then feel smug about knowing him so well. Matt glanced at the other options. A savoury pancake did fit the bill. Most of the other choices involved salad. "What\'s a risotto?"



"You\'d hate it."



"I\'ll have a bacon and cheese pancake." Matt glanced up just to see Mello looking pleased with himself. He did.



Their orders were placed and Mello leaned forward. "Did it hurt?"



Matt leaned forward too, holding the blond\'s gaze. "Yes, it did." He licked his top lip, as he\'d seen Mello do a million times, and aimed for the same sort of seductive smile. "All over my arm. I wanted to pull it away, but I couldn\'t. I had to sit there and take the pain." Mello leaned back and Matt inwardly wooted. His grin became wider and the blond looked away. "Tight, leather trousers suddenly seeming like a bad wardrobe choice, dear?"



"I like that." Mello decreed, turning back. "You never call me pet names. Well, apart from Mell, which is you just being too lazy to say Mello, and Princess, which I hate, because that\'s you saying I\'m being a prima donna."



"Pet names?" Matt frowned. He had anticipated a Mello-driven attempt at discussing, again, the abandonment of sado-masochism in their relationship and had had all of the responses prepared for that. Now they were talking about pet names. "\'kay." Now he thought about it, Mello had been sneaking terms of endearment into sex for weeks. \'Baby\', \'guapo\' - the Spanish for \'beautiful\' - and \'beautiful\' itself had slipped from the Slav\'s lips with increasing regularity. Matt should have seen this coming. "What do you want me to call you?"



Mello bristled. "I\'m not doing all the running. You do something for a change."



"A change?" Matt gaped. "You think you do the running after me?" He paused. Sometimes it was better to just let Mello carry on believing his own crap. "Ok, princess."



"How\'s your dick?"



"Say it a bit louder, I don\'t think those people down by the market heard you." Matt frowned. He knew he was blushing and hated himself for it. His tone dropped low. "So your sexual fantasy was basically cock torture."



Mello shook his head, his unruly hair still moving a second after he\'d stopped. "No, silly." He looked so camp that Matt just knew that everyone for a million miles around knew that they were lovers just by looking at them. "It was the contrast. Making you be gentle with me, while I was doing that to you. Comforting you, while it was me hurting you. You letting me, even though you could have just moved. Wow! That was a real turn-on." Mello shifted uncomfortably and drew his chair further under the table. Matt smirked at him, sneaking a leg out to cross ankles with him. "But you didn\'t like it, so..."



"I didn\'t say that." Matt watched the pinking of Mello\'s cheeks. "So it\'s comfort and hurt you\'re into now. This is what we\'re saying?" Mello frowned slightly, but it was in thought. He appeared to be considering whether that was alright. "Mell, you\'ve always been into that. You just dress it up as being a responsible sadist, checking I\'m still breathing and stuff before you lay it on again. It\'s all good." It was so unusual to see the blond losing his composure that Matt pressed home his advantage. "Any other kinky perversions I ought to know about?"



"You think I\'m kinky?"



Matt laughed aloud. His gaze took in the leather and the zips; his mind sped through all the things that he knew sent Mello into a sexual frenzy. "Don\'t you?"



Mello shrugged, but he still appeared pensive. Then he executed one of his lightning mood changes and he became impatient. "Yes, there is something else you don\'t do." He picked at invisible lint on his top. "Where\'s the romance?"



"Huh?" Matt applied a mental brake onto his thought processes and screeched the 180 degree, tyre-burning turn necessary to follow Mello\'s brand new whim. "Romance? Like flowers and, oh, chocolates. I buy you chocolate."



"But sometimes I want to be, I don\'t know, courted."



"Courted?" Matt tried hard not to laugh. "You are such a girl!" He tried to find precedents from their shared history for this one, just to work out what Mello was trying to tell him. "Ah! I get it. You\'ve been reading \'Wuthering Heights\' again. You\'re under the influence of Heathcliff. This is eventually going to end up with you demanding poetry with malice aforethought. I mean, let\'s get this right. You want me to woo you with roses and candlelit meals, so you can beat me up and fuck me. If you don\'t mind me saying so, there\'s a bit of a split personality going on there." Mello\'s eyes narrowed and he glared at the floorboards. "Ok, don\'t go all Scarlett O\'Hara on me. I\'ll buy you flowers."



Mello exhaled petulantly and played with a food knife. "Don\'t just do it because I told you to."



Matt smiled, "\'He walks in beauty, like the night, and all that\'s best of dark and light, meet in his aspect and his eyes - which Heaven to gaudy day denies.\'" His grin grew wider as Mello looked startled. He had to stop there though, as his recollection of Byron didn\'t stretch to the next lines. He couldn\'t have read past that bit in their English classes. "Romantic with a big R?"



The blond looked pleased and a little coy. "How about you, Matty? What do you like me doing to you?"



"Whatever you want to do to me." Matt winked. "I live to serve you." He was desperately trying to remember more poetry. That had definitely been Mello\'s territory back at Wammy\'s House, and since. None of the poems Matt had memorised seemed appropriate.



"But if, say, one is me keeping my hands off you and never speaking to you, touching you, kissing you, interacting with you in any way, and ten is me controlling your every move and eventually killing you, where are you on the spectrum?"



"Ten." Matt replied instantly. He enjoyed the shock that wiped the bashfulness from Mello\'s demeanour and decided to wait to see how the blond would react. But Mello didn\'t say a word. He just sat there looking a little upset. "It\'s not that I want you to control my every mood and you\'d be miserable if you killed me. Not to mention that it wouldn\'t be the ideal from where I\'m sitting either." He shrugged, seeing that he had his lover\'s attention again. "But the idea that you might? The danger is fucking delicious." Confusion still crossed those Slavic features, as he tried to work it out. "I never know what you\'re going to do to me. I doubt we\'ve ever had sex in the same way twice, which really fucking inventive of you, Mello. Stop looking at me like I\'m suicidal, I\'m not. Ignore what Linda said, that was five years ago and I\'ve grown a lot stronger since then. Ditto the incident when I was packing up smoking, I was out of my head and paranoid as fuck." He watched Mello touch his rosary. Suddenly he placed the inspiration beyond the blond\'s cryptic quoting of \'Paradise Lost\' last night, when this was last mentioned. It was suicide and Catholic mortal sin. It must have been Mello\'s attempt at a lecture about the perils of Hell with someone he knew he\'d alienate with such talk. "Ok, forget suicide, let\'s get back to sex. You act all calm and in control, but there are moments when you slip and anything can happen. Sometimes I really think you could kill me, accidentally, I know, or something else. I don\'t know. I\'m not exactly bloody articulating my thoughts at the time." Matt laughed, but Mello didn\'t. "Sorry, yes, you\'re always in control and nothing bad will ever happen. Got it." He winked. "But it\'s still hotwired right from my nerves to my balls that it might." He snorted. "Adrenaline junkie. You said it yourself."



Mello suddenly looked very smug. "Hoo-bloody-ray." He smirked triumphantly. "I don\'t even want to calculate the years I\'ve been trying to get that out of you! Thank you, Matt. Finally!"



Matt was aware that he\'d just been owned. His mind hadn\'t yet caught up with how or what the implications were. He frowned. "Erm. What do you think I\'ve just agreed to?" Their conversation was interupted by the arrival of their food. His pancake smelled wonderful, though Mello\'s risotto turned out to be rice with bits in it. Matt waited anxiously until the waitress had left them again. "I never once said I didn\'t want you to hurt me."



"I know." Mello replied mildly. "You just told me the psychology behind me and I intend to use that to its best advantage."



"Yeah, but I have depths. I\'m more complex than that." Matt replied.



"Do tell."



"Ok, I haven\'t got any depths, but..." He knew he was losing. "I\'ll get some, just to thwart your dastardly plan at world domination."



Mello snorted and had to cover his mouth. "You just go ahead, Matt. I look forward to seeing your depths."



Matt was saved by the bell, literally. His mobile \'phone started playing \'Tubular Bells\', which was his Wammy\'s House ring-tone. A less welcome intrusion was difficult to imagine, but ignoring it irked him even more. He took it out of his jeans pocket and handed it to Mello as a compromise. As his lover answered the call, Matt inspected his tattoo again. It took a little visualisaton to see what it was going to look like in a few sessions\' time, but he was proud of it thus far. It shone with the anti-septic spray and the shape was amazing. Then Mello dropped his fork onto his plate and Matt looked up to witness his lover sitting stock-still, as alert as a deer with the scent of the hunter in his nostrils. "What\'s happened?"



"Roger, I swear by Almighty God that I did not do that." Mello responded quietly into the telephone. "It doesn\'t matter to me whether you believe me or not," though it patently did, "but I\'m telling you that I didn\'t. Matt is with me and he can tell you that I have my hand on my crucifix and I swear it wasn\'t me." He listened and seemed to regain his composure. "I\'m being set up. Let me have this case." But his mind was transparently rushing through to certain implications. "No, I\'ve changed my mind. Let Near have this case. I will still investigate it and I won\'t co-operate with him, but let Near have this case."



Matt could feel their future falling down around his ears. The rest of the conversation gave no further clues, but Mello\'s whole stance was frightening. "What\'s happened?" He asked, the instant that the blond ended the call.



"Jonny has been shot dead. There\'s a half-eaten bar of Bournville Classic Dark Chocolate at the scene and his ashtray has several cigarette butts in it." Mello met Matt\'s horrified stare. "Jonny doesn\'t smoke."