Trace on a Data Back-road. (Xover, Death Note/Boys Next Door.)

[allira-dream.livejournal.com]

Reposted from my personal LJ, originally published on February 23th, 2007.

Title: Trace on a Data Back-road.
Fandom: Death Note/Boys Next Door.
Warnings: Spoilers for both Death Note and BND.
Characters/couples: Mello, Dallas, Lawrence.
Summary: Mello knows that if he wants his plan to succeed, if he wants to beat Near, he needs to have support.
Rating: PG
Notes: daniela_lynx encouraged me to do this XD.

Trace on a Data Back-road.

The man, Dallas, seizes him up and down and Mello keeps looking, taking a bite of his chocolate as he waits.

Then, Dallas smiles, the corner of his mouth curving and he takes off his smoke, blows a perfect smoke ring and looks at him.

"You lookin' for a job, kid?"

Mello bites his tongue to refrain from lashing out. This, he knows, is important. If he wants his plan to succeed, if he wants to beat Near to finding out who Kira is, he needs to have support, and for that he needs money, and the only way he gets to get enough money, the only way to get the support he needs is with criminals and mafia.

If this is the way to finally beat Near, so be it.

"Yeah, but not like you're thinking," Mello says, a hand over his hip as he smirks. He knows how he's looking, the clothes he's dressing, and he had known this was the way to get attention. "I can help you with a few of your business?"

"What makes you think I need help, kid?"

Mello shrugs and digs unto one of his pockets and takes out a polaroid, offering that to the guy. He doesn't hide his smile when Dallas' eyes go wide, and just licks the indentation his bite has left in his chocolate. He keeps both the smile and the look once Dallas makes a motions and guns are suddenly pointing at him.

"Well then. I believe you've got something of mine. I'll say that you've guts to try something like this. What's your name?"

"Mello."

"Well then, Mello. You gonna be a good boy and tell me where my stuff is, or my people will have to beat it out of you?"

Mello shrugs, now perfectly calm, because the lingering doubts he had had that his plan wouldn't work are completely gone now, with Dallas eating from the palm of his hand.

"You can kill me and don't find out, or you can hear me out."

Dallas' eyes narrow, but he jerks his head and most of the guns stop pointing at him. Mello takes a step forward, a smirk on his lips.

"I can make your profit increase in two months so much that even cutting what you gotta give your boss, you'll be able to retire in less than two years. You're not dealing your cards as you should."

"Oh? And what's for you?" Dallas' eyes aren't as stupid as the rest of the men in the room, nor the fearful look of the two women that are by his side, on their knees. This man, Mello thinks, is smart enough to have gotten here despite coming from a normal middle class family.

But he's smarter.

"Protection. Money of my own. There's a guy I wanna catch, and I can't do it on my own."

"What's the sucker's name and what did he do? Kick your puppy?"

Mello tries not to think of L, or Near being the new L, and, after a few seconds, manages to shrug as if he doesn't care.

"That's for me to know," he says, moving the chocolate to take another bite, this time slower, even sensual if he has to say so himself. He smirks, eyes dark beneath his bangs. "Then? We've a deal?"

Dallas looks at him, seizes him over once, twice before he tilts his head backwards.

"Hey, Lawr, come here for a sec."

Mello tenses for a moment, but relaxes when a boy about his age shows. Matt would say that the boy was even girlier than him, Mello thinks, and he kind of agrees despite the tight leather clothes the boy is wearing, or the dark smudge of a bruise fading from his face.

Lawr looks at him for a moment, and Mello fights the wish to recoil. He has the same eyes Near has, void of anything but quiet contempt. He closes his hand in a fist and stops himself from doing something.

Temper, he tells himself. He has to control that urge. This whore of a kid wouldn't get to Near's ankle about skills. There's no reason to feel angry at this boy.

"Yeah?"

"You're gonna walk Mello to see that he gets my stuff, and then walk him back, okay?"

"As if I'm gonna fall for that," Mello snorts, but his eyes kind of follow the fall of Lawr's hair. If the research he did is the correct (and he knows it is), then this boy's Dallas' younger brother, and they look nothing alike. Lawr, he thinks, looks more like him than Dallas does.

Dallas takes another drag and looks at him as if lazy, but his eye moves towards the big muscled guy behind him for a second, and Mello knows his plan.

"See Dallas, you've two things you could do. You make me go with Lawr here to pick up the drug and then you try to off me and you lose your drug and pretty much everything else to the police which will get here, or I stay here and get you very fucking rich, and then I give you back your drug."

To his surprise, Lawr moves towards him and stands there. It's not like looking in a mirror but it gets close, just darker, somehow sharper. They're probably the same height and they've similar complexion, but his eyes keep being vacant even when lawr raises an eyebrow and looks over his shoulder.

"You should give him a week, see if he's talking shit, Dallas. I think he isn't."

"And since when do I have you here for thinking, you idiot?" But after Dallas' snort, he looks at him again. "Okay, Mello. You have seven days to prove me that you've the balls to fill the big words."

Mello eats the last of his chocolate, trying not to look too smug. Seven days is more than enough to make Dallas realize just how much he can make him win. And, of course, by the time he realizes how much he'll lose, he'll be far away.

***

Seven days pass too fast, and in just those few days, Mello shows Dallas the difference. He's not surprised at all when Dallas says he'll go with him to pick up the drugs, nor is he when Dallas says he'll be staying with him from then and not with the whores.

"Guess you're going away?"

"Yup," he bites his chocolate. Lawrence blows a string of white gray smoke, and his eyes are still like Nears while he keeps bouncing his legs, sort of like Matt would. Mello thought about fucking him, just too see if the expression ever changed but decided against it. Lawr, most likely, would look alive for a second and then he'd go back to having reptile eyes, and Mello knew his temper wouldn't hold on.

He won't miss Lawr, he knows. Not anymore than Lawr would miss him. And yet, he feels he has to tell him something. Perhaps because he went without a word of Wammy House. Perhaps he just found the solving of the case almost boring, despite the police going nuts while they search for clues, and he just doesn't carey anymore.

"I've a present for you, though."

"Really? What?"

"Man you've been looking at? The teacher?" Mello knows this is dangerous, knows that he shouldn't be giving this boy directions towards a serial killer and instead he should be making the police find out the clues.

He also knows that the kind of justice he's interested doesn't fit with police's justice, and that the only case he cares is Kira's.

"Yeah?" Lawr leans forward, dark eyes wide as he looks at him. Mello snaps a bite of his chocolate.

"Search for him over Raymond's corner, tomorrow."

Lawr's eyes narrow a bit but he nods. With that, Mello just walks away.