Hopefully it makes at least a teeny bit of sense.
Death Note and all characters therein are Ohba-san's and Obata-san's, not mine.
Onward!
Since day one, they've had a pattern.
It's hard to pick up on it unless you know how they circle each other mentally even when they stand and sit like statues in the same room.
But it's there.
Near does something and Mello tries to best him. Mello fails, inevitably, and lays down a punishment in the form of words or, later, erratic lines drawn on skin with his nails and his tongue. Near is too proud to put down the guise of rivalry, and Mello too drowned in self-denial to notice that the frantic pulling at his hair isn't in protest.
They need each other, and he knows it.
Mello knows it and it burns him, because he knows that however much he can overpower Near physically – and oh, how he could – Near, Near would always be thinking one step ahead.
But thinking, just like throwing a punch or stumbling slightly, was a process rather easily interrupted.
He valued these moments, this part of their cycle where he could deprive Near of the one advantage he had.
Mouth to cheek and there's a silent tug on his wrist, childish hand-holding.
Lip to lip and there's a blush now, oddly faint against too-pale skin.
Tongue to jaw and there's a whimper, small frame standing on tip-toes.
Slim hands clamp around his wrists, and buttons pop open.
A whisper of something that means nothing but a breath against trembling lips, mouth pink against the white skin standing in awkward contrast to his tan, his scars, lipstick and nail polish and steel-toed boots.
Thinking doesn't matter here, because logic has nothing to do with instinct.
Painted nails against silver-white hair; the slightest pull and Near goes limp, clinging and dependent like he'd never dare to be otherwise. Stoic and calm and thoughtful, and in Mello's hands he collapsed, a crumbled mess, a blushing, crying child with his arms wrapped around his lover's neck.
If only for a moment then Mello knew he had power, he was better, and he dared to feel the thrill of such a pretty, plastic victory.
In the morning he always woke up first and he felt it, how empty it was, but Near was still asleep and he knew he still had a while before the curled and slumbering child became his enemy again in waking.
Those blue eyes weren't cold when they were closed.
They have a pattern that's almost a dance. Circle each other on the field of battle, turn to thrash and tangle in hair and sheets like fingers and legs. They go their separate ways and four years later the magnets wake up again, polarity shoving them together like teachers at the orphanage and the corpse they both strive to surpass.
A single word pulled them together and pushed them apart, and it was all that kept each other's names locked in their throats even after the sheets were irreversibly stained.
Domination.
Rivalry boils down to a salt made of denial and pride, and the only time its not pouring into the wounds is when they think about it.
The SPK members wonder but don't dare to ask the next morning when Near has bite marks standing out pink on his neck, and they probably would have done the same had they seen him with the dog collar the night before, handcuffs at three in the morning, bruises at five. They might have inquired about Mello had they seen him, but certainly not about how his nails – neon orange, ugly painted – dug into his palms, knowing that those pale and treacherously blind blue eyes were back to thinking.
Luckily, their pattern didn't involve wondering if that old corpse was rolling in his grave, an insomniac puppeteer with a headstone reading nothing but silence, and perhaps if they'd been bold:
Here lies justice.
Sometimes, they thought it did.
It's too much fun comparing Near to a little kid. He's too cuddly and small for his own good.
-wants to pet his hair-
Mmn, do let's review, shall we?
- Ashley