These characters aren't mine. And that's pretty much all there is to say on this subject.
Episode.07: -FIGHT- (Whiteout)
Writhing in agony, the creature wrapped its right arm behind its back and grabbed its leg, which was also bent in an awkward angle. "Of all the things to serve..." it groaned to its human companion, "an apple pie...and just when your mother needs to go grocery shopping...was it good?"
Closing his notebook and tapping his pen against the cover, the young man smiled to himself. "Not really. But it was worth it." Carelessly he knocked over the stack of books lying on the corner of his desk and smirked as they tumbled to the ground. "Soon, Ryuk, you'll see the greatest act of the drama yet. The curtain goes up tomorrow, in fact."
"If I make it until tomorrow..." Lather had begun to build up between the creature's jagged teeth. "What happens then?"
"Weren't you listening?" The young man straightened his tie professionally and went about picking up the scattered volumes. "I have a job interview. With a small group of people in charge of a very, very important case."
"You are a rotten person." The words were given with no hint of malice; in fact, the creature's voice was tinged with respect and awe. "By what I've seen of human standards, at least. To me it's all the same."
"Rotten?" The boy's brow quirked but soon smoothed out. "That's unlike you, Ryuk." He sighed. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I really am nothing but, deep down, a twisted optimist with a sick dream. A rotten person." A slight tug on the corners of his mouth betrayed he hadn't really considered the option. "But...I'm a very efficient god."
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Mello dragged a struggling but listless Clair down three blocks and up to a three-story apartment building, which given the glamorous surroundings was actually quite small and unkempt. As the blond switched on the lights in one of the second-floor apartments, he kicked a pair of muddy boots out of the doorway and held the door open for his guest. "It's not much, but it keeps out the rain," he said almost shyly as Clair stared at the disaster area before him.
"If you're this lazy, get a maid," Clair sniffed, eyeing the piles of dirty dishes on nearly every tabletop and wrinkling his nose at the half-full ashtrays Matt had left lying around. "You've got to have the money."
"I would have the money if it weren't for all that techno junk we need for the case," Mello corrected, kicking the door shut behind him and clearing a space on the sofa for Clair to sit down. "Iwanami wasn't living high on the hog himself, just pretending to and getting crazy in debt. Besides, the idea of some total nobody going through my stuff creeps me out. Whole damn servant system does, in fact."
Though uncomfortable with the idea of associating with anything with zebra stripes, Clair's tiredness won out over his good taste and he collapsed onto Mello's garish sofa. "This doesn't mean anything," he warned the other boy, wrapping a blanket around his shivering shoulders. "As soon as I dry off I'm calling Giovanni and going straight home."
"I haven't got a washer or a dryer. You're stuck with me overnight. We can open the oven and place your stuff near it to dry faster if you like, but that'll heat up the whole damn place."
"You don't have a..." The thought was alien to Clair. Mello grinned.
"Hell, half my stuff's hand-wash only and Matt never bothers with his own. To him, 'clean' means 'inside-out'."
Come to think of it, the apartment did smell pretty bad. Clair made a mental note to train Matt in the proper art of attiring oneself at his earliest possible convenience. Chilled, he pulled the blanket tighter. "Get me some wine," he ordered Mello. "Red if you have it."
"No brain-altering anything in the house while I've got a case, sorry. Caffeine being the only notable exception. I even make Matt smoke on the porch most of the time. But I can make you a hot drink."
"What do you have?" Accepting charity from anyone, especially Mello, was unthinkable... but it couldn't hurt to ask.
Mello walked into the kitchen and poked his head in a cabinet. "Dark hot chocolate, milk hot chocolate, mocha hot chocolate, hot chocolate with marshmallows in the little packet, Swiss hot chocolate..."
Clair shouldn't have asked. "I'll pass."
"You sure? The Swiss is damn good for a powder mix. Silky." Mello filled a teakettle and placed it on the stove to heat, then wandered through the living area and into an adjacent hallway. He emerged with a pile of clothing, which he tossed at Clair. "Here you go. Stop dripping on my couch."
"I'm fine," Clair insisted, but his words were negated by the furious sneeze following them. Grumpily, he stalked to the bathroom and emerged a few minutes later in black sweatpants and a thermal.
Looking up from where he was dumping two packets of hot chocolate mix into only one mug, Mello whistled. "I think I like you wet."
Embarrassed, Clair looked down and saw that his shirt was still sticking to himself, outlining the faint contours of his chest and stomach muscles. "Take these," he replied brusquely, shoving his wet suit at Mello. The boy spread the garments out on the kitchen counter and grinned.
"So...where's your underwear?"
"I'm going to bed," Clair snapped; although he had no intentions of actually sleeping, he wanted to continue his earlier sulk and just couldn't do it on a zebra background. "Where is it? And if I hear you come within twenty feet of the door, you are not only off the Kira case, but every headhunter in the city will be after you. But I won't order them to kill you." He tried to smile cockily but barely had the strength to stand. "That pleasure I'll save for myself."
"Second door on your right. Throw anything that might be on the bed onto the floor." Mello strolled over to Clair, tilted the young don's head up coyly with one finger. "You sure you don't want me to find some other way to warm you up?"
Clair's lashes fluttered, but he knocked Mello's hand aside and glared at him venomously. "We had an agreement," he reminded his inferior. "If you forget your end, I might forget mine, too." He disappeared down the hallway, leaving Mello smiling cattily in his wake.
"You're coming around, Vampire," he murmured softly to the closed bedroom door, taking a sip of his double-strength cocoa and scowling as it burned his tongue. "I'll honor your stubborn phase. But it won't last long."
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
There were some ideas, Kyoko reflected, that really sounded much better at first than upon execution. Tattoos, for the most part, fell into that category for her. So did kissing on a first date and buying a pet. And now she had something new to add to the list.
Bringing people in to meet Near.
"This is the second person in three days," the boy hissed to her as their guest waited politely in the hall, having been expelled by Near shortly after entering in the first place. "Are you really trying to have me killed?"
"The first person was my mother," Kyoko shot back. "And if you're even coming close to suggesting Light Yagami is a threat to your safety--"
"Even you are a threat to my safety," Near shot back. "I have not ruled out the possibility of your being Kira, though given your abysmally idiotic behavior I doubt it. But a total stranger is a blank slate!"
She'd never seen the boy express actual emotions, which made his anger all the more frightening. "What should we do now, then?" she asked, pragmatic to the end and wanting to steer the conversation away from her ineptitude. It would be pointless, she knew, to explain to Near the strange turns the night had taken, how Light had so thoroughly charmed her entire family to the point where, as Light and her father batted Kira theories back and forth across the kitchen table long after the apple pie had been cleared away, the subject of Light's perhaps joining the Special Unit had arisen. Instantly both of her parents and her grandfather had backed the idea and coerced a bashful Light to admit that actually, there was nothing he'd like better.
Near sighed and withdrew again to his usual, if still a bit sullen, self. "I suppose I should interview the boy to determine his intelligence and likelihood of being Kira himself," he conceded. "Now that he has seen my face, there seems to be no further harm posed in investigating him in more detail. But what you have done is very, very stupid. The only saving grace I see in this situation is that, if I die, there shall only be three suspects. Yes, I suspect even your mother, so stop gawking and exchange places with your friend outside the door. This should not take very long. In two or three hours I shall have my answer for you. Until then, good day."
Rattled, Kyoko nodded. "O-okay." Backing to the door, it opened automatically and Light looked up from where he stood leaning against the wall, reading one of the army books. "Near wants to talk to you," she informed him, hoping her blush from being rightfully scolded had faded sufficiently. "Good luck."
"I need luck?" he asked with a small smile, which she could not return.
"It's Near," she told him wearily. "If you're going to end up working with him...you'd better get used to it sooner rather than later."
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Draining the dregs from his third cocoa of the night, Mello sat on the couch and stared blindly at the papers in his hands. Over and over again he'd tried to sort through all the victims and possible victims, and he knew he'd seen a pattern only the previous day, but he just couldn't stay focused to follow it through. Goddamn it all.
At this rate, he figured, Near would breeze through the case miles ahead of him, given the younger boy's own connections. What did Near need with connections? The damn kid was practically a robot himself. You put data in, you got a solution out. How could a person compete with that—a lone, determined, but distractable person?
He must have sounded like such an idiot, babbling on about how he had all these rules when he was on a case. Yes, Mello disciplined himself very thoroughly—he had since even before going to the orphanage and discovering maybe he wasn't so special after all, that being a big fish in a big pond was tantamount to being a nobody—but there were still factors he couldn't predict, opportunities that might arise. Decisions he might have made which he half-regretted.
Clair's clothes, lying next to the open oven, had finally dried out; walking over, Mello turned off the appliance and carefully folded the garments into a neat pile, pausing to hold the shirt close to his face. Smiling, he carried it back to the sofa with him and sat down again. It still carried traces of the boy's cologne, the way he went to great lengths to smell like nothing while acting like he owned the world. Mello came from a sensory world, did not live life so much as taste it, an explosion of chocolate or blood or sweat on his tongue, and the harsh sterility of Clair's environment had almost intimidated him at first. Here was no Iwanami, ordering that drugs be shipped to the lowest slums while feeding koi in a pond; this was the real deal, the upper crust. Mello had spent most of his life hating the upper crust, legal or illegal, because as far as he could tell they'd never had to earn their positions. Being born number one when better men killed each other over bread on the streets seemed the greatest unfairness a world could pose.
Of course, Clair had been different than that; Clair was different in so many ways, and any kind of new experience intrigued Mello. For the millionth time his eyes flicked to and away from the hallway, his leg muscles tensed as if to stand and walk over, but he forced himself to remain where he was. It was better for both of them this way; he'd won a victory already by being able to claim Clair Leonelli had spent the night in his apartment. And it would be better for the case if he regained some of the trust which he had so foolishly forfeited.
The boy who went by the name Nate River may not have been number one, but he was no fool. His mind had warned him that it had been too soon, that Vampire was dangerous, that it was bad enough that he'd adopted a familiar tone on the first day without kissing the blasted child the second. Near, if Near could feel emotions (which Mello sometimes doubted), would have certainly repressed his attraction and remained at a civil distance. But it wasn't in Mello's nature to remain either civil or at a distance. What he wanted, he took, and he took immediately.
Fretting at a thumbnail, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to see a relief image of Clair wrapped in blankets two rooms down, peaceful and lovely, his small mouth with that godawful gorgeous ring through it slightly open in sleep. From when Mello had first set eyes on the don, he'd found him to be fragile, delicate, yet somehow unyielding. Even when he'd kissed the boy and Clair had—whether or not the young chairman would acknowledge it—kissed him back, that had been no coerced or accommodating kiss. Clair had sought to overpower, to dominate, crushing himself against Mello with such fervor that had the blond not been used to intense situations he might have fallen over. No, there was precious little weakness in Clair Leonelli that wasn't also tempered with iron.
But this was the wrong time, this was the wrong place, he never meant for those honeyed words to come spilling out of his mouth, he never intended to try and stroke the boy's feathery hair; yet Mello was only human, and humans were susceptible to temptation, especially when they lived in the moment like he did. He tried to tell himself that if he had the power to change emotions he would stomp Clair out of his mind or—at the very least—postpone the chase until after Kira was caught. But he also could not deny that were all of his options truly open, he would be hanging onto the boy for dear life.
Or...no, no, that wouldn't be the best possible scenario. Mello gnawed at his thumb a little harder. What he really wanted was for Clair to come to him of his own accord, for Clair to draw him into his arms and rest his head on Mello's shoulders, to conquer and yet surrender since it was what Mello had wanted all along...Mello had never let anyone else get the better of him before and if anyone could do it in a way he'd enjoy, it would be Clair...
Oh hell, just looking in the damn room wouldn't hurt anything. Standing in sudden resolution, Mello tossed Clair's dry shirt down onto the sofa and swaggered down the hall, breath held in tightly in anticipation and secrecy. There was no reason to be nervous. Mello did not get nervous. Reaching out a hand, he turned the knob and opened the door.
He could barely make out the sleeping boy's silhouette at first, but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he made his way to the side of the bed and stared down, smiling. It couldn't have been more perfect even in his imagination: Clair pouted in his sleep. Mello fought back the urge to bend down and kiss the young man's furrowed brow.
"What are you dreaming about, Vampire?" he whispered, barely even giving breath to his words. "Are you thinking of me?" Courage growing by the minute—not, Mello reminded himself, that he had ever been afraid to begin with; after all, he had been in charge of this thing from the beginning—he lifted one of Clair's pale hands and stroked it gently, feeling the hard lump of the ring the boy always wore under his fingers.
Bending the hand up, he noticed the purple nail polish. "Oh, what's this?" he mouthed, enjoying his one-sided conversation. "You're still pretty for me. I like that." Leaning over carefully, he kissed the youth's hand gently.
Limp fingers suddenly contracted. "Caught you," Clair accused, his eyes snapping open and pulling his other hand out from under the covers. A clicking sound, and Mello found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun; too late he noticed the open bedside table drawer and cursed his oversight.
Still, he kept his lips on Clair's hand for a moment longer, drawing back but not yanking his own hand away. "Now what?" he asked, unable to keep a grin off his face that felt, if anything, even better than the adoring little smile he'd worn upon seeing that pout. Yes, Clair Leonelli was definitely one to watch. This was good, this was excellent, this was what he'd been looking for. His life had gotten too predictable of late, and this amazing child—Mello was nearly a year younger than the don, but he could not help considering him a child—was just the person to spice it back up for him.
Clair sat up, pulling Mello close to him and grinding the gun into the blond's forehead; for his part, Mello barely blinked or winced as the hard metal circle pressed into his skull. "I thought you might come looking," the don said in a low voice, rotating his wrist so the gun dug even further, "but I should have known you wouldn't have the self-control to leave it at that. Animals like you—trash who can't even maintain human decency or keep a promise—if you can't rule yourself, how will you rule others? I told you before I don't suffer idiots. And this was supremely idiotic."
"You haven't gotten any sleep, then?" Mello tsked, shaking his head slightly despite the pressure from the gun barrel. "However will you handle your busy day tomorrow?"
Clair's face darkened in suspicion. "Do you honestly think I'm enough of a fool to sleep with you around?"
"If you can't trust me, then I can't trust you," Mello countered, rotating his hips so he ended up perched on the mattress. A plan had begun to form in his mind that agreed with him immensely; if properly executed, it would return Vampire-employee relations to civility as well as teaching the spoiled boy something of the world he believed he ruled. First things first, however. "Though if you're going to be up all night anyway..." he began to suggest.
Eyes widening, Clair's finger tightened on the trigger; his gritted mouth stretched wildly.
Laughing, Mello snapped his hand free from Clair's fingers and, wringing it out, backed to the door. "Very good, Vampire. I kid. But I would suggest closing your eyes sometime tonight, since I'm going to need you to run a few little errands for me while you're in the area. Nothing special, just a little coercive negotiation. There might even be fireworks. I hear you like them."
Glowering, Clair sunk under the covers but kept the gun peeking out. "You are taking me to my house tomorrow," he informed Mello. "Do you have any idea how many men must be combing the city looking for me by now?"
"That's taken care of easily enough." Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, Mello switched it on; he hadn't bothered after hanging up on Matt the previous night. "Look at that. Five messages, and they're all from Matt. I wonder why?" Dialing, he held the phone to his ear. "Yo. Hey, talk slower. No, it's cool. I've got him." A chuckle rolled off his lips. "Well, well, wouldn't you like to know?"
"I'm a very good shot," Clair threatened from where he lay.
"I'm sure you are, dear. No, not you. I'd never call you 'dear.' He's trying to talk to me while I'm talking to you, which is very rude, by the way." Mello gave Clair a sidelong look, then turned his attention back to the phone. "Nah, I'm listening. I know. But I'm borrowing him for the case tomorrow. No, he's fine with it..."
"Give me that!" Lunging out of the bed, Clair made a mad grab for the phone, screaming something about coming to take him home immediately, but he miscalculated and ended up ramming into Mello instead. Caught off-guard, the blond stumbled and fell, and both boys fell to the ground in a dust-shaking tangle of black-clad limbs and clawing painted fingernails.
Clair straddled Mello on the chest, one hand pressed into the blond's windpipe and the other forcibly wrenching the phone loose; he'd dropped the gun in his dash. "Matt? Matt? Damn!" Punching in a number while white rage roiled on his face, he heaved a shuddering breath and spoke. "Giovanni? It's me. I want to go home right now. No, I don't know the address. Get Matt to tell you."
"Don't tell him, Matt!" Mello yelled hoarsely; Clair snarled and, forgetting even the phone in his anger, grabbed Mello by the throat with both hands and pressed down as hard as he could. Mello's back arched in agony; he tried to cough but merely sputtered; his legs kicked and scrabbled on the floor; and he grabbed Clair's wrists and, shuddering, tried to wrench the young don's hands off of him. It didn't work: spite and hate lent his attacker new strength.
Sweat dripped down Clair's face as he pushed even harder, grinning an awful smile in his rage. Finally—after Mello's eyes stared at him almost pleadingly—the boy's head lolled back and his legs were still. Clair couldn't see his chest move anymore.
Standing shakily and backing away, Clair panted and shook, adrenaline still powering his system and yet overloading it. "S-serves you right," he spat at the silent figure on the ground; then, as Mello made no sign of responding, a stab of fear shot up his spine. Had he really...? Was Mello actually...?
He sat down, hard, on the bed, horribly aware of whose clothes he was wearing and what he'd just done. Why did everything involving this damned boy end so contrary to the way he wanted? Well, now at least that problem was solved. Mello wouldn't be bothering him anymore.
A laugh sounded through the room; it took several seconds for Clair to realize he had produced it. More laughter followed, desperate and tinny, until he couldn't even sit upright and had to flop back on the bed, holding his stomach in awful mirth until he himself was breathless. It was all over. Finally. He had done it! He had finally won. And as long as he kept laughing, the fear would stay far, far away.
"You sound...like a retarded hyena," someone rasped from the floor, coughing and hacking between the words. "D-damn it. You are a l-lousy guest."
Clair cursed as well, though the emptying feeling gushing through his body more closely resembled relief. "I was careless," he told the twitching figure on the ground. "I should have used the gun too."
"I like you careless," Mello responded, still mainly breathless but too stubborn to forgo speaking. Clair waited for the no-doubt-imminent joke about also liking rolling on the floor with him, but it never came. Had he really taught the blond his lesson, then? "G-give me a second. I'll take you home."
"You'll get me killed in that condition," Clair pointed out, but Mello shook his head, massaging his wounded throat and placing his own fingertips over the marks Clair had left.
"Naw, I'm fine...I can drive and all...but I only got one helmet..."
Clair frowned and felt around in the bed for the gun.
"Here." Mello held up the weapon and tried to stand, but his legs gave out. Rotating his neck, an expression of extreme pain spasmed across his face. "Hold on. Give me--"
Reluctantly Clair stepped away from the bed. "...Lie down," he muttered. "You shouldn't be moving in that condition."
Mello gave him a doubtful look, but Clair insisted, taking him by the arm and guiding him to the mattress. "I'll get Giovanni and Matt to pick me up if they haven't left already," he told the blond as Mello climbed into bed. "By the time you wake up, I'll be long gone." Rest was starting to sound pretty good to him, too; before he had merely been drowsy from depression and the rain, but now he was outright exhausted.
"S-sounds good," Mello replied shakily, closing his eyes. "Here. In case...you still don't trust me." He pressed the gun into Clair's hand. "I guess this is goodbye, huh?"
"What?"
"You won't want me around after this. That's how it goes. I say something stupid and have to leave. Happens every time." He smiled. "I'll catch Kira on my own."
"As long as you've learned your lesson, you can stay," Clair said through a lump in his throat. His father had done this once, he recalled: kept on a man who had been embezzling Company funds. After publicly humiliating the man, Papa had offered a forgiving hand to the traitor, saying that now the scales had been evened again. The man had never strayed again, and even had been allowed to attend the don's funeral. Somehow, though, Clair worried that he wouldn't quite be able to achieve the same effect. "Y-you did this to yourself."
"No, I'm pretty sure..."
Shaking his head, Clair drew a finger across Mello's lips the way the other boy had done to him only that afternoon. "I meant all this," he half-whispered, half-hissed, and noted with some satisfaction the way Mello quivered at the sound and the teasing touch. "I liked you at first, until you started...You defeated yourself." Straightening, he put the gun back in the bedside drawer and shut it. "As long as you remember that, I don't see any further problems. Good night."
" 'Kay," Mello mumbled thickly, burrowing into his pillow. "Give gogglehead my best."
"I will," Clair promised; pausing to pick Mello's cell phone up from the ground, he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him. Halfheartedly he dialed and held the phone to his ear.
Fifteen minutes later Giovanni came barreling into the apartment only to find his young master, far from the tortured wreck he'd expected, sitting calmly in his suit and tie on the edge of what had to be the world's ugliest sofa. A neatly folded pile of black fabric lay beside him on the seat, and his face was perfectly expressionless.
"Oh God--" Scooping the boy into a bear hug, protocol and pretense forgotten, Giovanni nearly burst into tears. "You're all right? He didn't hurt you?"
Clair shook his head, leaning on the bodyguard for support. "Just take me home, Giovanni," he ordered, but his heart wasn't in the command. "I've had enough for tonight."
