A/N: I've decided to tell you all something about me at the beginning of each chapter. In case you couldn't tell, chapter one's confession was that I eat literally as many sweets as L. I bake and consume a cake every day, have at least one large blizzard a day, and eat pints of ice cream, candy, and cookies throughout. But that's all last chapter. This chapter's fun fact is that I have a deep love of chaos that somehow works out. My heroes are Tank Girl, Neil Gaiman's Delirium, Pippi Longstocking, etc. Sometimes, I do weird things because I feel like it's my duty to spice up other people's lives. So, twice a year, I put on my M&M costume, and go to every grocery store in my neighborhood, convincing people it's national M&M day and they should get free M&M's. I highly recommend this practice to anyone who wants free candy. O.O If anyone has any questions about me, I will be glad to make them my A/Ns for future chapters.
"Hey, Snowflake! Time for our date!" Near weighed his chances of successfully avoiding Mello, and found them depressingly low. He resigned himself to his fate and shuffled over towards the cheerfully waving figure in black.
"We are not going on a date." He felt the need to clarify to Mello who waved him off, seeming unperturbed.
"I meant a friend date." Mello looked slyly at Near out of the corner of his eye and favored him with a deceptively innocent smile. "What were you thinking?" Characteristically unfazed, Near managed to impart the flavor of glare into his usual blank expression when he replied,
"It doesn't matter what I was thinking; your implications were obvious, and now all of my classmates believe we are going on a date."
"Screw 'em."
"Whether or not I disregard what they say, I have to maintain a certain level of inconspicuousness or I will suffer the consequences of being different."
"I hate to say this, Snowflake, but you're kind of…monochromatic."
"I am aware. Still, my classmates have gotten used to that particular oddity."
"Like I said, screw 'em. What are you worried about?"
"Being pinched, having my books knocked out of my hands, being dyed blue." Near listed in a monotone. He peeked at Mello to see if he'd somehow managed to absorb the message, and was surprised to see the blonde looking utterly furious. His entire body was lined with tension, from his gritted teeth to his white knuckles on the steering wheel.
For the first time, Near was afraid of Mello. Before, it had been more of a detached fear Near had felt, an intellectual understanding that the individual next to him could be a threat. Now, he looked dangerous.
"Mello?" Near asked, just a little more quietly than he would have liked. Glancing at the younger boy, Mello instantly relaxed, and shot a care-free smile over to Near, in reassurance.
"You'd be really cute in blue, ya know?"
"Hm." Near replied noncommittally, secretly relieved.
"But then I couldn't call you Snowflake. Tell me if anyone touches you, okay?"
"I believe I have asked you not to call me Snowflake anyways." Dangerous Mello was back again, and glared at Near.
"Promise me you'll tell me."
"Very well." Near had to admit to some curiosity about how Mello would deal with a potential aggressor. It would be a good gauge of what kind of person Mello was. He hoped his confidence in his ability to restrain Mello was not misplaced.
When Mello passed Near's house and kept driving, Near looked curiously at Mello.
"We passed my house."
"You were going to buy me coffee, remember?"
"I suspect I'll need my wallet to accomplish that."
"No big deal, I'll buy it."
"I declined that offer already."
"Fine, we'll stop by your stupid house."
"If the intelligence of houses is judged by whether they do or do not have bat caves, the vast majority of houses must be sadly lacking to you."
"They are. But that's life. It takes so long to find something interesting, it's worth holding on to when you do." Near twisted his hair in thought.
"Is that why you insist on stalking me?"
"I am not stalking you. We're here." Mello parked in front of Near's house and Near exited the car and shuffled into the house, leaving the door open behind him. Five minutes later, he had yet to come out. Mello tapped on the dashboard impatiently. Ten minutes later, he started to worry. Staring intently at the open door that had yet to yield his fluffy white coffee companion, he wondered if it was possible for someone to have broken into the house. Sure, Near might get mad at him if he waltzed in without permission, but there could be robbers in there right now, stealing his things, hurting him, with their robber hands all over him…
Mello was already running into the house.
Instead of bursting in on a scene of Near struggling against ski-masked men with dirty hands, or even Near scolding him for barging in, he found Near crouching on his office chair, looking utterly focused on his computer. Suddenly irritated at having been made to wait for nothing, Mello huffed and asked,
"What the hell are you-"
"Sh." Near shushed him. Near shushed him!
"How dare-"
"Sh." Near shushed him again. Interested to see what could possibly warrant such a complete disregard for Mello- he was a highly suspicious character, dammit, and deserved to be treated with at least a little apprehension!- he looked over Near's shoulder at the screen.
"What the hell are you watching?"
"The beating and subsequent murder of Ricardo Perez."
"Oh. Heavy stuff, this early in the evening."
"This is actually the third of six videos." Coffee long forgotten, Mello grinned at the screen.
"Can I have a copy?" For the first time, Near pulled his eyes from the screen to look at Mello with disapproval.
"These are highly confidential police files, and are not meant for personal enjoyment."
"That's harsh, snowflake. I just want to see the case."
"Get it yourself. If you are as proficient at hacking as you claim to be, you should be able to easily obtain the same information." For the first time, it dawned on Mello that maybe Near was slightly displeased about having had his secret identity uncovered on a whim. Filing the information away for later, Mello shrugged and dialed his phone. It rang twice, and then
"'lo?"
"Matty?"
"Not so loud, man."
"Are you drunk?"
"Nah, I just haven't slept in…three days."
"Why?"
"New modern warfare. You know how many people are depending on me to find all the cheats in there before they'll even buy the game?"
"I need you to-"
"Wait up, I gotta kill someone." A long pause followed, during which Mello attempted to convince himself that throwing the phone at the wall wouldn't actually hurt Matt. It would just feel really, really satisfying. "…kay. Whazhup?"
"Send me all the files from the police case involving anonymous videos."
"You could do that."
"I know I could do that, but it would take me a couple of hours to get in, whereas I happen to know that you have a constant tap in their shit."
"Fine, fine. I'm sending instructions and all my codes. There. A five year old could follow it, and so can a trigger happy, chocolate obsessed little girl…"
"Matt!" Mello barked into the phone, but Matt's laughter only filled the silence for a minute, and then he hung up.
"Were you successful?"
"Yeah." If Matt said it was done, it was done.
"That was very impressive. I would like to meet your friend."
"Yeah, if you can get every video game company in the world to stop manufacturing for a few weeks, maybe he'll emerge from his room."
"I see."
Mello left quickly, and produced a laptop from…somewhere. The two worked in silence for a while, and the steady tapping of computer keys filled the room, broken by silence as each new video was watched. Near sported a neutral expression, and Mello made dramatic faces at the bloody murders, but neither seemed truly affected by either the deaths or the blood, something each took note of when they glanced away from their screens to judge the other's reactions.
Eventually, Near opened a closet door and pulled out a puzzle from a stack of boxes.
"What's that?"
"My bat cave."
Near was pleasantly surprised by how easily he got used to working with the blonde. Well, not with the blonde, so much as in the same room as him. He was behaving himself for once, so it was like he wasn't even th-
"Hey, Snowflake! Near, near, near, near, guesswhat?" Near sighed and turned.
"Yes?"
"I think it's drug related." Mello looked proud of himself, and Near was privately impressed, although he displayed nothing on his face when he turned to ask Mello
"Why?" Clearly eager to explain, Mello started bringing up tabs, paused to different points in the videos. Near silently lowered his estimate on how much time it'd taken Mello to reach his conclusion if he'd had time to set up an explanation.
"First, I created a timeline. I think the order is Maya, Guillermo, Alex, Ricardo, Clarence, Adam. I-"
"Please refer to them by their last names."
"Herrera, Chavez, Tenor, Perez, Jones, Jones."
"The timeline you created is the same as the order they were delivered to the police station in except for Perez and the first Jones. Why is that?"
"I'm basing it on the order they actually died in."
"If they died in that order, why would they be delivered differently?"
"Clarence and Adam weren't really close despite being brothers. Adam did everything with their cousin, Richard." Mello pulled up a transcript. "Every class the same. Sophomore year, they had different advisory classes and actually switched to be with each other. If Adam was involved in something, Richard was too. The videos are obviously a warning, I suspect they were sent to the police by Richard, the original recipient. If he and Adam were close, they probably added something more personal to his video."
"Good. Now why do you believe this to be drug related?"
"When you put them in order, you can see a pattern of which guy is leading. Even though they're all masked, the heights are different. The odd thing is, the guys who follow are always more energetic. I think they took turns being high so that one of them would always be in control. Also, look at the way he moves his fingers. Every time one of them does delicate work, their fingers twitch in another direction, probably because they're used to setting up lines. Muscle memory, ya know?" Mello demonstrated with his own fingers.
"I believe you are correct. But you missed something." Near smirked, pleased. "I came to the same conclusion based on the fact that all of the victims had small chemical burns around their wrists. Just above where standard gloves would end."
"Snowflake, you should smile more often. Looks good on you." The smirk vanished. Not the smile, the smirk.
"I don't think that's relevant. You're too easily distracted."
"No'm not."
"Why try and convince me you are not?"
"I dunn-"
"Before we continue, you need to tell me your true intentions. There is a reason beyond entertainment you wanted to contact N. Tell me now." Mello surprised Near with the speed with which he switched into total seriousness.
"Fine. I want a job."
"A…job?"
"Yeah. Me and my friend. We're good. Just let us help out on this case, and you'll see."
"You wanted a job, and you thought it would help to proposition your potential employer?"
"…yeah? Well, I want a boyfriend too, and I'm kind of a go-for-it kind of guy."
"A…boyfriend."
"Yeah. Eh, to be honest, though, job comes first. Not that you're not absolutely gorgeous, but I don't shit where I eat, ya know?"
"I wish you would stop saying that. I do not know."
"I'm sayin, Snowflake, if our relationship gets in the way of work, work comes first." Near nodded. He completely agreed with the sentiment. Except for one thing.
"We are not in a relationship."
"Give it time, Snowflake."
"Alright."
"Really?"
"I was referring to the job. You may help with this case, and I make no promises about the future."
"Cool! I'll call Matty." A case usually took two weeks, with the help, Near still calculated it would take at least a week. Grudgingly, he invited Mello to stay during that time. He started planning which bookshelves he could sacrifice for his guests. He was staring at the single guest bed he owned, when Mello poked his nose around the corner, trying to see what he was doing.
"Oh, it's cool. Matt and I share a room, and a bed." Near looked at Mello. Although at times, he had the social awareness of a retarded moth, he at least knew the implications of that. "Oh, don't give me that look, Snowflake. You're the only one for me. What I mean is, I'll sleep in the bed, and he'll pass out on the floor surrounded by his videogames and laptops."
"Mel, no one opened the door, so I let myself in." Near turned to glare at Mello, who was looking in the direction of the newcomer's voice.
"You left the door unlocked behind you?"
"No, I locked it." The new arrival stepped into the room.
"Eh, open door, cheap lock, same thing." Near looked at him suspiciously. He was wearing a black and white striped shirt under a soft brown leather vest with white fur, oddly stylized jeans and black combat boots with matching leather gloves. Oddest of all, he had on ridiculous yellow goggles. With the goggles covering his eyes and the collar of the vest pulled up to cover most of his chin and mouth, Near had the strangest impression that he was meeting a nose.
"My lock was very expensive." He informed the nose.
"I'll build you a better one."
"Fine." Near was unpleasantly reminded of his new burglar alarm.
"This is our room?"
"Yes."
"Cool. I'm Matt. Mel, help me move my stuff in." Near watched, amazed, as the two started carrying in an impossible mess of wires, computers, videogames, routers, and other things he couldn't identify. Where Near was awkwardly oblivious towards others, and Mello was awkwardly attentive, Matt seemed to be fully socially aware, yet he chose to ignore the existence of other human beings. Every touch towards his tech, however, was loving and careful.
Near worked for a while on the case, informing the police that he would be taking it, and beginning to assemble clues before he went to bed. When he woke up and started preparing for school, he saw the door to his guest room was open, and Matt was still finishing up assembling his devices inside. Mello was absent. Unconcerned, Near continued towards the front door, pleased to have reserved enough time to pick up his morning Danish and coffee before school.
Mello, ever fond of disrupting Near's routine, stopped him.
"I'm making breakfast!"
"There is no food." Near informed him.
"I went grocery shopping, for breakfast, because your kitchen is sad."
"My kitchen is inanimate and does not experience emotions."
"Well, then, your kitchen makes me sad. But now it has food, and I'm making breakfast!"
Mello sashayed around Near's kitchen for a while, while Near sat glumly at a chair, although he perked up a little when Mello opened the oven and revealed Danishes.
"You can make Danishes?"
"Frozen foods aisle, Snowflake."
"I see. What exactly are you wearing?"
"Pajamas."
"Where is the shirt?"
"I don't sleep with one. You like what you see?" Mello stretched for Near, showing off lithe muscles under tanned skin, and hoping to catch Near's eyes lingering. Instead, they rolled, before he replied,
"I have no opinions on the matter, except a mild curiosity about how you went grocery shopping wearing only that."
"I wore clothes when I went out…"
"Then why did you change back for breakfast."
"I wanted breakfast to be enjoyable for you."
"I see. In the future, please do not refrain from wearing clothes on my account." Mello hmphed, and dropped a plate of eggs, bacon and Danish in front of Near, with a glass of orange juice and a mug of coffee. "Will you be having any?"
"Nah, eating'll throw me off. After I drop you off at school, I'm going back to sleep for another few hours."
"Oh." Near chose, for once, to be polite, and ate the breakfast Mello had woken up to make for him. It was a unique experience to be cared for in such a way. Breakfast had been cooked for Near before, of course, but then it hadn't been cooked for Near specifically, it had been prepared for all of the orphans in the cafeteria. Even from Lola's, food was somewhat impersonal. Although he never would have admitted it, Near was touched by the gesture.
School was, for once, interesting, as Near wondered what his guests were doing in his absence, and when it finally ended, his curiosity was piqued even further by Mello's failure to appear with a ride, and he started home, somewhat absentmindedly speculating if his house would be destroyed. Suddenly, a warm liquid was dumped on Near's head, and started streaming down his back and face. Quickly, he bent over, so it would drip onto the sidewalk instead, and he watched a pool of three-day-old kool-aid start to form. Sighing, he straightened up, and looked for his attackers, who were gone, before continuing home. He received several odd stares, but was more concerned with the way the dye soaked into his skin and stained it.
By the time Near reached home, he was tired, irritated, and dirty. He wearily headed towards his room and the waiting shower when-
"Damn, Snowflake. What happened?"
"I was immersed in Kool-Aid. If you'll excuse me, I would like to shower."
"Go ahead?" Near took a shower, watching the pastel blue water swirl down the drain. The dye came out of his hair easily enough- mostly because he didn't concern himself with damaging it with the amounts of shampoo he used- but a few light stains stayed on his skin no matter how roughly he rubbed at them. When he accidentally broke the skin, scrubbing, Near resigned himself to waiting for the color to fade. He stepped out of the shower and wrapped himself into a towel, then turned off the faucet, and walked into his room.
"Hey, Snowflake." Near jumped.
"What are you doing in my room?"
"Brought you this." Mello offered Near a tupperware container of…goop.
"What is it?"
"Dishwashing soap mixed with baking soda."
"Thank you." Near accepted it, wondering what it was for.
"It always got hair dye off, so I figured it'd help with whatever made you blue."
"Hair dye?" Near looked closely at Mello- really at his hair- who raised his hands in defense.
"Not me! Matty decided he wanted to be a redhead, a couple of years ago, before he realized no one looks at him, but me and his computers."
"Oh. Well. Please get out of my room. I am going to shower again." Mello pouted, then brightened up as he got an idea.
"Can I help you scrub your back?"
"Absolutely not."
"Fine." Pouting again, he left. Showering the second time was much more effective, although Near had to be much more gentle washing the bits of skin he had over-scrubbed before. Looking at the blue stains on his towel and clothes, he briefly envied them for their ability to simply be bleached back to white.
Near was on his way to the laundry room to do just that, but Mello was waiting outside his door with his arms crossed.
"So what happened?"
"I was immersed in-"
"Don't use passive tense. What did who do to you?"
"A classmate poured Kool-aid on me during my walk home. I do not know which."
"I should've picked you up."
"It is fine."
"It's not going to happen again."
"I agree. Most likely, when they see that I am not stained tomorrow, they will consider new methods. I suspect the attack was partially out of curiosity to see whether I always wear the same clothes."
"That's ridiculous. Of course you don't."
"How do you know?"
"Went through your closet."
"….please refrain from entering my room in the future."
"Kay. Any other house rules?"
"May I give you a drug test?"
"What? Seriously?"
"Yes, I am curious to see if the experience you applied to the videos was first hand."
"I guess so? I'm clean, but if you really have your heart set on obtaining my bodily fluids, I can think of much more fun ways to-"
"Mel, calm down. That's the shittiest pick up line ever."
"Yeah, but look at what he gives me to work with."
"Your fault for falling for a sheep. No offense, Near." Matt was wearing a nice suit, and his hair was neatly brushed.
"Did you go somewhere?"
"Yeah. I just talked to Richard Potter. Like my suit? Surprisingly easy to be taken seriously."
"He answered your questions seriously?"
"Yeah. Well, also I had this." Matt held out an SIS card.
"You are part of the Secret Intelligence Service?"
"Don't be so paranoid. I printed it out this morning. While certain other people were sprawled out on the bed, snoring." Mello raised his eyebrows in the universal expression for I'm not going to dignify that with a comment.
"What did you learn?"
"I got full cooperation. The victims were all med students that accidentally made a drug. Once they realized the effects, they started selling it. S'called Bliss." He pulled out a packet of light blue pills. "They trampled on someone else's territory. Case closed. I even have the names of the dudes who killed the kids…somewhere." He patted around his pockets until he found a crumpled piece of paper. "Kid knew everything, he was just scared to go to the police."
"Why?"
"Oh, yeah." He patted around his pockets again before he found a squashed jewelry box and handed it to Near. "Put on gloves before you open it." Near found latex gloves and opened the box. Mello jumped back.
"Matt, you had those in your pocket?"
"What, you wanted me to carry them in my mouth like a chipmunk?"
"Gross, Matt!" Near picked up all five fingers, matching each to the severed fingers from the Adam video.
"We will verify everything you found, and send everything to the police by the morning."
"We?" Matt snorted. "You hear that?" Matt, Mello and Near all listened to the dead silence of the house. "That's Mario calling me. G'luck." Matt vanished, leaving Near confused.
"I didn't hear anything." Mello sighed.
"That's the point, Snowflake. C'mon. Let's do some work." Near felt oddly useless, with the case being solved by the time he'd come home, but as he assembled the police report, he enjoyed the same feeling of the puzzle coming together. They finished as the sun started going down.
"You may stay."
"Oooh, you want to live together already?"
"As assistance for my cases."
"For now."
"Forever."
"Promises of forever so early in the relationship?" Silently admitting defeat, Near ignored the reply. As much as he hated to admit it, Mello's driven attitude, and Matt's hacking abilities- and acting abilities- were both useful additions to N. What he couldn't explain was
"Why do you not work independently."
"You're making me feel repetitive. It's not about solving the world's problems. We want entertainment. This is entertaining, you've already got the whole notoriety thing going on, and you can afford to pay us tons. It's better to work under a title."
"Well, you can continue working with me until we have problems. We'll go over your salaries in the morning."
"You're a pessimistic little snowflake, aren't you?"
"Now that I am your employer, I would like to request that you desist in calling me that."
"Not a chance, Snowflake."