Watari Pt 2: Wammy's House

They were in Matt\'s study. There had been much debate, at least in Mello\'s mind, about the best place for this to happen. Neutral territory had seemed best, but not the bedroom. That would only lead to sex papering over the cracks or else give Matt an excuse to plead exhaustion, sleeping as a way to escape having to confront his demons. They had nearly stayed in the kitchen, but Mello wanted to be in a position to hold his husband and neither floor nor chairs would be very comfortable in the long term. He suspected that they would be talking for hours. In the end, the settee in Matt\'s room presented itself as the most logical choice, so Mello shepherded the redhead there, armed with a packet of cigarettes and a flask of tea.



"I know you just want this to go away, but I think you had a breakdown today. If I let you push it inside again, you\'re going to end up in the state I was back in the flat." Mello arranged himself on the settee and held out his arms. "Come and get comfortable."



Matt gave him a wary look, but sat down anyway. He was soon pulled into Mello\'s embrace and cradled against his chest. Cushions pressed in around him, holding him in place. "I\'m going to end up going to sleep here. I\'m really tired."



"That\'s why I made you a flask of tea." Mello replied, mildly. "Caffeine to calm the nerves and keep you awake." He leaned down for a kiss, smiling fondly at the redhead. "Stay with me, Matty. I do think that this is necessary or else I wouldn\'t put you through it. I\'m telling you now that there\'s nothing you can say that will make me hate you nor get angry with you. I just want you to get it off your chest."



Matt closed his eyes, sighing in annoyance. His tone remained placid though. "What do you want me to say? I thought I\'d beaten you in the rankings. I kept it from you because I thought that would destroy you and would lead to you treating me like you treat Near. I hated lying to you, especially on those trillions of occasions when you\'d pretty much worked it out. I hated more the thought of you finding out. But now you know and it turns out that it was bullshit all along anyway."



"Right." Mello smoothed back Matt\'s hair. "That\'s a good start. For my part, I\'ll say that I understand why you kept it secret. I don\'t like it, but I understand. You\'re right, I might not have been able to handle it very well, if I\'d found out..." He paused. "When did you find out?"



"That week I went to Wammy\'s House and couldn\'t tell you what I was working on. It was removing all electronic evidence of the Mario Clause."



Mello\'s eyes widened. "All that time?" He frowned and picked up the chocolate he had stashed on the arm of the settee. "You\'re right, I wouldn\'t have handled it very well then. The pressure must have been immense, baby. You did very well to keep it hidden until now." He licked the chocolate. "But here we are, on the other side of Kira and, let\'s face, on the other side of my own breakdown. I\'m a changed man, so I don\'t want you to worry about how I\'m taking it." He watched Matt close his eyes. "What?"



"Mello, you still talk about winning and losing, like they are the only two options. You and Near are still challenging each other for supremacy, you just keep altering arenas as the last one gets used up." He turned his face into the blond\'s chest. "We\'re only having this conversation now because it turns out that I didn\'t beat you after all. If Near..."



"Bullshit." Mello snapped. "What do I have to say to convince you?" He dropped his chocolate onto Matt\'s stomach and it rolled down to land on his thighs. "It\'s not just about intelligence anymore. This is what I\'ve been trying to tell you! You deselected yourself from the process. Even if it was still about being L\'s heir..."



"Which it is."



"... you don\'t count, because you have made it absolutely clear that you don\'t wish to be counted." Mello stared down at him. "Look at me." Matt\'s eyes opened again. "Insofar as these things can be measured, you are one of the most breath-takingly intelligent men alive on this planet. You hide your genius, well, behind mine, if we\'re honest, and you are quite content to sit on the sidelines. Is that a loss to the world? Yes, probably, but even if it had been true, even if the Mario Clause had somehow elevated you higher than myself and Near, it wouldn\'t hold any water now. For you to even seriously begin to take us on, you would have to move to where the battle is now. Academia processed at Wammy\'s House is, forgive me for saying this, fucking child\'s play now. Now look me in the eyes and tell me, are you taking me on?"



Matt\'s eyes filled up. "As my husband, yes. As a competitor for the L title, no fucking way."



"Well, then. Where\'s the problem?" Mello bowed his head and kissed the tears from Matt\'s cheeks. "Was that all? Was that what all the fuss was about on the way here?"



The redhead started to nod, then shook his head. His breath caught in his throat and Mello held him as he dissolved again. "No."



"Right." Mello bit his lip. "What broke you, guapo?"



"Everything." He began to shudder violently in Mello\'s arms. The chocolate fell from his legs to the floor, but Mello just held him close. "I can\'t tell you!"



Mello gulped, "You can. I told you I won\'t be angry..."



"I can\'t get the thoughts to stop! I can\'t get them to slow down long enough to tell you!" Matt gushed, tightly closing his eyes and clinging to the blond.



Mello nodded. "You\'re already on anti-depressants. You feel the need to cut. In the past week, you\'ve been kidnapped, nearly killed, emotionally wrecked several times, starved, dehydrated, frozen to the point of second degree hypothermia, frightened half to death and married. You are a stone and half underweight and you\'re still taking a lot of drugs. You are alabaster and covered in cuts and bruises, which must be sore. You\'ve spent your entire life under intense pressure that you only endured by always being at the top of your game. In the past year, you\'ve been in terrifying, potentially fatal situations; you took on Kira, you\'ve been shot and you survived me having a breakdown. About four hours ago, the man who has been your surrogate father since you were three betrayed you in the worst way. You have just been in a situation where you had to take on me and Near simultaneously, and you have been worried sick that this meant the end of us. This is what I see in you, Mail. I have so much fucking respect for how resilient you have been until now, but I think you\'ve deserved the right to be a bit upset."



Matt clung to him, sobbing with such heart-breaking abandon that tears pricked Mello\'s eyes too. He could do nothing but hold him until the devastation receded and Matt lay limp against him. "I feel so pathetic."



"Fucking Hell, Mail, you are not pathetic. You call me a hero, but have you looked in the mirror recently? How many people do you think could have lived through a fraction of what you have and come out sane?" Mello raked at the red hair until he could see Matt\'s face. "You are sane, guapo. More sane than me and Near put together. You are my inspiration."



"Why did he do it?" Matt sniffed, shifting to reach for cigarettes and finding the chocolate along the way.



"Who?"



"Roger."



"I don\'t give a shit about Roger." Mello began, irritably. "You know why he did it. He\'s a wanker. You have been laughing at Roger for years, because he couldn\'t come close to controlling us. He already let you down over that business with calling you every night." He paused, watching Matt\'s expression. "This is deeper than Roger, isn\'t it? What...?" He took a square of chocolate and held it between his teeth.



"Don\'t work it out, Mell. You\'ll just laugh at me."



"As if I could laugh at you, Mail Jeevas. For fuck\'s sake, just tell me."



Matt bowed his head over his cigarette, flushing deeply. "I know he\'s a stupid, old man. I know he\'s a joke. I\'ve run rings around him as often as you have, probably more, because I was there longer. I know."



"But when I cracked, he was there for you and carried on being there for you." Mello whispered. "At the moment when I dropped the baton, Roger picked it up and gave you security."



"He said to me that he isn\'t allowed favourites amongst the children, but..." He inhaled heavily on his cigarette.



Mello stared at him, "I hit the nail on the head when I just called him your surrogate father." His gaze dipped. "That was cheap of him."



"Don\'t. I feel stupid enough as it is."



Mello\'s eyes flashed. "Like it or not, you are an orphan who never knew what it was like to have a family. I have memories of my parents. Happy memories, I mean. When did anyone ever love you?" He felt Matt jolt in his arms. "I mean as a parent! I love you with everything I\'ve got. You couldn\'t be more loved than you are right now. I fucking love you, Mail." He lifted Matt\'s dripping chin and kissed him, fiercely, possessively. "That was clumsy, I apologise. I love you."



"Ok."



"Ok." Mello breathed. "So Roger finally found a chink in your considerable emotional armour and pressed home his advantage. You ended up thinking of him as a father and then he betrayed you." His lips pursed. "I could kill him."



Matt struggled out of his arms and sat up beside him on the settee. "I\'m going to."



"You\'re not." Mello felt cold where Matt had been lying. "He\'s not worth it."



"I\'m going to zero him if it\'s the last thing I do."



"It\'s good that you\'ve progressed to getting angry about this, but Roger is really not worth the trauma of killing him."



Matt was shaking, his whole face pinched with uncommon fury. "He wanted me to be Watari. I\'m going to do it. I\'m going to take Wammy\'s House and I\'m going to systematically undo his life\'s work. I\'m going to make him watch me do it. I\'m going to pull the system apart and bring it crashing down around his ears."



"Fine. But Watari supports Near." Mello smiled at him. "You\'re going to work for Near now?"



Matt glanced at him sharply. "No."



"Well then, how the fuck can you be Watari?" He watched Matt turn to squint at the monitors. "So you hack the system. Great, that\'s your forte. Bring down Wammy\'s and you undermine the L title." He paused. "Which, of course, you wouldn\'t give a shit about." He bit his lip. "We didn\'t find your goggles. You can\'t see as far as the monitors." He shuffled out of his seat. "I\'ll get them. I\'ll be right back."



"Mell." Matt moaned. "Stay with me."



Mello reached out to take his hand again and to squeeze it. "For the record, you do breakdowns with far more dignity than I did. You\'re a really amazing person. I feel honoured to know you."



Matt drew his knees back up, his hand touching a game controller. "Thank you."



"I\'d play a game with you, but you can\'t see the screen properly."



The redhead rose suddenly, extracting his hand from his husband\'s grasp. He walked over to his safe and entered the code to access it. Mello leaned over the back of the settee, watching curiously, eyes widening as he saw what Matt held in his hands. "Shut up."



"You\'ve got proper glasses!" Mello shrieked. "When did you get those?"



"When I was sixteen. Shut up."



"Oh! Put them on!" Mello grinned. "I want to see."



Tears welled in the green eyes again and Matt slammed the case down on the top of the safe. He turned around and headed towards the door. "I\'m going to get my goggles."



"Oh! Matty." Mello vaulted over the back of the settee and caught him near to the doorway. He pressed him against the wall and kissed him, hungrily, passionately. "Put your glasses on, guapo. I can\'t believe that you can look me in the face and tell me that you honestly think I won\'t fancy the arse off you in them. You\'ve spent how long telling me that I\'m gorgeous, when you\'ve had to look at me with half my face blown off and you think that wearing glasses is going to make a blind bit of difference to how I look at you?" He frowned. "No pun intended." Another kiss was delivered. "I actually think they\'ll really suit you. It\'s hardly like I\'m not used to seeing you with something covering your eyes. Come on, guapo, show me how beautiful you are in glasses."



Matt stared back at him from the wall. "You think it\'s so simple."



"It is. You just put the glasses on and you can see. People do it every day."



"I\'m not talking about the bloody glasses." Matt glared, his eyes searching the depths of the blue eyes in front of him. "Oh God! Mello, I want to believe you."



Mello frowned. "Believe me in what?"



"Happy ever after." He rubbed his mouth. "But it\'s not that simple. You can fight so hard for years and it doesn\'t get you anywhere." His hands covered his mouth, his eyes widening with the intensity of feeling inside. "You can do everything right and it was never enough. Everyone using everyone else as pawns in their own plans and if you let your guard down for two seconds, they\'ve got you. It was never enough."



"I know that place. I\'ve been there." Mello nodded. "I\'ll feed you back the lines that you taught me. Where there\'s breath there\'s hope. You and me against the world." He smiled. "When did that combination ever fail?"



Matt stared back at him and something inside snapped. "When you walked out of Wammy\'s House and left me!" He screamed into Mello\'s face. "You wanker! You fucking, fucking bastard!" He lashed out, taking the blond by surprise. For a moment, Mello stumbled back, his cheek reddening and sore under the blow, but Mafia honed instinct kicked in and he caught the next punch on his arm, deflecting it away. Matt yelled, "You fucking left me! You left me! You bastard! You motherfucking arsehole! You..."



Mello had him pinned up the wall, his hands above his head. Matt struggled and kicked, but Mello held him. "Yes! I am! Yes! I left you and I shouldn\'t have done that! Tell me, Matty! Fucking tell me what I did to you!"



"My whole world fucking crashing down! My whole fucking world!"



"And it made you want to kill yourself. And it made you cut." Mello roared back. "And it wasn\'t fair! You did not deserve that. You did not deserve me leaving you in that place."



"Yes!" Matt spat in his face, fury contorting his features. "I fucking hated you for that."



"Good." Mello gulped. "And I\'ve regretted it from the moment I did it. I spent four years kicking my own ass for my utter stupidity and wishing I could guarantee your safety if I called you. I should not have left you there." Matt stopped struggling, his head bowing. "Matt, you haven\'t finished. Tell me about afterwards. I came back and I treated you like shit. Tell me!"



"Mihael."



Mello released him and pulled him into a crushing hug. "Then tell me how I tore your mind to shreds back in the flat. Be angry with me, Matt. You deserve to be angry. I was just one more person who let you down." Matt was clinging to him, crying, trembling against him. "You deserved a mother who loved you. You got Ann, who was so over-stretched she couldn\'t even get our names right half the time. You deserved a father who sent you out to play and bought you games. You got Roger, pushing your brain so hard to be another carbon-copy of L, that you could barely think straight when you passed out exhausted on your bed at the end of the night. You deserved a best friend who sat and learned the latest games with you. You got me ranting because Near had just pipped me to the post again. You got me on the verge of fainting half the time, because I\'d been up all night revising and had skipped meals again. You did not deserve to be left in that place on your own. You are right. I should have taken you with me."



"You shouldn\'t have left." Matt rasped. "You were fourteen years old. It wasn\'t your burden."



Mello snorted. "Yeah, and you\'re not that niave."



"You were a child, Mello."



"I was never a child." His arms tightened yet further around the redhead. "We were not allowed a childhood."



"You were a child, Mello."



"Ok! I was a child, but it was still my burden." Mello rained kisses down, around his head and the tiny area of face not pressed against his shoulder. "But what was your burden, Mail? We know all about mine, because I\'m a loud, selfish bastard and I make damn sure everyone knows about it if I\'m upset about something. You gave a great show of doing fuck all at Wammy\'s, but you kept Deontic at arm\'s length for years. If you even try to overtake me? You were as aware of the rankings as the rest of us. You had to be to stay firmly third. Just like on the EHC forum, you are ranked firmly third below CrashnBurn and Bubbles. The third in line to L; the third best hacker in the world. It must take three times the bloody effort it took for me, for you to just maintain that and look so nonchalent about it."



"Stop!" Matt pushed him away. "You\'re trying to talk yourself into me being number one again! Near set it up! I was fucking third because I was better than Deontic, but not as good as you and Near! That\'s how I did it!" He gripped Mello\'s shoulders and dug his fingers in. "I was sharing a room with Mihael Keehl! And you wonder how I could get such good marks? Your notes were just lying there for me to skim-read! I didn\'t have to do fuck all for real, because you did enough for the pair of us."



"Bullshit."



"Who\'s the brains in this bloody marriage of ours?"



Mello glowered, then flicked his head back to knock the hair from his eyes. "In truth, probably you. I\'m just the one who gets my own way a lot."



"Oh! Grow up, Mello!"



"Make me." Mello smiled. Matt did not smile back. "Right, we\'ve covered the fact that Roger is a twat. We\'ve done how unfair life is. We\'ve established that I\'m a selfish bastard. Actually, let\'s return to that one. I exploited you. When we met back up, I made your life Hell. I fucked with your mind. I worked out that you liked it rough and exploited that one to the hilt, so I could explore my own sexuality without feeling like it was anything to do with me. You told me no and I overwhelmed you. I intimidated the crap out of you and, let\'s be honest about this, I sexually bullied you."



"Yeah?" Matt bit back. "And I liked it! What the fuck does that make me? I told you no, you did it anyway and I got turned on by that. You think I\'m proud of it? I mean, what kind of fucked up pinacle of the evolutionary scale am I? Two days ago, I was handcuffed and naked being thrown around that landing outside and... what that did to me? I\'m half-tempted to ask you to do it again, because I loved it!"



"It makes you the sexiest creature I\'ve ever laid eyes on." Mello grinned. "But no, I\'m not doing that to you tonight. Sorry. I know it makes it all better again, but tonight we\'re going to try something different. Honesty." He shrugged. "We\'re going to scream, shout, punch, kick, cry, smoke and eat chocolate until we make ourselves sick, but you are going to get it out of your system and we are going to find some resolutions."



"How can you do that?" Matt exhaled angrily. "How can you take what I\'m saying and just dismiss it, because you\'d rather talk about something else? You keep going on and on about talking about things, then you keep changing the subject! We\'re covering so many things because you don\'t want to talk about anything in depth!"



"Ok!" Mello pouted. "So, you\'re a fucked up whore. What else did you want to say about that?" Matt\'s gaze slid away and he stared pensively at the cupboards at his side. "Nothing else to say about that?" He waited. "Ok, let me say something about that. You like. I like doing it to you. The sex is amazing. The orgasms are out of this world. You and I are fine and no-one else is involved. Where is the problem? You want to stop? Is that it? Would you prefer that I made love to you sedately in the comfort of our marital bed? Perhaps sprinkled you with rose petals first? Fine! That\'s what we\'ll do. You\'ll never feel another handcuff covering your wrist..." He smiled as Matt stared in horror at him. "Sorry, you wished to interject, love of my life?"



"That\'s not what I said." He replied, softly.



"Right. But I\'m telling you know that based on yesterday, some things are going to change about our sex life. We can discuss that another time..."



"What?" Matt froze, peering back nervously to meet Mello\'s eyes. "What sort of changes?"



Mello smiled, "I\'m loving this emotional range that I\'ve never quite seen before. I didn\'t know you had it in you."



"It\'s mindgames. You\'ve been challenged and you\'re putting me in my place. You\'re trying to send me insane."



Mello frowned, "What?" He shook his head. "No, I\'m not. I\'m really not, Mail."



"You don\'t even know you\'re doing it. It\'s like a default setting with you. You just play to win, regardless of how low you have to go or how many people have to die. As long as Mello wins, then everything is ok." Matt removed his hands from Mello\'s shoulders and tried to move away, but Mello kept him pinned against the wall. "Will you fucking let me go?"



Hurt lodged itself into Mello\'s gaze. "You\'re mad at me. You\'re angry, so you\'re defaulting me to the character you used to think I was."



Matt sighed, "Can we just stop now please? We\'re just doing each other\'s heads in and getting nowhere. I\'m a complete wreck right now and I can\'t play the game. You are just coming out with whatever random crap enters your head for no other reason than to keep me on edge. Now right now, I just want to lie down somewhere quiet and cry. Please leave me alone."



"If you need to cry, do it here, instead. You think I\'m trying to manipulate you, but that\'s you reading into a character who I\'ve only been to you in sex." His features softened and Mello allowed himself to look worried. "It\'s just me. It\'s Mihael and I\'m always going to be here for you. Don\'t close down on me. I love you. I\'ve been going too fast for you, I know, and it was deliberate. I could see you starting to calm down and that didn\'t give me much time before all your defences kicked back into place, and then I\'d never find out all those things that hurt you that you keep buried inside. I want to help."



Matt closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged. He reached forward and was taken into a tight hug. "I\'m sorry I hit you."



"I deserved it. I shouldn\'t have left you." He felt the tears falling again hot against his neck. "This might sound cruel, but I\'m glad that you\'re crying. There\'s always been the little signs with you that all this feeling is churning away under the surface. I\'ve seen it in your chain-smoking; in your escapism, the games and the drugs; I\'ve even felt it in sex. Quite often, actually. Then, remember that time I went and concussed you back at the flat? Before I left the Mafia?" Mello felt Matt nod and stroked his hair. "Did I ever apologise for that? If not, I\'m sorry. But the way you started crying then threw me big time. That was when I really realised that underneath that laid-back exterior, you\'re a bit of a mess." Mello emitted a half-laugh, but it held no humour. "Yeah, and I call myself a genius as well. Unfortunately, I\'m a pretty self-centred one. When we were growing up, I\'d look at you and it would be like seeing the Ice Age in progress. Absolutely nothing ever ruffled you. It was all like water off a duck\'s back. There would be me ranting and raving about stuff and just when I wanted to shake you, because you were ignoring me, you\'d do this little smile. It made me feel like a child next to you. You seemed so mature. Yeah, you\'d be engrossed in a game and going, \'woot\' every so often, but emotionally you left me standing. I never knew all of this was underneath."



"Can we sit down please?" Matt asked, hoarsely. "I\'m fucked."



Mello nodded and led them back to the settee. Matt sat down beside him, rather than lying half over him as Mello would have preferred, but the blond snaked an arm around his shoulders and there was no hesitation from the redhead in resting his head on his shoulder. Mello pulled him in tighter and Matt curled a leg underneath himself to facilitate the half-cuddle. "I guess what I\'m saying is that I might intimidate you at times now, and if I do, I\'m sorry, but when we were kids, it was the other way round. I felt a bit inferior, I think."



Matt wiped his eyes, but the tears still slowly fell. "You felt inferior to me? Really?"



"Yes." Mello flashed a small smile. "Because you could take everything in your stride. I\'m not saying you were emotionless. You weren\'t Near. But you didn\'t let anything get to you."



"The irony." Matt sniffed. He reached in the direction of his ashtray and Mello picked it up to hand it to him. He lit a cigarette and smoked it with shaking fingers. "For the record, your intelligence always intimidated me. There have been times when your attitude has and, ok, I admit it, times when your temper has, but on the whole you don\'t intimidate me. I might get really fucking turned on by that psycho personality you put on sometimes, but I\'ve known you too long. At your most dangerous, I know that it\'s because inside you\'re scared or desperate." He wiped his cheeks again. "It\'s just a case of getting to the wounded, little sparrow behind the 9mm Beretta being shoved in my face."



Mello chuckled. "I\'ve been called a lot of things in my time, but I don\'t think anyone ever called me a \'wounded, little sparrow\'."



"Pity. Because a lot of your crap wouldn\'t have worked if more people had sussed that."



"You know too much. I might have to kill you." Mello smiled. He twisted his arm around to stroke Matt\'s hair again, then kissed his forehead. "I\'m glad you know me. It\'s nice to have someone who does. But, baby, let\'s keep this about you. I keep seeing themes coming up here and they are the same subjects that Roger had written in his notes..."



Anger flared through the redhead, his shoulders tensing again, "Don\'t fucking talk to me about Roger."



"Ok." Mello glanced down at him. "Though your reaction just then confirms my deduction. Abandonment issues and neglect." Matt shifted against him. "Please hear me out. I love you." He kissed him again. "What you just did to me and Near was absolute genius. In fairness, if you hadn\'t agreed to just walk out of there, I don\'t think that the combined intellect of me and Near could have shifted you. Trust me, I went through every solution that I could think of and you had me thwarted at every step. I\'d be very suprised if Nate wasn\'t doing exactly the same thing and he didn\'t suggest anything. However, the one thing I couldn\'t find was your exit plan. Your options, as far as I could see were to persuade us to discount the Mario Clause, thus returning everything to normal, or to come out in a body-bag. They were the kind of desperate odds worthy of one of my plans." Mello grinned. "But what was it all about? There were far simpler ways to keep me at arm\'s length until I\'d calmed down. You could have just driven off and called me on your mobile. But with that plan you risked me packing a bag and just driving off too. I think you worked out that I wouldn\'t have hit you. I\'ve never beaten Near up and he\'s the only precedent for this situation. Instead you devised a plan whereby you could keep my attention firmly on you and not move an inch until you\'d negotiated our future. I had to stay and confront it." Mello twitched slightly. "Please note that I\'m saying this from your perceived point of view. The reality being that you are far more important to me than any title that I\'ve already passed up twice."



Matt swallowed. "You make my plan sound really clever. In truth, I never thought for one minute that you and Near would join forces. Nor did it occur to me that you\'d talk me into leaving. Nor did I suspect that the Mario Clause was bollocks, though in retrospect that should have been obvious. That was just my ego being massaged, I suppose."



"I think I can talk for Near too when I say that we have both mused in the past about your mind. You are brilliant, Matt, whether you like it or not. The only reason I never worried about you overtaking me is because you never showed any inclination for wanting to. If you had stopped concentrating on finding ways to create more game time in amongst all the work, then maybe I would have been a bit more panicked. You always did just enough to stay where you were."



"No." Matt tensed. "I deliberately sabotaged my work every time I sensed I was pulling too close." Mello flinched and Matt rushed on. "Please note that I\'m not saying that I could have beaten you nor maintained it if I had, but I used up a lot of brainpower watching you, Near and Deontic constantly. If she got too good, I\'d step up a gear; if the margin between us got too narrow, I\'d slow down again. The one thing that saved me was that there\'s Hell of a big gap between you and Deontic. It gave me a lot of scope to move in."



Mello stared at him. His mouth dry, his features very still. "I think I knew that." He nodded and bowed his head, biting his lip. "I dismissed it because I couldn\'t find a motive. Plus it felt too ridiculous to contemplate, when the rest of us were killing ourselves trying to outdo each other. I could hazard a motivation now, but if I\'m right, then it\'s really fucking disturbing from where I\'m sitting."



"You\'re going to be half right, if that makes it any better."



Mello found himself unaccountably close to tears. "It meant such a lot to me. It was everything I thought about. You\'re going to tell me now that it still is, but I like to think I\'ve moved on at least a little bit. Thank you for giving me the chance to play for the title. By being such a bloody martyr all your life, you ensured that I had the emotional support not to just give up when Near kept beating me. I had a friend and he didn\'t and I think that\'s what kept me in the running for so long." His hand was clenched into a tight fist, the chocolate abandoned on his lap. Another thought occurred to him. He blinked and stared back at Matt. "But so did you! It was the same fight! It was the same motivation then as it was earlier on! You had a friend too! And both then and now, you were afraid that becoming a threat meant that you\'d lose that friend." He frowned, then brightened. "It wasn\'t about me. Well, it wasn\'t for me. It was for you, so that you wouldn\'t be abandoned by me."



"I preferred your first theory." Matt replied evenly. "It made me sound a bit heroic. Can I claim that one instead please?"



"No, because that would make me feel very uncomfortable." Mello leaned down, raising his chin to kiss him. He peered into red-rimmed, green eyes from only a couple of inches away. "I\'m never going to abandon you, ever. Next time you feel forced to cause havoc, can you factor that in from the beginning please? Love you, Mail."



There was a glimmer of a weak smile, then Matt\'s eyes dipped, his face returning to its expression of abject misery. "Will do."



"Good." Mello kissed him again and sat back up. "Just so I know, was I still just half right on why you did it?"



"Deliberately came third?" Matt asked and Mello nodded. "It was my way of flipping the birdie at the system. It gave me such perverse pleasure to invert the game." He stared at his XBox on the floor in front of him. "I honestly don\'t know how to explain that in a way that you\'d understand, even abstractly. No disrespect to you intended. It was like a hack. A true hack, I mean. There was the system and..." He paused, working it out. "Ok, imagine that everything about Wammy\'s is the mainframe. You work hard, you rise in the rankings, you get to succeed L. You slack off, you fall in the rankings, you get to leave for another orphanage. That\'s the programme. So what happens if someone finds a backdoor in that options menu, that forces a third route? If they could prove that someone was slacking off, then that could trigger game over. But who the Hell slacks off and cruises at third? That kept me just interesting enough to keep me in the game. Mr Wammy knew, Roger knew, L probably knew and, from what you\'ve just said, you and Near knew, but who could prove it? You just told me that you dismissed it out of hand because the motivation didn\'t add up. But that was the hack. Ensure that the logic didn\'t add up and you wipe out all the other players."



"So you could have beaten me and Near."



"No."



"That\'s what you\'ve just said."



"No, I didn\'t." Matt sighed and wrapped his arm around Mello\'s stomach. "You ever played a game where you just keep getting the same average score over and over again? You might have a fluke whereby you get the right circumstances or you somehow speed up with just enough accuracy to get a great hiscore, but try doing it again and you\'ll end up wanting to throw the bloody thing up the wall. I can see you smiling at my analogy." Above his head, Mello laughed. "Well, my average score at Wammy\'s was third. I was just very careful never to have any flukes."



"This might be an inappropriate moment to say so, but you are so gorgeous." Mello smiled. "I\'m just looking down and thinking, \'God, I fancy this man.\'" Matt snuggled closer and closed his eyes. "As for what you were saying, that might have been half of your reason by the end, but without the other half, there would have been no motivation to want to \'hack\' the way it was. If you hadn\'t been so afraid of losing me as a friend, then you would have had no reason to not want to become L yourself. It\'s only natural. The fact remains then that you only acted in that way because we were friends. I don\'t think it even matters that I was the friend, as much as I\'d like to think it did. I\'m just lucky, as I was in the right place at the right time. I\'m just the only person in your childhood," he paused, "perhaps in your life, who ever showed you affection. They all saw your genius, but I see as well the human being behind it. You were so neglected that you chose being acknowledged, for yourself... no, you chose being acknowledged and loved over becoming L. God! You were so damaged and I didn\'t even know."



Matt shrugged slightly, "You make it sound much more of a psychological drama than it actually was."



"You look like you\'re falling to sleep." Mello rubbed his back. "I\'m afraid that if you do, you\'ll never be this vunerable again and we won\'t be able to talk like this. I could cry for you, Matty, but I won\'t. I have too much respect for you and what you did, to besmirch it with pity. But I want to..." His gaze took in the whole room, searching for inspiration. It landed on a collection of bottles in the corner near to the main computer station. "Have you got any glasses in here that are even vaguely clean?"



"Eh?"



Mello patted him, "Sit up, Matty. I want to do something." He waited until the redhead rose off him, then stood. He dashed across the room, picking up two glasses from random surfaces, then racing out into the bathroom to quickly rinse them through. Returning to Matt\'s study, he crouched down by the alcohol and selected a French brandy. He thrust a glass, containing a generous helping of the strong spirit, into Matt\'s hand and then stood holding his own more modest draft. "I\'d like to propose a toast." He raised his glass and waited until Matt, warily, raised his too. "I would like us to take a moment to acknowledge the achievements of someone who fought a long, silent, lonely and bloody hard war, with fortitude, compassion and brilliance. To Mail Jeevas, aged three to 18." He took a sip of his brandy and watched as Matt, with a faintly dismissive smile, took a gulp of his own. "I would further like to raise a toast to someone who, though gutted, found ways to keep going, which is actually the hardest kind of courage to find. Who not only did that, but again did it with brilliance and awesome results. To Mail Jeevas, aged nought to three and aged fourteen to 19." His eyes stung as he lifted his glass to his lips again. The amber liquid inside was potently strong on his tongue. It warmed as it travelled down his throat.



Mello raised the brandy again for a third toast, but Matt interrupted him. "Thank you, but I know what you\'re going to say. Let me do this one please?" The redhead leaned forward from the settee and held his glass aloft. "To us. To Mihael Keehl, the prettiest, sexiest, most bad ass and most stunningly intelligent genius ever, and to Mail Jeevas, who did what was necessary at the time, who have come a bloody long way in the past two years. To us and to our marriage. May we always shine this brightly." He slugged down the rest of his brandy before Mello could embarrass him with any more toasts.



Mello smirked and blushed, gazing down at the rememnants of his own drink, once he had taken his third sip in salute. He reached across and poured half of it into Matt\'s glass. "I was going to say, to Mail Jeevas-Keehl, who ultimately won his war. May he never, ever be forgotten, ignored, neglected, abandoned or dismissed for as long as I have breath in my body or a soul that may haunt him thereon. This is my oath. To Mail Jeevas-Keehl." Matt fixed him with the strangest look. It took Mello a moment to realise that what he saw, pass fleetingly through those green eyes, wasn\'t pain, but hope. But then it was gone, lost in the bowing of his head as Matt finished his brandy for the second time. When his face appeared again, there was a faint smirk. Mello stared back fiercely. "No! The first reaction please. Do not think up wisecracks to counteract what I\'m trying to say to you."



"I\'m not." Matt sat back, but the smirk had broadened and his whole stance was far more laid-back than it had been. "Thank you for the oath. It\'s very lovely."



"Yes, you bloody well were!" Mello accused. "You\'ve stopped yourself feeling it!" He prowled around the mass of games paraphrenalia and straddled his husband\'s lap, leaning in entrap Matt\'s head between his arms. Mello peered down into the face turned upright towards him. "What came into your head when you finished your brandy?"



Matt bit his lip over a smile, his eyes twinkling. "Mello\'s been reading \'Wuthering Heights\' again." The blond gave an exasperated growl and rolled off him to land beside him on the settee. "Then I was going to add, \'and all who ride him\'," Matt reached out to squeeze a finger into Mello\'s clenched fist, "but I thought you might kill me."



"I don\'t know whether to be pleased or gutted." Mello snatched up his chocolate and nibbled on an edge of it. "The root of all of this... all of it... has been your fear of being abandoned. It\'s all about Spain. Everything stems from what that man, the arsehole who had the gall to call himself your Papa, did to you. Or didn\'t do, more to the point. What you did today; the fact that you want to kill Roger; all the panic you\'ve had over the Mario Clause; all the years you refused to even try for the L title; how you are with me; the shit you went through when I left you; the shit you put up with when I found you... it\'s all to do with those first three years of your life." He clutched the hand that was starting to draw away. "And I\'m trying to tell you that it\'s over. I\'m trying to say that I know and it\'s now the most important fact in my life." He snapped off a corner of the chocolate and held it between his teeth. "When we were out there and you were crying your eyes up, I\'d have given anything to have you like you are right now. But now we\'re here and I\'ve got to the root of all that upset, and I\'ve been trying to tell you that it\'s over now. I think I came really close to having it sink in to that part of you that needed to hear it, but you found your equilibrium and now I\'ll never know if you heard me." He sucked the chocolate inside his mouth and glanced across. "What\'s happening inside that head of yours, Mail?"



"I heard you." Matt smiled. "And I\'ve had a little epiphany of my own."



"What, baby?"



"The chocolate thing. It\'s comfort eating, isn\'t it?" He pointed to Mello\'s mouth. "I always thought it was like posing, with something you just really like to eat. But it\'s not. It\'s like your equivalent to walking around with a comfort blanket or a teddy bear or something." He caught Mello\'s stare and shrugged. "I\'m just saying." He lit a cigarette. "I mean, I\'m hardly one to talk. What with the cigarettes and all." He took it from his mouth and held it up as evidence. "I just never realised, erm, that it was comfort eating."



Mello sighed. "Matt, I think it\'s time we went to bed."



Matt smiled and nodded. "That would be nice." He began collecting his things together and spotted the flask of tea. "Hey! We never opened that. Think it will still be hot by morning? Save getting out of bed for a cuppa." He caught sight of Mello\'s pensive expression. "Mihael?" The blond looked across at him. "Thank you. For everything, I mean. You\'re right, it is going to be alright."



"Yeah, baby." Mello patted his arm. "It is."