Disclaimer! All fictional entities featured/ mentioned in this segment belong to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.

A tribute for Valentine's Day, with a slight change of pace. You can interpret the following any way you want; in fact, I encourage it! I've never written about Ide before, so I doubt that this is the best characterization of him out there. They have Valentine's Day in Japan, though they approach it a bit differently than America does.

Written for phollie. Dunno if you're still into Death Note, but this one's for you. Just because…

PS: Sanami is a task force member exclusively from the live-action movies based on the manga.

VALENTINE

Valentine's Day is a quiet, unassuming celebration within the police force: a day when most of the men would come in with chocolates and other treats on hand as gifts from their wives or girlfriends or female colleagues or friends for midday snacks, their minds comforted by the reassurance of female support in their lives.

Not everyone gets something every year, though. Ide is one of those guys. He's no ladies' man, but he gets along well enough with the fair sex. He likes to think so, anyway. They'll say good-morning to him in the break room when everyone's getting their first cup of coffee for the day, and good-afternoon when everyone's getting water from the fountain. They've let him borrow pens, asked him for help in fixing an error on the computer when they can't find anyone else, and thanked him when he's held open the door for them.

But that's pretty much all the action he gets. And just about every Valentine's Day since he'd started working as a detective, he'd go home empty-handed to a glass of sake and a good book. It's not a big deal, though he has found himself wondering sometimes why women seem more interested in alpha males and bad boys, and pass over gentlemen like him seemingly without a second glance. Is it because he's too…unremarkable?

This year, however, he finds himself in a fairly remarkable position: he's sitting with a gold-tinted box in his lap, tied up neatly with a red satin ribbon. And what should he find inside but twenty-four assorted chocolates?

Aizawa leans in for a better look, blinking in mild surprise. "Huh? Well, look at that. Seems like somebody thought of you enough to give you chocolate, this year," he teases in that gruff way of his. "Who's it from?"

"Uh, not sure. I went to get the stapler, and there it was inside the drawer. They didn't leave a name or anything…well, it's got my name on it, but it's typed."

"They typed your name? Kind of an impersonal way to go about giving someone chocolates," grunts Aizawa. "Unless, for whatever reason, this secret admirer of yours wants to stay secret."

"Secret admirer? Aizawa, I'm surprised that you're capable of coming up with a conclusion like that. That's something I'd expect Matsuda to say."

It's odd: for a moment, it almost feels as though someone is watching him from across the room. He looks up, but finds no one. No one looking in his direction, at least.

Then he sees something gleam from the other man's wrist. "Hey, what's that you've got there?"

"Oh, this? Yumi made it for me, the other day. Said she wanted to give me chocolates, but she had to test the ones she bought to make sure that they were good. And…well, you know how it is, kids and chocolate." He sounds half-lost in thought, a wistfulness that he'd never acknowledge out loud, but leaks out in trickles through the cracks in his voice.

Aizawa pauses to pull his sleeve over the red and pink bead bracelet, not so much out of embarrassment about what their co-workers would think about a grown man wearing a kiddie bracelet, as it's so he can enjoy his gift more privately. "Well, I wish I could stay and help you unravel this mystery, Ide, but I've got work that I need to get back to. Take care of yourself."

"Yeah, you too."

After a moment of wondering what to do, he lifts up the lid of the box enough to slip a hand inside and pull out a chocolate at random. As far as he knows, he doesn't have any enemies, being too unremarkable to make them, so it's unlikely the box is poisoned. Who is it from, then? A secret admirer? That's more wishful thinking than anything. Someone must've given him this out of pity or obligation.

But they've never done it before. Why now? And why would they want to remain anonymous? It's not like he's the type that most people would be ashamed to associate with or something. He doesn't think so, anyway.

He savors the tart, sticky filling oozing out between his teeth. Tangerine.

Well, if he never finds out, he won't know who he's supposed to get a present for on White Day. To not get someone a gift in return for a gift that they didn't have to go out of their way to give…that's just rude.

But how is he going to find out without coming off as desperate or obnoxious?

By acting naturally, of course. If there's one thing he's good at, it's being casual. After all, the chances of the gift coming from a genuine secret admirer are 50/50, and he'd rather err on the side of caution. He stops to pop another chocolate in his mouth. Coconut.

Ide waits until the lunch hour to go asking around, after checking his teeth a time or two in the bathroom; the last thing he wants is to have coconut shreds sticking out of his smile, or chocolate staining the enamel.

There aren't many women on the force to begin with, so it's relatively easy to narrow the list. He focuses on the one who seems most likely to be it: Sanami. She's paid the most attention to his existence in the time they've both been working here; she's even gotten him coffee on one or two occasions when he would stay to work overtime.

(To be fair, she tends to get everyone coffee when the job doesn't fall on Matsuda's shoulders, he reminds himself.)

That feeling of being watched creeps over him again. Was that a titter he just heard? He glances behind him, but no one is there. Ide takes a deep breath to steel his nerve. Why is he getting excited, all of a sudden?

He approaches Sanami like he would under any other circumstance, just as he sees her enter the kitchenette with a bowl of ramen, about to place it into the microwave for heating.

"Ramen, again, huh?" A rather cliché line, he vaguely notes, but the ice needs to be broken somehow, and that's the first thing that pops up in his mind.

Sanami turns and smiles. He must admit, she has a nice smile, gentle and warm. "What's wrong with ramen? It's fast and easy to fix."

"Well, sure, but it gets boring to eat the same thing every day, doesn't it?"

"Maybe. But that's the sacrifice you make when you take up a job like this." She flips open the microwave door and frowns at what she sees inside. "Oh, not again! Someone keeps forgetting that this microwave is for everyone!" She reaches for the paper towels, only to have Ide beat her to it.

"Hey, why are you cleaning it? It's not your mess," he says, his face radiant with heat that may or may not be from having it near the microwave.

"No, but if I go out of my way to try to find out who's mess it is, I'd be wasting my time, and the microwave wouldn't get any cleaner. It's a lot easier to just clean it up myself."

"As noble as that is of you, I think you're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of," he blurts. "If the majority here realized that there was somebody to clean up their mess for them, they'd stop cleaning up after themselves entirely."

"Oh, I don't think it would go that far," says Sanami, brushing a stray lock of her dark hair back behind her ear. "Maybe they're just stressed out, and making a little mess in the kitchenette is the last thing on their mind."

"Everyone has their way of looking at it, I suppose…here, I'll get it, if that's all right," Ide volunteers without thinking about it.

She nods in approval. So far, so good. "Ah, thank you, Ide, that's very sweet of you."

…

"So Ide, how's your day been going? Has anyone given you anything?"

The crumpled ball of soiled towel bounces aimlessly off the edge of the can before plopping to the floor. "Whoops," he says, biting back the solid mass of anxiety building up inside him. "I'll get that, too. Uh, no. It's the same-old, same-old on my end. What about you?"

Sanami raises a tweaked eyebrow, her tone patient. "Are you sure? I could've sworn I saw you eating chocolates earlier. Valentine chocolates. Either you bought them for yourself, or someone was thinking of you today."

Ide fends off the urge to scratch the back of his head by washing his hands in the sink. "Oh, well, actually, I…may have gotten a box of chocolate. Why do you ask?"

Why is he already getting the feeling that it wasn't Sanami, after all? No one would point it out when you've gotten chocolate from an unknown source unless they're indirectly trying to direct your attention to them, being that they were the culprits. Sanami isn't the type to do that…

"Really? That's great! Who was it?"

"…I don't know," he admits dumbly. "They just left it in my desk. Didn't leave a name or anything…"

"Is that right? Sounds like you might have a secret admirer on your hands, Ide," she teases.

"I doubt that," he admits, stopping himself before he can say anything more self-deprecating. He doesn't want pity.

"Why not? You're a good guy, Ide. A little standoffish, but a good guy all the same. Why, if I'd had the time, I would've gotten you something, too…"

Why? Because she likes him, or because she feels sorry for him?

Sanami drums her fingers against the counter, in harmony with the soft monotonous hum of the oven. "Hmm…I wonder…no, that's not likely…"

"What is it?"

"Come to think of it, I did see Matsuda by your desk, this morning, before you showed up. He was going through your drawer, hunched over, like he had a stomachache or something."

Either a stomachache, or he'd had something else hidden underneath his jacket…

"I offered him ginger ale and crackers, but he said he just needed an antacid, and that you had some left over. Oh Matsuda, who knows what's going on through his head sometimes…but he does keep us on our toes. And every court needs a jester, not to be mean."

Ding!

Sanami promptly opens the microwave to pull out her now steaming bowl of ramen. She sits down at the table with her lunch, pulling up her chair. Her chopsticks poised for use, she stops to look him over, concerned. "Are you okay, Ide?"

…

"Uh, yeah. Must've eaten a bad chocolate or something. Can you excuse me?"

"Of course. Happy Valentine's Day, Ide. Thanks for cleaning the microwave."

Ide can't get out of there fast enough. He should've known. He should've known the instant he saw the box crammed into the side of the drawer. Why hadn't he considered it? Probably because it's so easy to blame Matsuda when things go wrong, and really, there is no such thing as the Law of Averages, as he realizes now.

This isn't worth getting mad over, per se. But God, he must've looked like a fool, talking to Sanami as though expecting to milk some kind of cheesy confession out of her. Did she take it like that? He hopes not.

He finds Matsuda in his cubicle, binders propped up around his head like he's working on something top-secret, or so he wants to pretend. He's panting, like he's just run back over to his desk and placed the binders around him in haste.

He looks down at him, keeping as firm a grip on his temper as possible. "What the hell, Matsuda?"

The younger man looks up at him like a startled rabbit. "Wh-what's wrong, Ide?" he asks, like he doesn't have a clue, as is usually the case.

"You sent me on a wild goose chase," he snaps. "You planted those chocolates in my desk and had me thinking that Sanami sent them."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Matsuda shoots back, but Ide can tell by the way his eyes shift to the right that that's a bald-faced lie.

"Sanami told me that she saw you messing around with my stuff, this morning. You were hunched over."

"…Oh. Sh-she did?"

Ide doesn't have to say much more than that before Matsuda decides to cave himself. "It's not all my fault! I was getting tired of seeing you without a valentine, year after year. You never complain about it, but I know it bothers you a lot, and seeing you not even trying to ask someone out was getting frustrating. I had to spur you on, somehow."

Ide pinches the spot between his eyes, hoping to deflate the pressure inside his skull. "Matsuda, do I have to remind you that this isn't tenth grade, anymore?" He's not sure who he's convincing here on that: Matsuda, or himself. This entire escapade plays back in his mind, play-by-play, like an awkward high school experience that he'd rather forget.

"W-well, it worked, didn't it? You can't expect to have a love life when you always keep to yourself. You got to talk to a woman, for once in your life. And it's Sanami, too! Oh, you two would be so great together, I can feel it!" he gushes. "Now if only you'd have spoken to her for longer, while the iron was still hot. You could've asked her out for a date tonight. Maybe you still have a chance?"

Ide cringes a little inside. One thing he can count on about the task force's rookie: whatever he does, it would never be in malice. Misguided, most definitely, but never malicious.

"Well…I think I can appreciate the effort, but that's not how I'd want to find someone."

"You think someone will approach you first?"

"No, I don't expect that. I do, however, would prefer to…"

Pause.

"Prefer to what? Bide your time until you find 'the one?' Well, what if 'the one' is sitting across the room from you, and all you have to do to get the ball rolling is say hi?"

Matsuda can't tell him who's perfect for Ide; only Ide can decide who's perfect for Ide.

"Why do you think you keep getting passed over, Ide? Because you don't try. You don't reach out, put yourself out there, take the risk. Why won't you? Because you haven't found your perfect match, or is it because deep down you don't think you're good enough for anyone?"

…

Sometimes dumbasses have a point. Maybe. Kind of.

He sighs. The sweet aftertaste in his mouth suddenly turns sour to him. "You know what? Let's just put this behind us. I've messed around too much today already, and now I'm behind. Still, I should thank you for the chocolate. As far as I know, you spent your own money on them, and…you didn't have to do that."

Matsuda stares at him for a moment longer, his expression tense with concern and mild frustration that Ide won't admit to anything. Eventually, though, it softens with defeat. "Y-you're welcome."

Then it perks up, as though he's just realized something. Ide has yet to meet someone who jumped from emotion to emotion with the same pace as Matsuda.

He scratches his head. "So…since I'm technically the one who gave you the chocolates, does this mean you're going to give me something when White Day rolls around?"

Ide snorts. "Shut up, Matsu."

END