Author's Note: Howdy! Thanks for taking a look at my story. I started this a few months ago - I have a few chapters written by this point. I personally like the story idea, but it's tough writing since this story is both pre-canon and not in the Death Note world. As a result, whether or not I continue writing this depends on your reactions. If you read and like it, please drop a review. If you don't, I promise my feelings won't be hurt. Constructive criticism is cool (:
Thanks~!

Chapter One

Let me just start by telling you that if you're looking for a fangirl-sucked-into-Death-Note fic, turn around. This isn't the place for you. In fact, this is the opposite.

Actually, I probably should have informed you of my name first. The name's Nicolette Mills, but I go by Nik. Is Nik a guy's name? Technically. Do I care? No. Do you have a problem with it? I don't care.

Now that we've covered the formalities, I'll move on to the story.

I was wandering around town. It was pretty innocent, although in a small town like mine, everything has to be innocent or everyone will know about it. I was basically window shopping. Checking out the old furniture in the local antique stores, y'know? Looking inside the window of books hope and wishing I actually had enough cash to actually buy something from our town's tiny GameStop.

After a while, I sat down at the cafe. It's called the Happy Day Cafe or something cheesy and rhymy like that, but what matters is that the mocha there is incredible and so are the chocolate muffins. I swear, those things are the size of my head.

So, that day, I got a muffin, a mocha, and sat down in the booth next to the window. The booth was pretty worn out and God knows it was ugly as they come, but it was comfortable too. Not only that, but there was sunlight bathing me as I snacked on the awesomeness that was that muffin. I'd take a bite of muffin followed by a sip of mocha, enjoy the sunlight, and close my eyes for a minute or so before repeating the process.

Okay, so I might have been going overboard a little. In my defense, it was pretty good stuff.

Anyways, the important thing is that after a while, this really annoying shadow started to block out the sunlight. Obviously, the really annoying shadow was connected to a really annoying guy. When I realized that whoever was causing the shadow wasn't moving, I turned to the window.

The light was to their back so I couldn't see their features too well, but what I could see was enough to tell me that they were a cosplayer. They had a painfully hunched back and they hand at least part of their hand in their mouth. They wore jeans that were a couple of sizes too large and a baggy white t-shirt. Even their jet-black hair seemed to naturally defy gravity in the right way. Actually, the only difference between them and L was that they were my age. Probably sixteen, give or take a year or two.

They were staring through the window at my chocolate muffin. Good cosplay or no, that was off limits. I glared at them through the window and they turned around. Admittedly, I was relieved. The staring was pretty creepy.

And then the little bell on the door jingled and I was like, Great. I'm doomed.

Much to my surprise, the guy walked right past me and up to the counter. Then, he ordered a muffin. Obviously, being my age, his voice wasn't quite as low and sexy as L's. But he had the monotone down for sure. I was impressed. Upon receiving it, he paid up and sat in the more shadowed area of the cafe. I could see his face better at that point, and the guy was a perfect replica of L. He had the right facial shape - which, by the way, is hot - the beige skin, the long-but-not-too-long nose, and the piercing gray eyes. I knew he must be a pretty devoted cosplayer, too, because the black bags under his eyes were not makeup.

I'm sort of shy, but I figured I'd offer the poor guy a coffee. Maybe he was like me and he wasn't carrying enough cash to get what he actually wanted.

I crumpled my muffin liner and threw it into the garbage, then slid out of the booth. It only took a few steps to get to his table, and I didn't have to say a word to get his attention. The instant I got there, those steel-colored eyes were locked on mine. I would have been intensely uncomfortable with it, but I just got over it and asked anyways. "Do you want a coffee? You look pretty tired."

He looked me up and down and I briefly considered what he was seeing. A girl with wild brown hair that's more like a briar patch than something that belongs on someone's head. Other than her hair, she's small in every way. Thanks to a freakishly rare form of ocular albinism, her eyes are a pale violet. Her lips are full but her skin is quite pale. She's wearing cheap skinny jeans, probably from Walmart, and a plain short sleeved T-shirt the exact color of the worn asphalt just outside.

That was me.

"That sounds excellent. I'm afraid I didn't have the money on hand to get one for myself," he explained, proving me right on my earlier point

"Cool," I said, nodding. "Go ahead and order. I'll pay."

He ordered a simple black coffee, which made me happy because it was cheap. After he sat down I sort of invited myself to sit across from him, figuring that my spur-of-the-moment generosity kind of entitled me to do so. He grabbed the canister of sugar packets from the counter and pulled out almost fifteen of them. At first I thought it was a mistake, but then he ripped them open and dumped them all into his coffee.

I cringed. "Are you actually going to drink that?"

"Yes, of course," he answered, taking his first sip while sugar was still floating on top of the bitter liquid. "I wouldn't ask you to buy something for me if I didn't plan on making use of it."

Well, looky there. He even speaks in the funky way that L does. "Oh. I was just asking because the last time I had coffee that sweet, I couldn't even take a single swallow of it."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I have always preferred very sweet flavors over others."

"I can see that," I agreed as I looked at the circle of empty paper that had held a huge muffin about five minutes before. "Anyways, I'm Nik."

"Adrian," he returned, and I privately thought that he looked nothing like an Adrian. Still, since he didn't introduce himself as L or Ryuzaki or Ryuga, I figured that he was at least partially out of cosplay mode for the time being.

"Nice to meet you," I said as I stood up, glancing at my watch.

"Wait," he called, which was really not necessary since I was still standing right in front of him. "Could you give me directions to the Iron Horse Hotel? I'm completely lost."

"Oh? No problem," I responded. I thought his GPS must have been broken and taken him to the tiny town of Youngsville instead of Raleigh or wherever his hotel was. He was probably headed to a convention.

I had my phone pulled out of my pocket and the directions were halfway loaded when I noticed that Adrian was staring at me. Well, at my phone. I glanced at the case of my Samsung Galaxy S4 in case there was something gross on it.

Nothing.

"Uh, Adrian...?"

"What is that?" Adrian asks curiously. Not to mention seriously.

"It's... a cell phone?" I replied, raising my eyebrows.

"A cell phone."

"Yes. Oh, your directions are... woah! Adrian, that hotel is in Wisconsin!" I gasped, staring at the map that popped up on my screen. Adrian had to be pulling my leg.

"Yes, it is," Adrian agreed.

"We're in North Carolina right now, Adrian," I pointed out. I looked him over more carefully. At first I thought he had deprived himself of sleep in an effort to imitate L, but I was now considering that the lack of sleep stemmed from some kind of drug use. He did look sort of sickly, but I didn't want to judge based off of that.

"Hmm, that could be problematic," Adrian said, his already wide eyes forcing themselves yet wider. "Your... cell phone. May I use it to call someone?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, handing him my phone and setting it on the calling screen in case he didn't know how to use it. So the guy didn't have his own phone, didn't know what state he was in, looked like a drug addict, and couldn't afford his own coffee. But he was cosplaying! It didn't add up.

He held up my phone in the L way, like he thought it was carrying the plague, and tapped the number onto the screen. Then he held it to his ear, and I watched Adrian's face fall into an uneasy frown. "It didn't work," he declared, pressing the phone back into my hands.

What, like the number didn't exist? "Try it again. Maybe you just got the number wrong."

"I did not," Adrian said firmly, refusing to take the phone. "The number was out of service."

"Adrian, where are your parents?" I asked, starting to get worried about him. I could now add 'calling numbers that don't exist' onto my list of Adrian's problems.

"They're... absent," he answers flatly, and I feel a spark of rage fly in my chest.

"Look, I get that you're cosplaying, but you're taking this too far!" I snap

"Cosplaying?" He sounded absolutely clueless. I had never felt so pissed before. It was like this guy had convinced himself that he was actually L, and that we were stuck in the 90's when L would have been 16.

"Yeah, cosplaying. You know, when you imitate a fictional character for fun? Believe it or not, L from Death Note is fictional, man!" I snapped, my voice loud enough that I was drawing attention from the employees.

"This is a very interesting dream," Adrian murmured and scratched his head.

"Dream? The only dream you have is that you're actually L. Wake up, man," I ordered, my simmering rage beginning to come to a boil.

Adrian glanced into the glass of the window and stared into his reflection. He looked it up and down, as if checking to see if it was mutated. What in God's name is he doing? He then stared at me, specifically at my limbs. I began to feel very uncomfortable, but I realized that he was actually checking the signs. If he was dreaming, a deformed reflection would tell him so. Slightly malformed beings would also indicate a dream. The problem was that I was very conscious, and I knew it was no dream.

"I am not dreaming," he sighed finally. "I have no money, no place to go, and I am apparently a fictional character."

I decided to be blunt. "Are you on something? Seriously, Adrian." It was whispered, so the employees wouldn't hear it, but Adrian still looked very offended.

"No, I am not abusing or misusing drugs in any way," he hissed, anger flashing in his steely eyes.

"Then why are you so convinced that you're a Death Note character?" I shot back coldly, meeting his gaze.

"What is Death Note?"

"A popular manga that inspired an anime and several video games. Not to mention a spin-off novel and some movies. You know that, though. You're cosplaying as a main character," I pointed out stubbornly.

By now, I'd wandered out of the cafe and my desperately confused new friend was trailing behind me. "So," he asked hesitantly, "what is my name? My... character, I mean?"

"You know that already!" I snapped hotly, glaring at him over my shoulder. "It's L Lawliet."

There was a split second where everything was calm, but in the next instant, he was nearly on top of me. His developing voice was suddenly low and threatening. "How did you know that?"

"Uh, the true name card in the How to Read volume of the manga?" I said/asked, feeling sufficiently creeped out.

"This is nonsense. Why do you insist upon telling me that you learned my name from some comics? The idea is preposterous and I will not -"

"I, unlike you, can prove my claims!" I hissed. "There's a poster of you in the window of the bookstore. You wanna see it?" I spun around and shoved him backwards as I was highly uncomfortable with the close proximity.

"Yes, of course," he answered as he regained his footing, although he was looking at me as if I'd grown an extra head. I knew the truth. I wasn't the crazy one.

"Then come on," I instructed, taking a sudden left turn. "And if you get too close to me, I'll kick your ass."

Adrian stayed a safe distance away for the remainder of the walk.

Even as Adrian stared at the poster in the window, I felt like something was horribly wrong. The guy was practically in shock. His mouth hung open and his eyes were more bizarrely wide than I'd seen them yet, and his breathing had changed. I wondered if he had a head injury or something, because I knew there had to be some reason for it all.

"Nik... I have nowhere to go..." Adrian castes me a doleful glance, and I caught his drift almost instantly.

"No, Adrian! My foster parents would kill me if they came home from vacation and some random guy was camped out in their house!" I cried. "Besides, I barely know you!"

"Please, I don't know what to do right now. It would only be for tonight..." Adrian asked, his voice sounding almost desperate instead of its usual monotony.

I didn't know what to do, really. All of my instincts were telling me that Adrian was probably sick somehow, and that I should take him to a hospital. He seemed truly baffled and very convinced that he was L Lawliet, and I didn't know what to do as a result. "Adrian, we should go to the cops. Maybe they can help you find your parents," I offered, feeling hopeless.

Adrian simply gave me the saddest look in the world. It was one that told me he was questioning his own sanity, and I couldn't take it. "Maybe we should..."

"Adrian, do you have an ID on you? A license or something?" I asked, turning around since I had begun dragging him to the police station by the arm.

"No, the only thing I had was the money I used to buy a muffin," he answered, his monotone reappearing but his face still full of shock and confusion.

"Damn," I responded, biting my lip. "What's your last name?"

"Lawliet," he told me, much to my frustration.

"Adrian Lawliet?" I snapped.

"No. Adrian was just an alias. I thought it up on the spot," he answered.

"You don't even know your name?" I cried, just as we reached the police station. We were about ten feet from the doors when Adrian halted, and I was unable to pull him. I simply wasn't strong enough. "Adrian!"

"They won't be able to find my parents," he muttered.

"How do you know that if you can't even remember your own name?" I yelled, tugging on his sleeve.

"I do remember my name... As do you, apparently," he snapped, pulling his hand away. His raven locks had fallen into his face and I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew from his next words that he was truly terrified. "They'll put me in a foster home..."

"I'm in a foster home. It isn't that bad," I argued. "And for the last time, your name can't be L! He's fictional!"

"I will not risk being put into foster care," he murmured, walking away and ignoring my cries.

"Adrian, stop! What if you're sick or something?" And then I uttered the words that would change my life. "Just... just stay at my house! We'll figure this out!"