"No Apparent Motive"

by Acey

Author's Note: A collection of short standalone Matt, Misa, and Matt/Misa fics, updated at random. Some lime, cursing, and potential for alternate reality, depending on the fic. Dedicated to vazavati (Saulie here). Thanks a million.

one—collapsed illusion

"C'mon," he mumbles, thinking are the goggles enough, does she see enough of my face anyway, wondering why he even cares. She's willing and the look in her eyes is glazed, her makeup smudged (it's been a long night, hasn't it, Misa?)—the picture-perfect image faded and mussed over the course of the evening.

Not that he looks much better, he supposes distantly, but still. He doesn't have to keep up appearances, not the same way she does, not with smiles and energetic banter, but with casual smirks and a slow, practiced drawl over the phone, his Japanese intentionally worse than it actually is. Misa's the latest in the dying breed of supermodels, just like he's the last in a dying breed of Wammy House kids, the half-formed remnants of an old man's dream.

He has to fake incompetence when he's almost as smart as Mello. He has to throw off the suspicion of a world on the verge of being dominated by Kira.

But he doesn't have to have sex with her. It's not part of Mello's great plan and in a way he supposes that's why he's doing it, ripping off his gloves to touch her smooth, bare skin, run his fingers over her face, her back, touching her until she leans her head back in ecstasy, moaning.

Calling out Light's name, even now.

If he were Mello he wouldn't have been able to continue after that name, would've been too tense, too angry, would've thrown her off the bed and out of her own house. Mello has that kind of willful fire in him, that righteous anger where Matt has what passes for apathy. If Mello were here, he'd--

But since he's not, Matt keeps on, even though there's a sick feeling in his stomach and suddenly the supermodel looks more like a marionette with the strings slack than a girl.

"Matt, I—" but she stops her sentence there, as Matt stares into her dark brown eyes, thinking about how idyllic this isn't, pressing against her even though he's tired, tired of trying and failing and trying again in the game of Kira.

But it's not a physical exhaustion and this is the closest Matt can ever get to winning the game: fucking the Boss's fiancee, in an apartment where her perfume's only a cover-up for the smell of ashes.