InsaneJournal

Current mood:	crushed
Current music:	HIM : Buried Alive
Entry tags:	death note, fanfic:death note, fanfiction, mello/matt, pg-13

Fanfic: Death Note, Pressure in Numbers, PG-13, Mello/Matt
Fandom: Death Note
Title: Pressure in Numbers
Pairing: Mello/Matt
Rating: PG-13 for bad language.
Feedback: Yes, please! Any kind of feedback makes me high.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
Word Count: 777
Summary: A drabble focused on Mello in Wammy's house. Inspired by the fan game 'DNd : Poisoned'.



Notes: Not beta-read because this started off as a rough idea for something else but then I decided it was going off into a completely wrong direction than I wanted it to go. I decided to run with it anyway, just to see where it would go. Just a drabble. Probably riddled with mistakes. Feel free to pick them out and throw them at me.

---

Mello’s in one of those moods again. It’s one of those inescapable and unexplainable moods where he feels like every fucker in the room hates him. He feels like everyone is looking down on him, judging him, picking him apart by his achievements and his failures and piecing him together the way perfect Near delicately puts together his puzzles to decide whether Mello is worth second place - whether he’s worth anything at all.

It’s a constant battle at Wammy’s house and Mello feels the pressure more than anyone. The pressure feels physical sometimes; like those test scores and numbers are digging into his back, shoving him onwards and he has to work as hard as he can to keep up with their ludicrous demands. Constantly. He’s worn out and tired, agitated and moody, can’t rest from fear of falling behind and it’s all Near’s fault.

They live in a house of bloody geniuses. Somehow, he has to find a way to socially interact with them all and yet be able to run from them too so that they never catch up with his title of second place. It’s the only thing he has to cling onto, the only scrap of proof that his life was worth being spared by the same fate that took his parents. That one reason that makes his existence acceptable is always being knocked and bashed by the very thing that keeps it with him: Mello works so hard and yet the wonderful, flawless boy who sits and does nothing all day keeps the title he wants and needs so impossibly far out of reach.

Near’s a bastard. He keeps Mello awake at night with those uncaring eyes falling over their test papers, calmly filling out the questions in a steady pace while Mello’s mind whirls erratically at a hundred miles a second. It doesn’t matter how much Mello prepares for the tests, how much work he does to back up his scores, how many books he reads, hours he stays awake at night, how quickly he fills out the answers and checks them again and again until the time’s run out. Near’s name will always be at the top of the sheet of scores, Mello’s hard work and effort buried beneath him and it’s like the scrawny nuisance doesn’t even care.

The bastard even has the audacity to torment him now. He can’t sleep. He feels ill, like there’s something clawing away in his stomach. It’s like his brain is full of smashed glass with each thought colliding into the scattered shards no matter which direction he goes or what way he lies. Restless, he tosses and turns in his bed torn between the desire to open one of the books he collected in the library and study more or just sleep. That’s what he needs to do, that’s what he’s trying to do, just let go and for God’s sake sleep, because it’s essential and he needs it for concentration. Sleep is always needed to beat Near.

He feels a weight at the edge of his bed: feels himself relax without meaning to, open his eyes slightly to see a flash of a dopey grin, a playful look from hazel eyes under a crimson fringe and a leather bound musty book clutched in thin fingers barely visible in the dim light. He grins when Matt whispers to ask if he’s awake. Mello kicks him as a response.

Matt is just here to read a book with him. It eats up time on something unimportant when there’s a hundred and one other things Mello could be doing to improve himself and finally surpass Near; but when Matt settles down next to him, wearing a loose, uncaring smile like he hasn’t got a care in the world as he makes himself comfortable, he feels the pressure of all those threatening numbers subside a little. When he feels Matt’s warmth wash over him as they both lie on their stomachs, shoulder to shoulder, on the single bed as Matt murmurs useless words to him from under a feeble torchlight, he decides it’s ok to waste time just for tonight. There are still numbers here, closing in on them from all sides and crushing them at every opportunity. For once, though, he knows he’s superior here and yet it feels meaningless, like it doesn’t matter.

There’s only two numbers here: two and three. He should feel better knowing Matt is third, completely beneath him, and yet he doesn’t. There’s no battle here, there’s no test scores, there’s no bite in the numbers here, no ultimate motive in anything either of them do, no double meanings – everything is safe, simple, calm and completely and utterly meaningless.