Not sure what it is about being hideously busy that makes me want to procrastinate and write fic, but there it is. Not really sure where this is going, I just have a small handful of randomish, half-finished, semi-connected Wammy vignettes that I'd like to polish off. Might develop into a coherent storyline but probs not. Hope everyone's finals are going well, to those whom it applies...
Wane
The migraines first start when Mello is nine. It's a while after one of the other students, the quiet one that never seems to care what's going on around him, finally gets with the program and begins taking L seriously.
The sliver more than minimum effort the younger boy expends once he decides the title is at least as worthwhile as airplane models sends him rocketing from Seventh to Second on the Blackboard at a rate that has the staff thinking there's been an administrative mistake. Mello has never noticed the other boy much before now, not really. He's never drawn attention to himself. Hardly speaks. Never makes a fuss. He's easy to overlook.
To be honest, Mello's always thought Near was a bit daft. Until now.
-o-
All through that winter Mello and Near wrestle between First and Second. That year is much colder than usual. The heaters crank out full blast without filling the rooms. Extra blankets are pulled out of storage and piled on the beds, slightly moth-eaten and mismatching. Mello shivers through it on the razor edge of his nerves. He spends long hours in the library with hot tea he has no intention of drinking clutched in his hands and three pairs of socks on, determined to stay on top where he belongs for more than 72 consecutive hours.
Near comes down horribly sick, which is fairly standard for Near, shakes with fever under a mountain of old spare blankets from the end of January til Valentine's. The absence of his new rival is a breath of fresh air; even the floors seem less cold underfoot and the homework less onerous. For those two weeks Mello is undisputed king of the Blackboard again. Euphoric, he observes to half the common room one evening that grades aside, the L machine could never afford to gamble on someone so weak and sickly. The comment spreads among the students like a prairie fire, and evidently makes its way to the weak and sickly child in question.
When Near gets better, he snatches the top slot his first week back and stays there for good.
As far as revenges go, it's very effective. The realization that his rival has been holding back all this time is just quicklime in the cut. Near has been toying with him.
Why? Who knows.
Because he's a spiteful little lunatic, probably, Mello figures. Whatever his reasons, he's apparently gotten tired of them, and now Mello's scrambling to pay him back for the humiliation.
Mello pulls two all-nighters in a row to prepare for the next battery of tests, eating nine bars of the chocolate he suddenly craves and ignoring the squiggly, zig-zagging rings that spiral over his vision, and is hit by his first ever migraine like an anvil under a driving hammer.
The nurse and the head of curriculum argue in the hall about whether he should be put on bedrest or sent to class while he curls in bed with his head under his pillow, feeling like he's going to be sick and trying to eavesdrop on the conversation even though their words are clanging against his right temple like heavy church bells. Eventually they take it to Roger, who doesn't care to hear their bickering and so decides Mello will sleep it off for one day and work hard to catch up the next day. One day later the hammer is still there. Mello lies and says he is fine, because second place is bad enough. He throws up in the middle of algebra and is ordered back to bed by the nurse, who radiates I told you so, and he staggers off with her on the sole condition that someone brings him his homework to do in bed.
He fails to specify someone other than Near. So naturally, in a galling exception to his antisocial habits, it's Near who volunteers to bring all his reading and assignment sheets.
"Go away," Mello groans when he sees him, burrowing deeper under the covers and fisting his pillow over his throbbing head. He's been working very hard to sleep it off as quickly as possible, but the harder he tries the less sleepy and more miserable he feels. The nurse says he needs to relax. His rival's visit does not improve things. The painkillers should be helping more than they are. Near's a pain. They should take a stab at him.
"I wasn't going to stay," Near murmurs. He slips the thick sheaf of assignments onto the desk, the whisper of paper on wood like a metal rasp against Mello's ear. Socks pad softly back across the carpet to the door, where his rival pauses. "I know neither of us believes in karma, Mello, but I personally find this to be an amusingly appropriate coincidence."
Mello grumbles obscenities into his mattress and can hear the smugness in the creak-swing and click of the door.
-o-
Later he reads that stress is a common trigger for migraines. The one thing he's pretty well guaranteed to always have in abundance. It's not fair. The next time Near gets sick Mello volunteers to bring him his homework and the head of curriculum, who sees through his mask of sincerity like glass, says no and behave.
-o-
"Do you ever think," Near says one day, partway through fall exams, "that they are deliberately trying to break our limits."
Yesterday Weak-and-Sickly-but-Still-First staggered out of a ten-day battle with the flu. (But still never slipped from the top of the Blackboard.) He still looks wan and hollowed, translucent in the late golden light washing over the windowseat with his forehead pressed tiredly to the glass and his fingers slow on the rope puzzle, but all his homework is somehow finished and he's solved and reset the puzzle five times in the last five minutes.
Since morning Mello has felt the onset of a migraine coming on, tingling in his right arm and stoking his chocolate cravings.
They both wax and wane, but Near is always brighter.
And of course the House is pushing their limits, that is their purpose. To be tested. To be pushed as far as they can without breaking. Mello knows Near is not talking about their exams, but of their lives in general.
"Hm," Near hums when it becomes clear that silence is Mello's answer.
The note is bleached of resentment or frustration. Apparently the thought that Wammy's would not hesitate drive them into the ground just to see if they'd keep running and throw them out if they don't is a new realization for the eight-year-old, but not one that strikes him as unjust. Mello wonders if this frictionless acceptance is part of why Near doesn't struggle like he does, and spirals ping over his vision and he leaves the room with his jaws clenched, goes to his room and turns out the lights.