Liz sprinted into the room, her eyes wide with panic and her hands clasped frantically together. "Roger! One of the children is missing!"
Roger stood up so quickly that he nearly sent his chair flying over backwards. "What? Who is it? What happened?"
"It's Mello!" she exclaimed. "I just came from his room, he's not in his bed and—what?"
Roger had sat down and begun chuckling despite himself. It was his mistake in the first place, both his and the rest of the staff's. It was rude to laugh at Liz because of it; he quickly reined himself in. "I'm sorry. Liz…this is your…third day, isn't it?"
Her eyes were as wide as saucers. "Y—yes," she managed. "Did I do something wrong? Only, Emily said that I found someone missing from bed in the morning, I should report it to you right away—I just thought—"
Roger shook his head to halt her explanations. "I should have warned you about this in advance. Mello is…a bit of a special case when it comes to this rule. This is not unusual, for him."
Liz stared at him in bafflement. "You mean he's routinely not in his bed in the morning? Where does he go?"
Roger opened his mouth to answer, hesitated, and stood up instead. "I'll show you," he offered. There was no use in sugar-coating it. She would see many things here at Wammy's House that would make her uncomfortable; this would be a good litmus test of how well she would take it. He crossed the room and led her into the hallways. She followed him in confused silence as they marched past Mello's room and around the corner to Matt's. Roger quietly opened the door and let Liz look inside.
She frowned. "What am I looking for?" she asked in a whisper. The room was normal upon a first inspection: discarded books and papers on the floor, a few pieces of dirty clothing, a blanket-covered lump on the bed with a shock of red hair protruding. Then Liz inhaled sharply. Roger knew she had spotted it: Mello's fine blonde strands against and around Matt's face. If he were to pull the covers back right now, Roger knew that he would find the two boys in their usual position: Mello asleep against Matt's chest, with Matt's arms wrapped around him. The game boy would be dangling loosely from his fingers, and the bed would be littered with empty chocolate wrappers. Mello would wake up immediately, demand to know what Roger wanted, and then shake and cajole Matt until he unwillingly opened his eyes and faced the new day.
When turned back to Liz, her expression was full of shock and consternation. He gestured for her to exit the room and quietly closed the door behind her.
She followed him in staunch silence until they reentered his study. The moment he closed the door, she spoke up. "You let that go on without interference?" she demanded.
Roger crossed the room and sat at his desk before he responded. "Yes. Those two boys are best friends. To keep them apart requires a Herculean effort." He met her gaze evenly. "Do you see a problem?"
She sputtered indignantly. "You're asking me if I see a problem with two young men sleeping together?" she demanded. "Of course I do! If that's allowed to continue for much longer, they could…"
She had already trailed off uncomfortably by the time Roger held up a hand to silence her. "Actually, as they are eleven years old, there is no guarantee that sharing a bed is innocent for them, even now." The words cost him dearly to say aloud. He recalled how disgusted he had been the time that L had voiced a similar speculation about Mello and Near, and felt soiled as he realized he was now doing the same thing to Liz. Nevertheless, he straightened his shoulders and met her gaze squarely.
Her jaw hung open. "And you're okay with that?" When he didn't respond immediately, she leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. "Are you?"
Was he okay with it? Honestly, no. He wasn't. These days everyone was pushing the idea that there was nothing wrong with homosexuality, but Roger just couldn't wrap his mind around it. He wanted to claim that he was open-minded, that he was still with the times even though he was an old man. He had honestly believed it, too, right up until Mello and Matt had started making their affection publicly visible. Then he had been forced to admit that he just wasn't able to throw away prejudices from the past. Homosexuality made him uncomfortable.
He had talked to Quillsh about it one day during an extremely rare live phone call, when he had nearly had a panic attack after watching Matt tickle-torture Mello for ten minutes solid. They were twisted together like pretzels, with Matt's hands roaming over most of Mello's body, and Mello squirming helplessly against him. Mello was victimized with surprising ease considering that he had shown himself capable of effortlessly taking down someone of Jury's size. "Quillsh!" he gasped. "It's not normal, the way those two play together. It's not like other boys. It's like…" they're flirting, he finished mentally, but couldn't bring himself to say aloud. "What happens if they're—if they're…queer? What do I do?"
Watari's soft chuckle gradually built into roaring laughter, much to Roger's chagrin. When the other man regained control of himself, he replied, "Be grateful. Be very grateful." Roger's mouth opened and shut rapidly a few times, a fish out of water, but Watari continued before he could formulate a verbal response. "L came in here yesterday to discuss the psychology behind why watching a woman urinate inspires arousal in men."
Roger blinked. "But that doesn't insp—" He broke off as his mind caught up to his ears. "Oh, god. Are you telling me that…" Watari's silence spoke volumes, and Roger grimaced. "Really? That? Ugh…" He shuddered.
"We've had a few nearly identical conversations about girls who are rendered helpless through restraints and forcibly raped." He paused for a moment to let those words sink in. "So Roger, if all your boys want to do is have sex with each other, then leave them to it. You won't even have to worry about pregnancy."
Roger was stunned into silence for a several long moments by that bald statement. "How can you say things like that so plainly?" he demanded accusingly when he recovered his voice. "You've spent too much time around L!"
Quillsh considered that with a musing sigh. "Maybe you're right. L says everything plainly, after all. But the fact remains, two boys having a relationship ranks at about two out of ten on the scale of bizarre behavior that such brilliant children can get up to." There was an uncomfortable moment as they both recalled Beyond Birthday's murders, Annabel and Dorian's suicides, Castor's long series of crimes, and half a dozen other incidents. Then Quillsh lightened the mood by chuckling. "Roger, you know that I still have to periodically change L's clothes for him, right? To spare your delicate sensibilities, I won't even go into what it takes to make sure he actually gets himself clean in the shower. If I've spent too much time around him, at least it's given me an appreciation of people who can take care of themselves." There was no malice or exasperation in his tone. He was just stating facts. Roger knew that his devotion to L bordered on love. He had always admired the way he worked with and around L's quirks so seamlessly, and had often wished he could achieve the same sort of rapport with one of his top students. That is, until he thought of Near, and recalled that the specialized care that young boy required alternately drove him up the wall and made him very uncomfortable. The truth was that Roger didn't have the constitution to do the job Watari did.
Quillsh was still speaking. "Honestly, Roger, can't you just be glad that they're brilliant, promising students who can function on their own? Whatever they do together, that's at least behind closed doors. You don't even have to concern yourself with it unless they decide to strip one another in the middle of the library."
Roger gasped, then guffawed. Once he was able to put the mental image aside, it was a humorous statement. Quillsh had certainly added to his irreverence over the years. Roger was beginning to get his point, but Quillsh drove it home by restating House policy to him. The mission of the educators at Wammy's House was to provide their charges with all of the necessary tools for their intellectual development, without interfering with their own individual growth. He finished the speech by pointedly asking how far he thought they would have gotten with L if they had wasted all of their time trying to make him sit normally and change his clothes every day.
It was with that in mind that he met Liz's gaze evenly. "Yes, I am fine with things how they are," he told her. "You have to understand. Here at Wammy's House, we have a philosophy, and that is to raise these children with as little interference as possible. They are geniuses on a level that you and I can't even comprehend. It is inevitable that they will see the world differently than we do, and differently than other children of their age group. Rather than hamper them by trying to force them to live by the rules of a society comprised of people who will never reach their intellectual level, we try to let them discover what is normal and healthy for them, and then grow and develop according to that."
Liz's jaw had closed and her lips were now pressed together in a thin line of tension. "But they're kids," she said. "Shouldn't the adults be guiding the children, rather than the other way around?"
Roger hesitated. That was a very, very reasonable suggestion. Somehow Quillsh's talking points sounded much less convincing when it was Roger repeating them. But he had taken this job knowing full well what it entailed, and he could hardly show uncertainty in the face of a new staff member. He nodded politely. "In most institutions, that would be the guiding principle. But most institutions aren't home to the brilliance that we lay claim to here. If you want to be a successful addition to our staff, you have to come to terms with the style of education we practice here."
Liz bit her lip and her eyes bored into him, filled with consternation. There was a long, tense moment. Then she gave a jerky nod. "Fine. I…I see. I heard these things while I was being interviewed, but I guess I didn't really understand what it meant until just now."
"Are you going to be okay with our policies?" Roger inquired.
Liz pursed her lips. "I…I need some time to think it over."
Roger nodded. "I understand."
He heaved a sigh once Liz had left. Her comment—that perhaps what they were doing was letting the children make the rules when they might benefit from having rules imposed on them—might have a lot of merit. Could he really look himself in the eye and declare, head held high, that he believed in his heart that the House policies worked for everyone? Certainly they had worked well with L: he blossomed when he was perched atop a chair, shoeless, munching on candy. He had solved countless "unsolvable" cases on his routine of three hours of sleep a night and a diet of junk food. If he was forced to wear shoes, he got so distracted that he couldn't concentrate on anything else. Any other approach to raising him would have been incredibly counterproductive. Quillsh's method of raising geniuses worked; L was the living proof.
But what about the others…? Roger was markedly less certain about them. None of the new generation seemed to be following quite in L's footsteps. Near was the closest, but he was so physically frail that there was little that he could do by himself. Left purely to his own devices, he would never leave his favorite play room. There was a chance that he would forget to eat until he actually passed out. Matt had his own entrenched attitude problem: he was rarely as interested in schoolwork as he was in his video games and in Mello.
As for Mello…giving him free rein only seemed to encourage him to attempt more and more mischief. Mischief? Roger snorted quietly to himself. No, "mischief" was no longer the proper word for Mello's antics. He had fits of uncontrolled and uncontrollable rage that were truly frightening to behold. He'd shattered every mirror in a communal bathroom once, overturned Near's desk and dresser once, and torn apart one of the spare bedrooms on the third floor half a dozen times. They hadn't even bothered putting it back together after the third time. It had been unofficially nicknamed the Mello Rage Room by a few of the staff. Half of the teachers wouldn't approach him during his fits because they feared for their physical safety.
But it wasn't the anger or the property destruction that Roger found truly disturbing. It was the way Mello's fist had been riddled with shards of mirror glass and dripping with blood, but the boy was so consumed by his rage that he hadn't even noticed. It was how someone as physically small as Mello found the strength to upend a five-drawer dresser filled with clothing. That he kept repeating such behavior made Roger wonder if there might be something wrong that ran deeper than school pressure and youthful rebellion coupled with a very short temper. He wondered if it could be a form of deliberate self-injury, except that where other pre-teens might cry in their bedrooms and cut themselves, Mello's angst found a much more spectacular outlet. The worst part was that his violent behavior was only increasing in frequency.
Roger didn't know what to do about it. He would have sworn that Mello would be the death of him, if he hadn't seen Quillsh deal with the previous generations' serious problem children. There had never been a time when Wammy's didn't have at least one student raising hell. Mello might very well be Roger's Beyond Birthday, but he wasn't anywhere near the same league as BB. That knowledge was what Roger used to console himself when affairs in the House were at their craziest. It was what he whispered to himself today before he shook his head and forced his attention back to his work.
