Disclaimer: I clearly do not own Death Note or any of the characters mentioned. This work is entirely fictional and only meant for non-profit enjoyment purposes. Thank you.

Snowflake

I'm not going to fall in love, especially not with you.

Aren't we natural opposites?

Aren't we just obstacles in each other's way?

To be anything more would be mutually assured destruction.

And you know all about that.

You know everything.

Don't you?

Golden and healthy, glimmering in the sunlight, his perfectly cut hair clung onto to his neck, protectively covered by a grey checkered scarf. His breath hung silently in the air as it slipped out of his mouth. His smooth black jacket was littered with snow; his shoulders holding the melting frost easily as he quickly picked it up, rolled it into a misshapen ball and proceeded to throw the lump at the back of another boy's head.

"Mello's team: Four, Aero's: One!" The referee shouted conclusively.

His lanky hand lifted the green flag in lieu of the red one, and the blonde and his team cheered acrimoniously. The green team proceeded to deliver the same treatment, spitting on the red team's ground and shouting profanities and assumptions at them. Bickering was not far off before the voices became louder and the accusations became more harsh and prominent as the blonde with the pageboy haircut dusted the icy powder away from his clothes nonchalantly. Screams and insults flung through the cold winter air when the blond raised his hand abruptly. The boys stopped their arguing and directed their attention to the undisputed leader of their pack. He proceeded to step on top of the stone that the referee was sitting on and placed his hands on his hips.

Black gloves clutched black pants and his smirking red lips allowed words to escape through their formerly fermented gate, "Shut up. Either you idiots stop fighting or we go inside."

Everyone retreated solemnly, obeying him, and returning to their forts to begin round six, although the odds were certainly stacked against the green team.

The red team had Mello.

His sparkling glaciate eyes flickered between boys as he planned a careful strategy to have his team win for certain. Whammy House's version of the snowball fight was not just relentless and barbaric like normal battles. Strategies, logic, and stringent gameplay created a universe where snowball fighting was like chess: a game where the smartest one wins. This is why athletic and brainy Mello was so coveted as your team member. This is why he was the leader, actually.

His skin was snow, perfect and white, matching his hair to absolute perfection. His eyes were dark and captivating, sucking the light out of anything they set on except for him, lean and tenacious Mello. He sat staring silently through the tall window from the second floor of the orphanage, snow falling around its pane. It was hard not to be curious about the unsolvable puzzle. Mello was a masterpiece of human nature.

A lithe, small finger rubbed on the glass where the blond stood and another curled in his soft hair. He was sincerely content, staring from far away, his hair kissing the glass as he wished that his lips would Mello's one day. However, he knew that this would probably as close as he would get without the altercation becoming violent or tense and angry. He knew Mello hated him, and his choler was founded after all. He was number one, after all.

"So you decided not to go out either, Near." A voice rang through the hallway, high and ringing like a bell through Near's delicate ears. He sighed disappointedly as a young girl with wavy chestnut hair approached him.

"Good afternoon, Linda," Near replied. His large eyes followed Mello inadvertently, failing to acknowledge the female looming over him.

"Um," Linda stumbled, trying to find something to say to the boy who did not speak. In fact, he never spoke unless directly addressed. He wasn't handing out invitations to enter his world. That carefully constructed, perfectly white, solemn and lonely world.

"Near, I was wondering if you could help me in math sometime," she said cheerily, obviously oblivious to Near's tendency to shy away from other people. Near did not feel that he was required to pay much attention to someone who didn't really stand a chance to succeed L. She was number fourteen; he was number one. The answer was evident.

One of the children outside screamed and the lot laughed loudly as he got up and swung miserably poor punches at the boy who shoved snow down his shirt. Linda huffed as she watched this scene, becoming fervent.

"Those stupid boys! How many rules do they break every single day?" She growled, wrapping her scarf tightly around her neck. "You're so lucky you aren't anything like them Near! I'm going to get Roger before they cause any more trouble." Her sneakers squeaked loudly as she ran out of the room, leaving Near alone again to peer through the window at the boys.

'No I am not lucky,' Near thought dejectedly. Mello patted the perpetrator on the back, snow falling out of his hair, maroon and shaggy like everyone else's. They laughed and began to return inside, glowing with joy: a joy that Near knew he could never bring Mello.

Mello didn't care about him. He cared about the spot he held. Near knew that the obsession Mello had with him was superficial and subjective, but he hardly cared.

Suddenly Mello halted just before he was out of Near's view. His eyes slit suspiciously, as if he heard a provoking noise. They moved slowly, scanning the side of the frostbitten building, ivy crawling towards the sun, until he caught a glimpse of something blindingly white. His eyes bolted towards the window, but nothing was there but snow dotting the pane.

His mouth tightened as the sun hid behind a poufy beige cloud. (He no longer considered them white anymore. That attributed to Near alone.)

Perhaps Near was watching.

Perhaps he was not.

'Either way,' Mello thought as he pulled his gloves tightly against his hand, flooding with hatred, 'He will be punished.' Punished for staring, or punished for not paying any attention to him. Mello found the latter far more incriminating.

Near was his rival, sure, but he found it infuriating when Near was looking somewhere else, doing something else, finding someone else more intriguing than Mello. He didn't notice his brow furrow in unheard, harbored frustration that had been shut up inside all these years.

'Why should Near get to look somewhere else,' he began, kicking the perfect face that the blanket of snow portrayed. It only reminded him of the aforementioned, his childish features and lithe, cadaverous figure. He dug his boot into the awful powder, imagining his rival's soft, white hair.

'Why…'

"When the only person I see is him?" he cried, falling into the snow. A sharp, freezing wind skid across his leather clad back, but he hardly cared. The snow felt surprisingly warm on his cheek, covering him from the harsh reality that was his world. That continually changing, dark, foreboding, and inescapable world.

"Near…" He murmured into the snow, wishing it was his perfect skin, clutching onto it as if it were his ever-present pajamas, just as straight and impeccable as he was, not a wrinkle or a stain to be seen.

Mello was all wrinkles and stains. He was almost exactly like every other boy, and it was maddening. Why was Near so captivating… alluring and different? He felt plain and imperfect next to him, so inferior… He snarled and dug his nails angrily into the snow.

Why ask the question that he had always asked when he knew that there was no answer? Near drove him insane, and it wasn't just because he was number one. Everything he did made Mello crazy. Jealously, rage, hunger, adoration mixed into one deadly flame… one addicting drug that controlled his whole life.

"Why Near?" he hissed into the snow to no one in particular. But he already knew the answer to that question, and just thinking about it made him shudder.

Thinking about looking into Near's eyes, touching his skin, revisiting those insipidly vivid and impulsive fantasies where they bit and sucked and breathed together… it gave Mello the chills.

Though he knew full well that he would never be able to get close enough to Near to devour him as voraciously as he did in his daydreams, it didn't stop him from wanting to taste that snowflake melt on his tongue.

It couldn't stop him from desire.

Mello's infinite desire.

"Mello, what are you still doing out here?" Matt whistled through his teeth, the words formulating into a stream of white breath. Mello's head jolted up at his mention, rising from the comfort of the snow almost embarrassedly.

"H-hey, Matt," he mumbled, blushing slightly. He shoved a handful of snow into his back pocket, as if he was stealing something important from the once vibrant ground.

"Hm," he grunted dubiously before shrugging and giving the blond an indifferent grin. "C'mon, let's go inside. You're probably dying for a bar of chocolate."

He smiled at his companion and walked beside him into the warmth of the indoors, unknowingly being watched from a second story window by a boy with white hair and deep onyx eyes. Those eyes that he longed for followed him from the ground to the door, shutting the curtain at the disappearance of his silhouette; falling to the ground with the knowledge that they'd never get to gaze upon their beloved the way Matt was looking at him then… and that it killed them.

'No, I am not lucky,' he mused sadly, 'because I will never be with Mello.'

He rose from his spot next to the window and padded away silently, the tears streaming down his face unbeknownst to him or anyone at Whammy's.

He didn't understand just how lonely he was; locked behind the walls of his world.

His complacent, perfect world that he wished Mello would swoop in and save him from.

But that would never happen.

And he knew it.

Author's Notes:

/Happy Birthday to Me! Happy Birthday to Me! Happy Birthday dear Sam! Happy Birthday to Me!/

My birthday was on September 21, so it's belated, but here's the only time I had to write a little special birthday fic (for me, of course.)

It's sad, whatever, but you know me. Unrequited love and lalala.

It gets a little drawn out at the end, but I couldn't figure out how to end it… ; The point was that they live in different worlds and even as much as they desire for the other's affection it can't happen…

I just wish they'd kiss and fall in love and be happy as L together. But that's impossible. Siiiigh.

Oh well! Thanks for reading! Please review if you've got the time! We love 'em!

Sincerely yours, Sam