if you show, you show (closed & complete)

[virucide]

WHO: Mello (virucide) & Matt (lungrot).
WHAT: The comfort log?
WHERE: Car, then their apartment.
WHEN: Day 76, after this.

Comments

[lungrot]

What's there to say, indeed

[virucide]

Mello's arm moves, lowering, rubbing fingertips into the fiber of the flooring until his whole hand begins to burn. It travels through the damaged bones and ligaments, a stinging ache that centers in his palm. His body is struggling to pull itself back together, collect the remnants scattered and torn the previous night and arrange them correctly, get them back in order. The healing process has become absolute agony, hindered only by the morphine heavy in his veins.

He breathes out.

Bottle-blue eyes, narrowed until the whites are barely visible, slide to his bare feet. There's blood crusted around his nails, a disgusting shade of dark maroon that stands out vividly against pale skin; his fingernails are much the same. Everything Dexter hadn't cleaned up up sits, festers, feels as though it's contaminating him, leeching the life away from him. He wants to shower. To scrub and scrub and scrub until it all goes awayHe feels like he's going to be sick

[lungrot]

The automobile whines as Matt takes another sharp turn, overwhelmed by the urgency with which he aches to hide behind his home's closed doors and curtains. Their home, just him and the blonde in the backseat, no-one to break in and knock down walls built from years' worth of confidence and assertion, no-one to make their blood run cold and their stomachs spill from worry and terror. It's a nice illusion the red head is surprised to find comfort in-- Reggio Calabria's renown violence had yet to phase him until just now.

At the hitch of breath and groaning behind him, Matt near slams the breaks. His heart hammers against the growing tightness of his chest and the cigarette tucked haphazardly between his saliva-slicked lips slips, falls into his lap, it's incandescent tip burning through denim. "Shit!", he hisses, picking the offending cigarette up between shaking fingers and flicking it out the half-opened window, sighing

SIGH, ME.

[virucide]

The interrupted question is otherwise ignored; he pretends he hasn't heard it. All that matters is getting home, finding some relative familiarity before he absolutely looses it. So when they pull into the small parking deck, he's already sitting up, popping the car door open and sliding to place both bare feet on the warm pavement. Matt's assistance is something he has to accept as much as he loathes it, because he can't walk on his leg alone without the support. Which makes the next task, the stairs (their apartment building doesn't have an elevator, which hadn't been a problem until now), an embarrassingly difficult feat

SHH, YOU. ♥

[lungrot]

"You're welcome," the red head mutters, shoved aside and left to watch Mello's painful retreat into the bathroom. Whatever; it's not an argument worth pursuing (or even starting), and he contents himself with locking the door, keys then discarded on a near-by table along with Matt's gloves and cigarettes. He pulls one out, fumbles around for a lighter before lighting it

[virucide]

Mello's indignant refusal is silenced by the other's authoritative words, but he shifts back across the tile as if to escape, spine hitting the row of cabinets. The dull impact drives a sound of muffled pain from his throat, rasped and broken. "No," the blond grits through his teeth in an attempt to dissuade Matt, but he already knows it's probably pointless. Still, there's a steeled look of aggravation in his eyes; but it isn't directed at the redhead. Everything's turned internal, turned on himself.

"I need to do the stitches over," he breathes, the statement a mess of trembling nerves, and it shows when his tone shakes. Mello twists, swallowing another whimper of pain when he feels the pressure shift around the ribs healing in his chest, and slides out the first aid kit from inside one of the cabinets. There are two needles in here, industrial needles built for this kind of work, and medical sutures. He'll have to take the ones already in his skin out, first. Which won't be a very pleasant event, he already knows. But he can deal

[lungrot]

"I said shut up."

Matt groans, hands slicked with blood as he slides forward, brandishing his washcloth. There's a forcefulness behind his words that the red head usually avoids, but he isn't going to repeat himself a third time ; this is hard enough as it is. He doesn't need Mello to remind him.

His blood runs cold at the mention of stitches. The thought of the needle's point protruding from pink flesh, stringing through muscle tissue and patching Mello up like a worn-out rag doll is enough to drain the remaining color from Matt's face, now almost as pale as the tile beneath them, dull gray eyes wide as saucepans. It could almost be considered comical, though the edges of his vision are already beginning to blur. God, why.

The red head's hand finds Mello's and grips it, slippery wet and sticky with his blood. He raises the other to press a calloused finger to the blonde's lips, foreheads swathed in sweat-soaked strands of hair pressed one against the other.

Just. Shut up. I can handle anything as long as you're okay, remember?

[virucide]

He goes quiet

[lungrot]

Try not to look? Mello doesn't have to ask him a second time.

Matt's hands are surprisingly steady as they old the torn flesh in place, skin crawling. He can't help but liken the other's leg, open and leaking thick red, to overripe fruit dropped carelessly onto tile, to a piece of meat on a cutting boar, to--

oh, god.

There's a sick squelching sound as Mello's pulling out the wayward sutures, and the red head can feel every tremor in the other's body as he does so. It's more than Matt thinks he can handle, though he tries his best to keep his breathing steady and his eyes focused on Mello's, gray pooling into bottle-blue.

[virucide]

Mello's own eyes are down, focused on the stitches as he picks them free from torn flesh, each precise pluck! shivering down his spine. But his work is careful, attentive, steady. And at long last, he manages to pry them all out, placing them onto the nearby towel bloodied by his earlier cleaning. Mello exhales the breath he'd been holding throughout the procedure. Okay. That hurt like a bitch, but it's done. Now

[lungrot]

Almost done but not soon enough. Matt counts the seconds, minutes, ticking by, tensing with every sharp inhale the other takes as he drives the needle in, pulls it out, repeats. Every once in a while the red head's morbid curiosity causes him to glance down, even for just a moment, after which he shuts his eyes tight and fights down the rising bile in his throat. He does this once, twice, three times before learning his lesson, keeping his gaze steadily fixed on anything but the gory goings-on beneath his fingers

[virucide]

The expression that flattens out the details of Mello's face is uncharacteristic: hollow, wide-eyed regard, mouth relaxed and parted enough to reveal a row of teeth, head tilted back against the cabinets in hazed, blank perspective. He slides partway down as though he'd just been slapped, recoiling from the demand in a way that Mello has never done. There's no resistance in him, and the Mello of days past has been snapped apart like a child's toy

[lungrot]

Mello's compliance is both disheartening and a relief. Though he has nothing but the blond's best interest in mind, Matt isn't sure how willing he is to fight him right now, not when they're both so tattered and torn, so obviously out of their comfort zone of hard-spoken words, of teasing and guile.

"Yeah? I'd be pretty fucking surprised if it didn't." Matt chuckles, dry and dark and humorless. When the other gestures towards the bath he frowns, eyebrows hitched and knit behind strands of unruly russet hair. If Mello thinks he's going to crawl his way into the bathtub without insistent assistance, he's dead wrong-- and Matt moves back to his side, arm slipping beneath Mello's.

"Christ, let me do it." It's for your own good. Shut up. Don't argue with me.

[virucide]

His eyes narrow on the redhead, blade-like and edged, at the comment. But his lips purse to swallow further protest, and the trip to the bath is a short, if relatively painful affair. Mello slides down until his head rests on the marble embankment of the tub, legs stretched out, skin tingling as the cold surface presses against his bare skin.

With a fair amount of effort, Mello reaches for the knob of the shower head above and turns it to scalding, the water spraying down like tiny embers bursting free from the earth. He hisses out a breath between gnashed teeth, but doesn't turn it down, doesn't do anything but lay back and endure. Pale eyelashes, now darkened with clinging moisture, close tightly. "Matt, you can leave now." The words are spoken with wire-sharp undertones; he's not leaving room for argument, though he still expects it.

"Just get out; come back in ten minutes. I don't need any help bathing."

[lungrot]

With that taken care of, Matt stretches, hands interlocked and raised high up above his head. His entire body creaks, joints popping in protest as his shoulders sink with a sigh ; he can't wait for this to be over, anticipates the very second they can both tangle themselves in their sheets and let sleep claim them (though he knows it won't be that easy).

"Shit, Mello." Sweat pearls across his forehead, the heat stifling. "Try not to peel your skin off, yeah?" Reaching for the knobs, he turns them down ever so slightly before stepping out.

"Ten minutes. I'll be in the living room." But who does he think he's fooling, when the strike of a match sounds in the hallway and smoke drifts through the open doorway?

A MONTH LATER

[virucide]

"Yeah," Mello replies, almost biting in the undercurrent of cynicism that the word implies. He says nothing more as the other leaves, but there's something telling about the fact the blond doesn't reach to turn the knobs back to their blistering temperature. Water rains down, coats his body, washes away ghost evidences and fingerprint reminders. Attempts to clean everything.

He closes his eyes to stifle a vague burn at the corners of his subconscious, and lets himself go under the wet heat of the shower. It sucks his under, dulls his mind--he scrubs with a bare bar of soap, as best he can. Ten minutes edge fifteen, threaten twenty.

The knuckles of his good hand gleam raw red. The smoke from Matt's cigarette, wafting strong from the wall, curls through him--the only familiar anchor he has left in this nightmarish afterworld.