Title: runner up
Summary: no matter how hard he tried he would always be second best—L/B
notes: Beyond Birthday because yes. And this just came to me out of nowhere really. Blame the internet. And my screwed up sleeping schedule.
Notes1: this fandom is too smart for me but I love it anyway
It seemed to him that no matter how hard he tried, Beyond Birthday would always be second best to L.
And believe him, he tried.
He didn't really understand, he was just as smart as L—a Genius, an almost-prodigy and maybe you could have been great but you aren't—just as good and everyone knew it but apparently that just wasn't enough (it was never enough and you know it so stop lying to yourself it's pathetic, you're pathetic).
So he became L and put on L's face and pretended to be him—and that was the key word; pretend—and the resemblance was so uncanny, they could have been twins (except they weren't because B was brilliant but L was better)
And B tried to live up to the part of L—same face, same thought processes, same mannerisms—but the differences were so glaringly obvious and he knew that they would never be the same and B would never be better because you could never surpass the original, it just wasn't possible.
And in the end Beyond Birthday was a cheap imitation who could never fully live up to the real thing (and he knew it too he's just been in denial for so long, telling himself all those lies and lies and lies until he could no longer distinguish it from the harsh truth)
Just the runner-up, the half-as-good clone, the loser nobody really cares about and you can pretend all you want, you can parade in this mask all you want but you are nothing and you are not L and you can keep lying to yourself but you know the truth don't you? Don't you?
B for Back-up because that's all he really was.
