NOTE: mild bloodplay and mentions of underage (and violent) sex ahead, just so we're all aware.
There was a lot that Mello didn't know about Near until they they were alone between two sheets. Or against a wall. Or on the floor. Whatever worked, really. Neither of them minded burns or bruises from uncomfortable positions. Mello liked it rough and Near was a sexual enigma who liked certain things on certain days, but not on others. It seemed to depend highly upon whatever his mood was at the moment.
Some days, Near wanted domination. He wanted to be tied up, blindfolded, completely immobilized – the works. He wanted to feel completely powerless, defeated somehow, and Mello had a hard time figuring out why at times. He liked to attribute it to his dependence on constant control and his fear of losing it. In that respect, Near was like L. He behaved like a leader but seemed unfit to be one. An alpha dog without the following of a pack to back him up. He had poor posture, was terribly annoyed by being lonesome and yet kept everyone at an arms length, and never seemed to grow out of his already lengthy childhood.
Still, he was a legal adult and when he hissed that Mello should – would – hold him down and fuck him into the carpet, Mello had no reason to complain.
It was just that sometimes Near revealed a side of himself that was a few steps too far across the line dividing a genius and a sociopath. Mello wondered if that was how L felt when he was handling the Kira case, seeing flashes of a monster behind passive eyes but being helpless to combat it. Light Yagami was a beautiful boy, ill-conceived as he was, and he struck Mello as L's sole rival. When he was executed, he used to wonder what L felt. He wondered after if he would have felt anything, or if he just locked all his emotions away and refused to deal with them ever again. He pondered whether Light Yagami ruined L or improved upon him, and he found that he couldn't decide.
Near was different though. He wasn't a pestilence upon humankind who preyed on the criminals serving time behind bars. He wasn't like Kira and he had voiced his disgust on Kira's ideals on a number of different occasions. Although, Mello often thought with a wry sneer, the only true difference was the manner of their upbringing.
Where Light Yagami had a family, support, two parents who loved him and a sister who idolized him, Near had an orphanage, a history of parents who wanted nothing to do with him, and a lonely existence characterized only by his one-sided rivalry with Mello. There were things about Near that suggested a history of abuse, long term trauma that had the potential to fuck anyone's head up, but his keen intelligence turned his quirks into the 'enigma of a genius' and was thusly ignored. Overlooked by people who should have seen it, and perceived by people who wanted nothing to do with it.
Of course, Mello supposed he wouldn't have seen the vaguely deranged gleam in Near's eyes if they hadn't started fooling around.
It stared a long time ago, back when they were attending Wammy's. Mello discovered that on some days, Near liked pain. He sometimes enjoyed being verbally abused and challenged on an intellectual level. He liked it when Mello made him work to come up with a reasonable comeback, or to invent one that was more creative. He told Mello to hit him sometimes, or slap him or strangle him, or make him bleed. It was a relief, he explained upon Mello's request.
Mello didn't really get it back then, but he liked it. Pushing Near down, sitting on his chest and pinning his arms with his knees, strangling him till he turned blue and then letting him scramble to force oxygen into his lungs – it was all sick but it felt so fulfilling. Near preferred not to bleed most times, because it stained his clothes and would require an explanation, but sometimes he liked it when Mello slid a knife down his chest or arms or legs and left little winding slits in his skin. Slight enough that the cuts would heal seamlessly, but deep enough that Near would squirm below him.
When it came to anything sexual, though, Near took charge. He let Mello sit on top of his hips, allowing him a comfortable illusion of dominance, and then slipped his hands into Mello's pants and up his shirt. He liked to be rough and knew that Mello got off on it, but he was never so inconsiderate that he made Mello uneasy. Not so early on, anyway. He squeezed hard enough to bruise, bit deep enough make him bleed, left more scratches on his back than Mello could count, but it always felt impossibly good.
'Like eating a chocolate bar, it's that good,' Mello once assured him.
The first time Mello saw the remorseless gleam in Near's eyes, it was when he let Near hold him down and scratch his name into flesh below Mello's collarbone. He had been normal all day but the moment Mello said he could make him bleed, Near's eyes darkened with an emotion both ineffable and frightening. When he pinned Mello to the bed, an arm draped over his neck like a quiet threat, Near looked eager. When he ducked down to drag his teeth across the pale expanse of Mello's jugular, he was smiling. When he came back up with a smear of blood on his lips, he looked jubilant and hungry in ways Mello had never witnessed before.
Then he used his fingernails, short but sharp, to scratch his name into Mello's skin. He worked away until the lines of the letters were beaded with blood and bits of pale skin stuck under the bed of his nails. There was something uniquely deranged about the way he sighed then, looking down at Mello with his eyes half closed in the dim light.
'You're fucked up, Near.' Mello remembered whispering, awed by the positively sadistic way Near glowed at his handiwork. The wounds weren't at all deep, just bloody and warm, but it was enough to get the little freak's rocks off.
'You liked it.' He could clearly remember the smugness in Near's adolescent voice, and also being enraged by it. When he dragged the boy in to strangle him and kiss him, Near groaned appreciatively into his mouth.
He can remember the redness of Near's lips contrasting his smooth, pale skin the best. He can remember it because it directly preceded the taste of his own blood, the way it smeared on his own lips and how Near's eyes traced it all night, and because that was the night they both lost their virginity.
That was when Near was eleven and Mello was twelve.
The two of them often contemplated that they were very sick as kids, and then realized they hadn't changed at all at nineteen and twenty. Not a single thing had changed, not even since they escaped Wammy's and became their own detectives instead of hiding under L's wing. They were still his heirs, his would-be successors, but L was alive and had no need of them because he worked alone. Near once theorized that L was apt to be insulted by their existence ('he likely expects he doesn't need successors' Near explained), but also rather fond of them all the same for having a similar innate cruelty and unbiased disregard for the world.
'He must like murderers,' Mello commented after one of Near's spiels on L's personality.
'I think he rather does.' Near replied, with a hint of knowing amusement. He wondered then what Near thought of L's relationship with Kira, the impossibly beautiful mass murderer who all but changed the world, and then thought better of asking. He didn't care to know because if Near was thinking it too, it would confirm Mello's suspicions.
At nineteen, Near was not so different from the way he was at eleven. He liked to play with robots, and puppets, and he still stacked dice into towers that architects would marvel at. He sat like he always did, with a knee drawn up to his chest and the other sprawled out on the floor, and he still rarely smiled. When he did, it was the same self-satisfied smirk that Mello was so well acquainted with.
He also still cheated at cards.
Near's personality had undergone some revolution though, and it showed in the way he stood up straight when he walked and became marginally more independent by way of not needing someone to take care of him at all times. He still hated doing things that he could have an agent do for him just as easily, but it was more like he did it because he had the option and not because he would be hopeless if no one was waiting on him. Mello privately speculated that Near did so because he wanted to be seen less like another L, a figure which Near had deemed respectable but too easily swayed by other 'people', who had always been extremely dependent on Watari.
That change in personality manifested itself in a number of ways, but for Mello it revolved around his behaviour when they fucked. Some days, Near liked to be dominated. Lately, he liked to dominate. The way he clenched Mello's slim wrists and refused to let them off the mattress, or how he made it all slow and sensual when he knew Mello wanted it hard and fast. He did it to be a brat and to flaunt his power over Mello in that situation, he was sure, but it also felt incredible. Near meant it to feel good and frustrating at the same time, and he was an expert at frustrating Mello in a number of ways beyond the realm of sexuality.
It still amazed him that Near was capable of mentally disarming him like he did in that mindset. He could keep Mello's conscience out of his head by keeping his body occupied between his two hands. And he did it all seamlessly, having known Mello's body for years and years – longer than anyone else in the entire expanse of people Mello knew. Matt was a close second, but Near still knew his reactions better. When he wanted something of Mello, he got it, if only because he could manipulate his body like he was one of those toy robots present where ever Near ventured.
He was six inches shorter, weightless in comparison and all bones, but his presence was indomitable when he got like that. Mello found it both incredibly hot and a little unsettling. Although if he was honest with himself, the way Near unnerved him was a turn-on of its own kind because there wasn't a whole hell of a lot that discomposed him like that. Not after making friends out of a mafia, or having known the seedier halves of the world since his birth to a poor family, and certainly not after witnessing the worldwide mass murders of Kira.
Yet Near could still throw him off, and he made it seem easy.
Not for the first time, Mello found himself struggling to keep up. He found ways to catch Near off his guard, but those times were few, far between, and nothing compared to the creative ways Near came up with to knock Mello down a few pegs. Where there was a will there was always a way, at least in Mello's case, and so he poured all his efforts into decoding Near's emotion and discovering that Near was most open during sex.
Mello found that both typical and ironic, but Near's facial expressions when he had a cock up his ass were vast and revealing compared to those he wore during everyday life. He also became much quicker at reading Near's emotions, a discovery that both frustrated and perplexed the younger genius to no end, all to Mello's well-earned amusement.
It was a mode of cheating, but Near was an inherent cheater on his own so Mello disregarded that fact. Two could play the game Near had created, and he was inviting Mello to join in every time his expression varied from his default blank-stare to something darker, and more wanting. So, never one to turn down a challenge, Mello played.
He figured it was a game they would explore for years and years to come, until one of them finally died on a case or they killed each other. Somehow, Mello found the latter much more likely than the former. And if he ever asked Near, he was overwhelmingly positive that the little brat would agree with him.
a/n: endings? what are endings?