Hello my children. Jk, I don't think I could handle a million fangirls/fanboys as children. Too many broken little shipper hearts. Anyway, I'm back with another Death Note story, once again focusing around Near and Mello, because why the fuck not? Also, Near refers to someone whose name he doesn't know as "Angry-Eyes", so try your very hardest not to picture Mr. Potato-Head from Toy Story. Or do. Whatever makes you happy. On with the story.
P.S. Don't tell me that eight-year-old Near would not freak out from missing the bus, because my fourteen-year-old sister cried when she did. It's fucking terrifying.
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note, but if I did there would be more sassy-Near because I feel like Near doesn't show enough of his inner sass.
Near needed to find his brother. Mello was somewhere in the building, at a meeting for a club of his, and Near actually felt like he was going to throw up if he didn't find him. He didn't think missing the bus could be so scary, but as a fourth-grader with no access to a cellphone, he realized just how much it could scare someone.
Now, he should have gone to the main office. It would have been the more rational option. But at that moment, he just wanted a familiar face. He'd known Mello longer than he'd known anyone else, and he was just about the only person he knew at that school, aside from Matt, but the redhead had already left. He hadn't been stupid enough to miss the bus.
So Near traversed the halls of the older kids' wing, walking down them like he'd been there a million times before. Which, in a sense, he had. The upper and lower wings were modeled in much the same fashion. But Near had no idea which classroom the twelve-year-old would be in.
It was on his journey through his fifth hallway that Near encountered a few older kids he thought he recognized. They were some kids that Mello often hung out with. Near thought that maybe they could help. They had to know where their friend was.
"Uh, ex-excuse me." Near tapped the closest one on the arm: a tall, brutish-looking boy with dark hair and angry eyes.
"What do you want, twerp?" he asked in a gruff voice.
"Do you know where Mello is?" Near's unwavering tone belied the unease and fear he felt in the pit of his stomach. He really just wanted to find Mello.
"Who wants to know?" a second boy asked, this one smaller and svelte, but intimidating all the same.
"I-uh-I'm his br-his friend. I'm his friend. I just need to find him," Near lied. Mello had made it clear that he didn't want anyone knowing they were brothers, which was easy enough to keep hidden, considering they'd both been adopted and looked nothing alike.
"His friend, huh?" the last one questioned with an accent that Near was certain belonged to the country of Australia, "What's Mello need a friend like you for?"
Near shrugged, unable to formulate an excuse in his frightened mind. He didn't like these kids, couldn't understand why Mello would ever hang out with people like this. They looked at him like he was a piece of meat that they couldn't wait to sink their claws into.
"You wanna know what I think?" the Australian one continued, "I think you're a liar, mate."
Near shook his head. He wasn't lying, not really. He and Mello may not have gotten along very well, but they were kind of friends. Near would like to think so, anyway. He thought they were definitely more of friends than Mello and these guys were, or at least should have been.
The one with the eyes that spoke of wrath stepped forward, and Near hoped that he imagined the bloodlust in his casual smirk, "We don't much like liars. Mello neither."
Near shook as he spoke, "I-I'm not lying. He-he's my brother."
He was beyond worrying about Mello's reaction to people finding out they were brothers. It didn't seem to matter, though. They just laughed, except for Angry-Eyes. Near didn't think he knew how to laugh.
"That's even less believable," Small-Svelte said, "You look nothing like him. You look way weirder."
It was true, they looked nothing alike and Near, with his white hair and extremely pale skin, appeared strange compared to most. But when Near tried to explain that it was because they weren't related by blood, he just sort of squeaked. This amused Small-Svelte and Australia even more. Angry-Eyes just got, well, more angry.
"Listen, pipsqueak," he said, stepping up in Near's face, "I don't like people who lie, and I like 'em even less when they lie about lying."
Now, Near was generally a very calm and collected person, especially for a kid his age. But at that moment, what with missing the bus and being unable to find Mello, and now being threatened by an older boy at least twice his size, Near just didn't know what to do, he couldn't even think. And so what did he do? He cried.
He looked at that enraged boy, with his narrowed eyes and bared teeth, and just burst into tears. He had never felt so humiliated as he did just then, reduced to tears like any other snot-nosed kid his age, but he couldn't help it.
"M-M-Mello!" Near sobbed out. Where was the blond? He just wanted his brother, "Me-Mello!"
Angry-Eyes advanced, and he smacked him so hard he fell to the floor. Near felt terrified. He'd never been struck out of anger before by anyone else aside from Mello, and he never felt like his life was threatened in any of those circumstances. Why would Mello ever be friends with these horrible people?
"Me-ello! M-M-Mello!" Near scooted back against the wall. He didn't know what else he was supposed to do. He was too weak to fight even the smallest of them. He couldn't do anything.
"Guys, I-" Mello walked around the corner then, arms full of supplies for something, but he stopped short when he spotted Near.
Near sobbed in relief and would have pushed past the boys in front of him if he were able. Instead he just settled on shouting, "M-Mello!"
There was a short pause before Mello spoke.
"What the hell are you doing?" Mello sounded dangerous then, and Near didn't know why, but for a heart-stopping moment he thought Mello was talking to him. It made no sense, obviously, but Near's mind was very all over the place and confused at that point.
"Get away from him! Now!" Mello snarled, and the other boys were right to take a step in the opposite direction. Mello may have been smaller than all of them, but when made mad, there was no one who he couldn't literally tear to pieces.
Mello stomped forward, supplies dropped to the floor somewhere along the way, and grabbed Angry-Eyes by the collar of his shirt, yanking him down to eye-level, "You had better run and never look back, because if I see you – any of you – anywhere near my brother again, I'll dismember you all and leave your bodies in a ditch somewhere to be stumbled across. Got it?"
Angry-Eyes, whose eyes now looked more filled with fear than anything else, nodded his head and turned to flee after his companions, who had already left. He turned to glance at Near, curled up in a ball crying, before he disappeared around a turn, but the white-haired boy couldn't read much of his expression in the short amount of time he could see his face.
And then, his attention was back on Mello, because he'd finally found him and now that he had, everything would be fine. Mello would know what to do, he'd fix everything.
Near sniffled and mumbled, "Mello," before reaching up with his arms like he used to do as a toddler to be picked up. He was probably still small enough for the slight twelve-year-old to hold him.
Mello obliged, bending down to pick Near up and wrap him in an embrace. He rarely received hugs from Mello, so he hugged back with all his might.
"What are you still doing here, Near?"
"I-I missed the bus, an-and I didn't kn-know what to do. I thought that- I thought they'd know where you were, they knew you, b-but they didn't wanna tell me because I told them I was your friend, 'cause I know how you feel about me telling people at school that we're related, and they didn't believe me and when I said I was your brother, they didn't believe me even more because we look nothing alike and-and- Mello, I just wanna go home!"
"You're such a baby, Near," Mello said with a shake of his head, but the blond hugged him even tighter, so Near figured he didn't mean it, "I'll go to the main office to call home and tell them to come pick you up."
Mello moved to set him down, but Near refused, because he had just found him and he was not going to lose him again in this confusing part of the building that maybe wasn't so much like the elementary wing that he knew so well.
The blond just sighed and carried Near with him to the main office, where he proceeded to tell the receptionist there that Near had missed the bus and they needed to call their parents, if not to get them to come pick him up then to at least notify them that Near was okay.
So she let them in, and they sat in the plastic blue chairs that took up one wall of the small outer office while they waited for her to get someone to call for them because she was too busy to herself, despite the fact that she was wasting just as much time finding someone else to dump them on. And really, they only took up one chair, because Near was still refusing to let go and Mello was in no rush to push him away, so the little boy just sort of curled up awkwardly in his brother's lap and wiped drying tears from his cheeks before they could stain his pale skin, which had now turned a light red from the effort he had exerted when crying.
When the receptionist finally returned with someone, another woman who wore a pantsuit and dark high heels, Mello asked from his position in his chair if they would please hurry the hell up and get him a phone already. Near thought the only reason they ignored Mello's inappropriate language was because there was what looked like an upset five-year-old shaking in his lap.
So the lady in the pantsuit led Mello to another room that held a phone and handed it to him after dialing the number he told her. Mello had to set Near down in a chair before he could take the phone, and Near reluctantly agreed because he knew there was no other option, and also because Mello kneeled in front of him and held his gaze while he talked to the person on the other end of the line.
When the conversation ended with the conclusion that their parents would come get Near right away, and when the woman left the room to attend to other business, Mello looked Near in the eye with an amount of seriousness that Near had never seen in his brother before and asked, "Did they hurt you? Did they do anything at all?"
Near hesitated a moment before saying, "The- uh, the angry one hit me just once. That was all."
"Are you hurt?"
"My-my neck hurts a little. He hits really hard, I think I have whiplash. And my cheek stings."
Mello gently turned Near's face to the side to examine his reddening cheek. The movement hurt Near's neck a bit, but he didn't complain. It was a relatively unimportant injury in comparison to what he could have received.
"I'll kick their asses, see how they like it," Mello growled.
"It's okay. And I don't think they'll try it again. They looked pretty sure you'd carry out your threat if they did," Near said.
"I know. Just in case."
It was silent for a few beats before, "I'm sorry."
"What?" Mello looked surprised at the apology.
"They were your friends, weren't they?" Near asked. He had thought they were.
"Yeah, sort of," Mello replied.
"Then I'm sorry that they're not anymore because of me."
"Oh, shut up." Mello rolled his eyes, "For a kid that's skipped two grades, you sure are dumb. I didn't like them that much, we just hung out. But I'm not gonna hang out with some assholes that pick on my brother. So don't worry about it, they're jerks."
"Okay," Near responded quietly, then, "Are you coming home with us when they get here?"
Mello stared at Near a moment, presumably trying to gauge the meaning of his question, before sighing and saying, "I guess I'll have to. It'd be sort of rude of me to ask them to drive back down here in an hour just to bring me home. I could always make up for what I miss next week, anyway."
Near knew then that Mello was a liar. He knew just as well as Near that their parents wouldn't have minded, they were so easy-going. At that moment, Near thought about how there were a lot of people that thought Mello didn't care about anyone but himself, but he knew it wasn't true. Mello had his own subtle ways of being nice. Near decided he'd let Mello think they still went unnoticed.
"Okay," he said again, but less like he was terrified of the world and more like he'd just won the lottery.
When their parents came to pick them up, it was quite the sight. A bedraggled young man who looked like he seldom saw sleep and his usually well-kempt spouse now looking closer in appearance to the other than anything else, both frantically proclaiming how they'd thought that something terrible had happened when he hadn't exited the bus as it stopped at there house and fawning over him like he'd had a near-death experience.
As they drove home – Near situated in the backseat with Mello, who played it off as if nothing had ever happened that would even suggest he held any sort of endearment for the snowy-haired boy – Near thought about how he'd first seen the yellow end of the school bus pulling out of the school parking lot without him and swore to himself that he never wanted to miss the bus again. Now, he thought that maybe he wouldn't mind all that much if he missed the bus a second time, if only because Mello would be there to make everything okay again.
Near was sure that Mello would say it was a dumb thing to think, but at the time he was just content in believing that his brother would always be there to get him out of any trouble he found himself in. Near was sure Mello would say that that was a dumb thing to think too.