Originally written for the Death Note Fanfiction Contest community at lj.
Disclaimer:I quite obviously do not own Death Note.
Theme: week #17 - sneeze
Pairings/Characters: L, Light, mentions of the rest of the task force
Summary: In Eastern Asian culture, it is said that when one sneezes, others are sure to be talking about them. If this was true, L decided, he must be a more popular conversation topic than he was aware of.
Warnings: none
A/N: Takes place during the very beginning of the Yotsuba arc, while the new task force headquarters are being used and Light and Misa have no memories of the Death Note. Very silly. Might even qualify as crack, though I'm not sure. Feel free to bash my head in with cinder blocks if anyone is out of character and/or this is completely abysmal.
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In Eastern Asian culture, it is said that when one sneezes, others are sure to be talking about them. If this was true, L decided, he must be a more popular conversation topic than he was aware of. Lately, the young detective had been troubled with excessively frequent bouts of sneezing. The other task force members found it to be of no concern; by this point, they had become accustomed to so many of L's unexplained quirks that recurrent sneezes were almost disappointingly mundane. They would sometimes give a startled jerk when his outburst were particularly sudden, but otherwise hardly took notice. Matsuda, however, did once make an offhanded comment that "Ryuzaki should get that cold checked out." L, who had been frustratingly perplexed with his newfound affliction, at first clung to this notion. It would stand to reason that his immune system was fairly weak. He ate nothing but sweets, and always refused the vitamins Watari begged him to take. Plus, most of his time was spent in a contained environment, where he was unlikely to encounter—and therefore, develop a resistance to—airborne pathogens. He must have contracted the common cold from one of the task force members, he told himself. He would be extremely susceptible to such a virus. But L was nothing if not logical. And logic suggested that there was not an illness in existence that presented only sneezing and not a single other symptom. Thus L was forced to—reluctantly—throw out sickness as an explanation, and was beginning to consider less plausible reasons.
Late one night, after the other task force members had all either gone home or fallen asleep, L found himself sidetracked with pondering his inexplicable sneezing fits. So much so that it was seriously affecting his focus on the investigation at hand. And that was simply unacceptable. Against his better judgment, he was starting to wonder if his sneezes actually indicated that he was being talked about behind his back. But that couldn't possibly be the real cause, could it? He suggested the idea to Light, counting on the young man's inevitably skeptical reply to better cement his own doubts. As expected, he was not disappointed.
"Don't be silly, Ryuzaki," Light immediately answered. "That's just a superstition. There's no real truth behind it."
L cocked his head slightly to the side, eyeing the saccharine treat currently placed before him. A mountain of chocolate fudge brownies, still in a soft, molten state fresh from the oven, each heavily dusted with a coat of powdered sugar and topped with a single, scrumptious strawberry. After carefully studying them all for a moment, he extracted a particularly mouth-watering square of sweetness from the pile. Of course Light was correct, L mused, removing the strawberry from his brownie and placing it on a porcelain saucer, to save it for last. It was ridiculous to even entertain the idea. Sneezing was no more than an involuntary, reflexive reaction—usually in response to a stimulus in the nasal cavity—and its only function was to expel foreign, possibly harmful entities from the body. It could never be attributed to something so metaphysical and unfounded as the state of being gossiped about.
L voiced his agreement, and asked Light what he thought the cause might in fact be.
"You've probably just been inhaling a lot of dust. I mean, look at these monitors," Light reasoned, dragging a finger across the top of one of the task force computer's screens. "Honestly, don't you ever clean these?"
L's chair faced Light's, but he didn't meet his gaze. Instead, he inspected the chocolate confection between his fingers, picking at the edges that kept it from being perfectly square. "Mm. Watari would normally see to such tasks, but he's been kept rather busy lately. And naturally, I have my own matters to attend to…"
The eccentric detective was too engrossed in adding the finishing touches to his brownie to notice the look of disgust that briefly contorted Light's handsome features. His grimace of revulsion at L's untidiness was replaced with his usual mask of composure when his cell phone rang. He flipped it open and held it to his ear. "Yes? …Misa, I— No, Misa, listen. I don't have time to chat. I told you not to call while I'm working. …No, I can't talk," he insisted, exasperated. Light leaned an elbow on the long counter that stretched before his and L's chairs. "…No, not even about that. …Trust me, I know. You're not the one handcuffed to him twenty-four hours a day."
Meanwhile, L had finally become satisfied that each side of the dessert was flawlessly even, and lifted it to his face. He took a deep, appreciative whiff of the brownie, savoring the heavenly aroma and opening his mouth to take the first bite.
Light, despite his initial refusal to talk at length with Misa, was still agreeing with the girl about the deplorableness of his current situation. L didn't seem to be paying the tiniest bit of attention to anything but the artery-clogging snack in his hands, but because of the close proximity of their seats—which were still facing each other—Light wasn't convinced that L wasn't listening. He dropped his voice to an irritated whisper. "Yeah. …I know. It would be so much more bearable if anything about him possessed even a hint of normalcy. It's like being chained to an incredibly intelligent mental patient. I can't stand it. …I mean it. One thing, just one more thing, and I think I might snap."
"You know, Light-kun," L said, interrupting the young man's hushed conversation, "whispered telephone calls to other chief suspects are very incriminating."
Light instantly jumped forward, leaning in to L's face, ready to yell at him, to scream at him that for the last time, he wasn't Kira, and it was too early in the morning for him to be dealing with this accusation crap, and God, didn't he realize that most people required sleep to function—but he stopped short. He suddenly wondered why L's voice, while smug, was quivering and his eyes were squinted and his head was tilted back just the slightest bit and—
"CHOO!!"
Oh. Oh hell, no.
The powdered sugar from what had been left of L's chocolate delicacy was now a thick blanket encrusted on Light's face, splattered with moist chunks of half-chewed brownie. For all the world, he looked as though he had been caked with porcelain-hued stage makeup and then promptly defecated on by a flock of birds.
L sniffled, wiping his nose with one finger. "My apologies," he said, sounding far more amused than sorry. Turning back to the computer at last, he popped the remainder of the treat into his mouth. "But really, that was much better," he mumbled. "It seems I've managed to keep from sneezing multiple times. Otherwise, that may have been unpleasant. How fortunate for you, Light."
Light's hand was still frozen in place by his ear, holding his phone in a furious death grip. "Misa…" he ground out, teeth gritted in restraint. "I'll have to call you back."
As L nibbled the strawberry he had earlier set aside, a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. It was hilariously ludicrous. There was less than a .1—no, .01 percent chance that his sneeze had been caused by Light and Misa's words. But this was one absurdly improbable theory that L was willing to accept, if only for sheer amusement.