Near turns to face her as her footsteps approach. Even when he's standing, his shoulders are hunched, his posture stooped, trying to make himself even more impossibly compact than he already is. There is a kind of subtle electricity in the air between them, akin to the static feeling one experiences when the TV is on but the cable box is not, when the dead air warping the space of an otherwise empty room. It is a vaguely haunting sensation, and yet at the same time, it feels like coming home.

She's all over the screens behind him, invisible cameras trained on her from every feasible angle. She could be unnerved by such a display, but she isn't. She only has eyes for him, for Near. The ivory-haired young man is standing awkwardly before her, his pallid features looking even more withdrawn than usual, his clothes just that more rumpled. Even his guarded expression, usually so listless and familiar, has altered somehow - she can detect a kind of nervousness behind those glassy dark orbs, a kind of frightened trepidation that she has never noticed before.

She's breathless at the sight of him, and one hand blindly reaches out, grasps the edges of the doorframe in order to stable herself. Near's eyes sweep over her form, taking in every facet of her body, lingering on strange places like her hands, or the hollow of her throat, and never quite meeting her eyes. As the silence threatens to become stifling, suffocating, he finally parts those pale, pink-colored lips, licks them once, and speaks.

"I suppose an explanation is in order."

It's like coming out of a thousand year sleep, and Sayu finally bridges the gap between them. She watches his eyes grow slightly wide at her approach, watches the jarring effort of his Adam's apple as the muscles beneath his shirt tense up before she wraps her arms around him. She marvels at the softness of his hair, the unblemished loveliness of his alabaster skin. She's slightly taken aback by the scent of freshly laundered linen that swathes his entity, despite the state of his clothes. Eventually his body will relax beneath her embrace, the seams of his tension unraveling around them. He's missed her as much as she's missed him, she realizes.

"You don't need to say anything," she assures him quietly, breaking away so that she's now holding him at arms' reach.

"Considering your lineage, I suppose it would be insulting to think that you couldn't fill in the blanks on your own," Near responds, his voice even more quiet than her own. "But Sayu, I--" His gaze immediately drops to the floor and Sayu shakes her head, raising both hands suddenly and placing them on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her.

"Near," she says again, smiling ruefully down upon him. "I told you, you don't need to explain."

"But I want to," he insists before squirming free from her grasp on him. Sayu lifts her eyebrows, surprised, and he frowns. "Maybe not everything," he admits slowly after a moment. "Maybe some things we can get to... in time. But Sayu, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry, that you were right about a lot of things and I'm sorry I didn't take you more seriously at first, that I didn't invest myself fully in getting to know you. You were obviously putting your all in something and I... I wasn't. I'm sorry I didn't try harder. I'm sorry I got myself all wrapped up in the past. I'm sorry that I let something like dead friends get between us." He turns around for a moment, picks up something off of the control panel behind him and holds it up delicately between his thumb and forefinger for her to see. It's a picture of Mello, looking so young and wholesome and happy that she almost doesn't recogonize him. Near flips it over, exposing the 'Dear Mello' written in cursive on the back.

"Mello should strengthen our bond; it shouldn't come between us." He holds it before him, seems to study the enigmatic smile the blonde wears in the picture critically. "At first I thought you might want this, might need it. But then when it became clear to me that you didn't, that you had moved on, I thought about giving it to Lidner. But she, too, seems perfectly content where she is, seems to have transcended past the past the point of mourning. And then I realized, maybe I was the person who needed this most of all." He swallows, tucks the picture down into his left front pocket.

Before him, Sayu nods mutely and waits patiently for him to continue.

"I'm new at this... new at the whole dating thing, new at having friends. I was really scared at first... well, I'm still really scared, to be perfectly honest." She watches as the toes beneath the wooly socks begin to curl, turning anxiously in toward one another as his knees follow, and now he's standing bowlegged, looking uncomfortable. "But now I'd really like to... what I mean to say... is that I..." He goes pink in the face as the words, at last, fail him completely. Then he falls silent.

It doesn't matter. Because he is right: she is more than capable of filling in the blanks for him. She is a Yagami, after all.

She pulls him against her, guides his own hands around her waist. "I love you, L," she murmurs into the silver nest of his hair, breathing him in. She can feel his burning face pressed against her clavicle.

"Is... is it always going to be like this?" Near asks weakly.

"Like what?"

"Am I always going to feel... awkward and gangly and stupid around you? Am I always going to blush, to be unable to express myself coherently?"

"Maybe," Sayu whispers impishly. "Hopefully."

--

A/N: aaah originally there was going to be a lot more to this but frankly, Near is so hard to characterize that I thought this was the way to do it, short but sweet. Of course there are a lot of unanswered questions, but Sayu and Near have the rest of their existence to work out the kinks in their relationship ON THEIR OWN TIME. Plus keem has writer's block like you wouldn't believe and I was seriously afraid there for a while that I would abandon all fanfiction outright. xD

Thank you to everyone fav'd, alert'd, reviewed, and the rest of you who simply lurked and read, cuz I know you're out there too. I got a lot of positive response and encouragement and I'm so glad you all enjoyed. I don't know if I'll ever do another NearxSayu again, but I might do some more Near-centric things at the very least, and certainly more of "Sayu Yagami does everybody". Next I'm shacking her up with MATT xD