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Near had been quiet, the entire time he’d been being restrained.
It was a favourite hobby of his captor, as he knew too well. He wouldn’t disturb it. It would be nonsensical, when he was deriving little displeasure from the activity, and Mello was enjoying it more than he could ever resent it.
Additionally, if he didn’t protest, Mello would be nicer to him. It was an easy trade. Near kept his mouth shut of his own volition, and Mello wouldn’t bother to gag him. He sat unprotestingly still, and the ropes remained comfortably snug, rather than punishing.
A fair payment, since his own slight to deserve this had been so minor. Near had known that Mello knew they were working on the same case, from opposite ends of the world, and they’d both known exactly what he was doing, pushing just a little ahead to get the jump on the suspect not even a week before Mello had planned his own apprehension.
Near had known exactly how much it would enrage Mello, to have such a hard-fought case snatched from him. It was a little more than mere loss of pride, too, since the reward offered had been enough to tempt both of them, separately.
Near would have given him the money, if that had been Mello’s preferred method of revenge, but as it turned out, Mello’s sullen silence in response to Near texting him his current location had been eager acceptance.
It had been as if Mello had been trying to prove he could do better than Near, and Near had only won thanks to his own underhandedness. The kidnapping had been flawless, in Near’s opinion, and he would pay due compliments when the time came.
Mello had tracked his guard’s schedules, and knew when they would be out of his base of operations for the period of the morning in which they simultaneously checked the exterior for any tampering, and gave Near privacy to rework his own private security measures. He’d tinkered with those, too, just enough that Near had hardly thought twice of reaching a little further back into the dead space that held his thermal-imager and off-grid server, conveniently disturbing the aerosol sedative that would never have been discovered by anyone except him.
From there, Near had to admit that he lost the narrative thread, due to his own unconsciousness. But he imagined Mello had leant towards brute-force, with Near’s schemes fully accounted for and his own unpredictability nullified.
It didn’t much matter, even if Near had been toying with which window had been the most likely for Mello to break through. He’d woken up in a pure white room, styled after a child’s bedroom rendered in a unshaded sketch, Mello eating chocolate on the floor in front of him, and holding up the rope coiled beside him in a silent warning before he’d begun tying it around Near’s limbs.
Useless, of course. Mello could overpower him. But Near was happy to indulge, and Mello seemed to take joy in it, looping black, fibrous cords around his wrists, behind the chair, and his ankles, beneath it. Nothing actually attached him to the furniture, aside from a length around his waist, which Near had recognised the pulls of as being currently tied with a knot that could come undone with a simple tug on one of the trailing strands.
Near swung his tied legs, exploring the sensation, and studied Mello’s enclosure for him, for however long Mello wished to express his frustration. It might be a few days, since there was a 30% chance Mello hadn’t, in fact, known they were working towards the same suspect until the moment Near had stolen them from him.
The single day grace period he’d been given would indicate as much. Mello was emotional, but that also rendered him inoperable at times, while he worked his own kicking rage back to a level he could express in front of Near without making a fool of himself. He would never do anyone else such a courtesy, but it seemed a personal challenge to himself, to restrain his fury to a bristling layer just above his skin, while he winded Near with a tug on the restraint around his waist.
“Comfortable?”
“Yes, actually. When did you realise I was working alongside you?”
Since Mello had spoken, Near felt the ice had been sufficiently broken to express his own chattier side. None of his operatives took too kindly to it, and Near had calculated their respect for him consistently dropped to nearly 70% of the original when he spoke in sentences longer than six words. To be quiet was to be in control, it seemed, for the boy genius.
Mello had no such restraints. Near had seen his preferred crew. He restrained his own polite judgements.
“Two days before you fucked me over.” Mello’s voice was dangerous, curt and short and he’d be yelling, if it were anyone else. He circled around, one foot placed on the edge of Near’s chair, and leaned closer, in the posturing intimidation Near was sure worked wonders on a common thug. “You were trying to get to me, weren’t you? Make me emotional, give you something more to work with?”
Near avoided eye contact. His gaze wandered, instead, across the clean white walls, and wondered if Mello still constructed his own facilities. He preferred to convert, but Mello had such a distrust for high population densities.
“Yup.” He spoke softly, non-confrontationally, and with just the right note of childish placidity to make Mello falter, and his anger spike. “I was missing your company.”
“Well congratulations. You pissed me off.”
“Such a difficult task.”
At that, Near did flick his eyes back, catching Mello off guard with his small grin. It was funny, to see him blink, and his lips pull into a sneer, and Near was still comfortable in his hacked tapes of Mello’s previous interrogations, and the knowledge that he was getting markedly preferential treatment.
“Watch it.” A knife appeared, from the woefully ill-concealed belt of the things slung around Mello’s waist, making him look something of a pirate, especially as he held it close to Near’s throat, exposed by his pyjamas. “What were you really trying?”
Mello’s free hand bunched in his hair, and Near let out a low breath, to test both the edge of the knife and its proximity to his neck. Close and sharp enough to nick at that alone, but he learnt more about its wielder, when Mello withdrew it by the barest millimetres.
“To see you.”
That clearly infuriated Mello even more. Clearly, because he pressed the flat edge of the knife against Near’s neck, yanking his head back by his hair in a signal to pay attention. It was a crude signal, but so much of what Mello did benefitted from his dramatics.
Near watched him, coolly, and didn’t quite smile. No, his expression was blank, and his eyes placid, a blank slate for Mello to draw onto whatever angers he needed an outlet for.
Mello, whose hand tightened, and his jaw clenched. A spasm, an stress-induced one, and his eyes were searching.
Mello, who had been being almost patient with the job Near had stolen from him, doing it by such clinical procedure he’d almost expected this to be a trap that sprung before his active interference.
Near’s amusement dropped, and so did the volume of his voice.
“The government hired you for this one. You were trying for political capital.”
In fairness to him, it didn’t align with Mello’s profile. And Near would never have known, until they were face-to-face, and he saw a kind of blind righteous rage in Mello’s eyes as could only be afforded by him losing something he’d not merely wanted, but needed.
But still, the apology in his voice was very much deserved. He had been distracted, after all, by the need to speed up their normally equal case-solving abilities, to pay attention to how Mello had been being more careful than could be expected of him.
Near felt the sense of failure hit him harder than Mello ever could, and he was suddenly impressed, by how much restraint Mello must be showing. Perhaps, with whatever loss he’d suffered, behind the scenes, he was craving Near as his nearest rival to afford him some sense of dignity.
As Mello’s head dropped, by an inch, and he looked almost a decade younger, caught trying to rig snares in the woods to study migration patterns, Near felt his skin itch with a need to do better.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s... fine. You deserved it, clearly.” Mello couldn’t hide the way his voice twisted, ugly resentment rearing its head in his throat. “But- fuck, N, what- what the fuck? Why’d it have to be this one?”
Near tugged at the ropes around his wrists, and deemed them needing a twenty-five second period to undo without causing himself injury.
Instead, he sat up a little straighter and nudged Mello’s forehead with his own. It was the necessary impetus, apparently, for Mello to follow him as he sat back, and rest their heads against each other, dead-straight blond falling into Near’s face as they both closed their eyes.
“Really sorry.”
“You have no idea how bad I want to kick the shit out of you.”
“I can… give you money instead?”
“You’d better.” Mello huffed, and Near could taste the chocolate that was probably still in the corners of his mouth. “And I want a good word put in with your FBI. I’m... so sick of working off the grid.”
“So this is in the middle of the desert?”
If Mello had said that much, and his last political play had been foiled by Near himself, that meant he was still without the credibility to use bases as Near did, which meant this was built somewhere nothing aside from satellites would see.
“Oregon. Didn’t take you so far from home.”
“Do I get a helicopter back?”
Mello’s hand ran through his hair, and another soft sigh made Near suspect such questions were over-optimistic of him. Mello didn’t sound so happy, not unless Near was about to be far less so.
“Not for a while, N. I’m holding you hostage while you tell the American government to get off my back.”
“Seems counterproductive to them trusting you.”
“Not if you tell them we worked together on that case you stole.”
“So… you want my money and my friends?” Near grinned, sticking out his tongue just enough to bite down on and pull a strand of Mello’s hair. “You’re using me.”
“You have no friends. Shut up. I’ll take half.”
“Half, and you play a board game with me.”
Mello’s sigh was one of deepest suffering. Near waited happily for the verdict.
“Fine. You’re here for a week, you little ferret, then I’m throwing you back to the wolves.”
Near liked that one. He was small, and playful, and smart. Mello was good with things like that, when he chose to be.
“Okay.”
“Don’t think I’m letting you off easy. This is still a hostage situation, if anyone asks.”
“Yep. Loud and clear.”
“…Missed you too, N.”