[closed/in progress]

[gettingawaywith]

WHO: Mello (virucide), Dexter Morgan (gettingawaywith), and eventually Matt (lungrot).
WHAT: Dexter finds Mello after this incident.
WHERE: On the beach, by the train tracks.
WHEN: Day 76, right around dawn.

Comments

[virucide]

Mello didn't know how long he was out there, between the beach and the train tracks. In fact, he spent most of the time unconscious, wrapped up tight enough to suffocate in the plastic sheets he'd been raped on. But earlier, a train had gone roaring by, jolting him from his nightmarish void

[gettingawaywith]

Dexter stared at the thing, and when it started to move, he bolted forward and immediately began to unwrap the roll of plastic sheets. The man had to swallow back a rising tightness of nausea in the back of his throat at all of the stickiness and the blood (god, so much of it, how he hated the stuff) that it began to reveal, and as more of the yellow hair began to show, he managed to unravel most of the plastic to reveal a face covered in the red liquid, framed in hair that was matted beyond any hopes of order.

Mello.It was that kid he'd taken into his apartment, the one he'd patched up after the bar fight. The one whose anger had resonated in some far away, almost forgotten part of Dexter

[virucide]

Had he really been rescued? It seemed too good, too lucky, to be true

[gettingawaywith]

Every time Dexter stopped at a light, he glanced backward to see how Mello was doing.

And each time he looked, he liked less and less what he saw. Mello had obviously taken a serious beating, along with some special attention paid to his limbs, his extremities. The fact that the blond was covered in blood made the man uneasy for the state of Mello's closeness to passing out again or dying, and neither would be of any help to Dexter for finding out what had happened

[virucide]

Despite the darkness, Mello's eyes focused on the man in the room the moment Dexter entered. It was part of becoming so obsessed with your surroundings, so focused on what made up your location, and that effect hadn't quite worn off yet since last night when he'd studied the heart-shaped seashells on the wall and analyzed the water-stains on the ceiling long enough to strain his eyes.

Drawn by the other's voice, the blond forced himself to lie back down flat once again, his head turned to face Dexter. His expression was vacant as ever, a slate of impassion, lips pressed into a neat line of tension. The chocolate bar he'd inhaled some hours ago sat heavy at the bottom of his stomach, so he wasn't hungry, and he articulated that with a tiny shake of his head.

As for the pills...the desire to take them was left unvoiced at the mention of Matt.

Calling Matt.

Matt, who'd probably combed through the entire city of Reggio in search of him over the past twenty-four hours. Why hadn't he remembered before he'd fallen asleep? All that time

[lungrot]

Ringing

[virucide]

The room is blanketed by silence, the token flare of static between the connected phone line all either of them has for company. Mello's eyes trail carefully over to Dexter, and he considers gesturing the man out of the room, but he's done nothing at all intrusive so far, nothing at all to earn his distrust. Whatever he might hear from Mello's end of the call couldn't cause any complications.

Without thinking ahead, without really planning what he's intended to say, Mello cradles the phone against the side of his face and croaks out through a healing throat of sores and tight dryness: "Matt."

Relief floods through him, pushes him further.

Matt, Matt, Matt. I've got you. It's okay. I'm sorry I took so long.

"I'm okay." There's a genuine smile on his face at last, underlined with darkness but still. there. Smudged and shadowed, fragile and broken, but there's still some brittle undertone of light to it. Mello wets his lips. "He's gone now. I'm okay. Where are you? You should." He's babbling, but he's so fucking relieved that he isn'

[lungrot]

There's a pause on the line; a hitch of breath, a choked and muted slip of the tongue, swelling of the heart so quick and seizing that Matt feels he could burst. All too familiar, the other's voice (weak and raw, as if rubbed by sandpaper, but still there and unmistakable regardless) is almost like a dream.

And could it be? That this was just one of what would become many drug and despair induced hallucinations over the next days, months, years? No surprise there; Matt's wired, precarious on the edge of consciousness which slips from his grasp like cigarette smoke.

But the voice continues, pushes on, insists. Is it safe to believe, then? That this is more than just some cruel trick of the mind and altered perceptions?

"Mel--" Interrupted, but that's fine. Keep talking, please. I need to know it's really you, I need to know--

"Where are you."