Title: Canasta
Characters: Light, L, Matsuda, Watari, and the rest of the Team.
Genre: Humour
Rating: K+
Length: 1,567
Spoilers: Up to and including the Yotsuba Kira arc
Warnings: Swearing
Status: Complete
Summary: Canasta. A card game of intelligence and skill, requiring a faultless poker face. So why, in the name of all that's sane, is Light on the sidelines whilst Matsuda enters the final hand?
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CANASTA
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Matsuda.
Fucking Matsuda.
Light has never hated anyone so much in his young life. For the first time, he actually understands why L believes he could be Kira – if he can come up with this many ways to murder his "senpai" (and fuck if that thought doesn't make him cringe) in only half an hour, he could be seriously impressive if given time for proper planning.
It's unfortunate that he has to keep his homicidal rage to himself, really. It would be lovely to be able to turn to his self-proclaimed "best friend" and mutter about how much he'd like to beat Matsuda to death with his own severed arm without confirming suspicions of him being a mass-murdering sociopath. Besides, he can tell that L himself is distinctly less than pleased with the current state of affairs. There are deep teeth marks on that pale thumb. Hell, he's probably joined Light in imagining the many ways those cards could be used to cause immense and distracting pain to the smug git.
Canasta is a card game from Uruguay, which Matsuda has no business knowing. He could understand Hanafuda perhaps, if an aunt was particularly good, but the man should not be this adept at a card game devised in South America.
He's always rather liked Watari, with his outright decency and intelligence, but he's never loved him so much as now, when he deals the final hand and immediately places three of the four available red threes on his side of the table. Three hundred points, right off the bat. Thus far it's been Matsuda with the immediate advantage through every round, and thus far Matsuda's creamed at least sixty percent of the opposition every round. Watari getting those points is a damned good start.
Both are well into the top tier by this final hand, so it's a tense few minutes before there's any movement towards the grand finale. Watari's already thrown three sevens (typical luck – you toss a card and then get every last one of its brothers), but on the fourth Matsuda reaches out and slides the growing discard pile towards himself. An immediate pure Canasta. Bastard.
It takes him only one minute to sort through his new hand, and the table in front of him fills up with five different melds – all worth substantial points, and some featuring the odd wild card. It turns out he had two of the jokers, and those are grinning up from ground zero as a hint of discomfort takes up residence in Watari's usually calm features.
Light twitches and the mental images morph into telepathic screams for Watari to do something incredible and victorious, immediately.
Apparently telepathy is a myth. Fuck.
Glancing to the side, he can see L's eyes creeping wider and his thumbnail being steadily chewed down. He can identify the tension in his shoulders and the furious twitching of his hands as he joins Light in wanting to leap in and help Watari survive the indignity that is defeat at the hands of an utter prat. Mogi is trying very hard not to edge towards the table and take a peek at the players' cards. Aiber and Wedy can be heard whispering up a storm behind the two genii, presumably placing and replacing bets. Looking to his right, Light can see his father, openly confused, bemused and just a little bit pissed at the skill Matsuda's been displaying for the past hour and a half.
After all, when they started the game everyone had been pretty certain the least likely member of their team would be the first out. Canasta is about strategy and intelligence, and the ability to outsmart and fool your opponent. Sure, luck helps, but not nearly so much as being able to get into the mind of the guy next to you.
Light would be tempted to accuse Matsuda of cheating, except that if he is and no one has noticed, that's even worse than the current state of affairs. Besides, a lack of proof only makes him look like a sore loser; he is one, to be sure, but only internally. He has far too much dignity and commands too much respect to go throwing tantrums over a game of cards.
How many black threes did Matsuda have though? He's tossed three in a row, for no apparent reason other than spite and boredom. Watari doesn't have a single Canasta on the table yet, just lots of five-card melds, and nothing has been of interest to him – at this point it would be pointless to have kept the cards hidden, as all Matsuda would have to do would be look at what he didn't need himself. Some of what he does need too. Watari's face when Matsuda laid out three of the fives the elderly competitor had been scouring the pack for was one of pure fury.
But now Matsuda is down to two cards, and Light can almost taste Watari's victory. The stupid man cornered himself, and all Watari has to do now is wait for the cards he needs to come up. The younger man has so few options it'll be eas–
Watari flicks down a four carelessly, and Matsuda smirks as he drops the two he'd clung to onto the table beside it before scooping up the meagre number of cards won with the third.
The devil's luck. It really is. There's no other explanation. By rights he should be trapped, caught by his own arrogance as he tossed cars to the table over and over, giving Watari nothing but damn black threes until he had only three cards to choose from at any one time. The last two he'd clung to should have been an eight and a Jack, all Watari needed to complete two pure Canastas, not a pair of fours. For him to plan this in advance is astounding – plus he would have needed balls of steel to go ahead with it, and that is not the Matsuda they know and… Tolerate sounds kindest of the words currently filling Light's skull.
Everyone in the room knows the bastard's won. All four black threes – the only way to meld them. Various cards he'd completed impure Canastas for, now forming small secondary melds on the tabletop. Just one card left in his hand, after he taunts Watari with a nine that he has no use for. But at this point Light (and most likely everyone else, if they were paying attention) knows exactly which they are, and knows it's only a matter of time.
The temptation to snatch the ace of spades from the moron's grip and give him a paper cut straight through to the jugular makes the brunette's fingertips itch. Glancing from side to side, he takes detached note of the blood on L's much-abused thumb and the thinly veiled shock and fury in his father's wide eyes. Aiber is groaning behind him, and the tell-tale sound of cash being counted seems to echo in the quiet room. The remaining member of the team is blatantly torn between the joy and pride of one of his own colleagues defeating men like Watari and L in a game of wits and the urge to strangle Matsuda with the too-bright tie so conveniently wrapped around his throat.
Light would happily play alibi for Mogi if his control happened to slip for just a minute.
It only takes two more turns. They knew from the cards on the table which were left in the deck – if a pile of eleven cards counts as a deck – and the remaining six allows Matsuda to form one more impure Canasta before he drops the goddamn ace on the discard pile and declares Canasta.
The number of cards on each side of the table tells it all, but they count up regardless. Watari finishes with just less than nine hundred points; Matsuda has over one thousand three hundred, and was already in the lead by a further two in terms of the final scores.
Matsuda. Fucking Matsuda, for crying out loud. The only consolation Light has is that no one else has in the room has ever been so humiliated either.
ooo
It transpires later that Matsuda's grandmother had been the one to teach him the game, and she cheated. Profusely.
Light doesn't accuse him of following her example. He'd like to – really like to, and perhaps beating the guy in the head with that chair he insists on twirling on until he confesses just to make the pain stop would also be productive – but he has to admit that if the young detective could hide the fact from them for the entirety of the three-hour game, he probably deserves the win regardless. Perhaps more than if he played it straight, considering the witnesses.
It doesn't prevent him slamming his own face into the desk the next time Matsuda causes him to question the future of humanity.
Beaten by that. By a man whose tea Light knows L's pseudo-tame criminals are drugging to ensure he can't reproduce.
Fuck.
ooo
Two weeks on, and as he grips that notebook Light remembers everything. His brilliance. His perfection.
Only one moment of hesitation, of "Kira" questioning his credentials for the position of "God" of the new world for the first time – when he sets eyes on Touta Fucking Matsuda.
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Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it – if you have the time, some feedback would be greatly appreciated. No flames please, but constructive criticism is loved as much as praise.