One night, A lies in bed and calculates his chances of becoming L's backup in the next six months. There's been talk of finals going on around Wammy's House for the last week, and A is too scared to admit he's scared, if that even makes sense. He's seen the look on B's face when he mentions the finals, a cocky half-grin than once attracted him and now turns him off completely.
("I'm sorry I lost my virginity to you," A says one day; B says back, "I regret wasting five minutes of my life getting you aroused, so I guess we're even." And no one asks about it when they show up for evening lessons with bruises on their arms and legs and faces, because they're not sure if they just got into a big fight or had very rough, angry sex -- and at Wammy's House, both are always a very real possibility.)
He wants to become L's backup, he really does. But sometimes, he wonders if its worth it. He's seen what the system inside of Wammy's House can do to someone. There were endless amounts of orphans in the house when he first entered; only two, including himself, made it to owning a letter of their own. The others either were kicked out, killed in the line of duty or offed themselves.
(A has contemplated suicide before. On a sunny day, he has sat outside and imagined curling up in the closet, choking on fumes, his belongings all packed up and boxed up for the next letters that would follow, each item marked with his own curse. A-per-se. Alienated. Abandoned. An hero. The last one made him giggle, which only served to irritate B, who was sitting nearby with his head buried in a volume of Descartes.)
So he's mentally computing his chances in the dead of night, crunching numbers like test scores and how many footsteps it takes him to go from class to class, how many cuts and bruises are still evident on his body from B; he factors in things like his personal advancement in his lessons as well as the achievements of his partner-slash-rival, B (the others don't matter, they never did, never will).
A ends up with a forty-five percent rate for success. Five percent less than half. Far less than what A is comfortable with. What should he do? According to his calculations, he would have to work 120% harder in order to overpass B and become the official L Backup. Either that or kill B and make it look like a suicide or an accident. No, these options won't do, and that's when he realizes that he needs to cut and run or else risk being shut out of Wammy's House for good.
So he leaves a note for B, a complicated set of algorithms (Lagged Fibonacci, hash tables, Hirschberg's algorithm, even a fucking Turing test) that takes B five hours to solve and is revealed to be a simple suicide note: Leaving forever. House key is under my pillow. There will be no body.
This is the story B tells Wammy, who tells L, who eventually tells Mello and Near years later, even though B has a suspicion something is amiss, that A is lying and having a good laugh at their expense. When B suspects A is alive, he suspects that something is not right with the Wammy's House system. But by then B is gone, far away from Japan and from what would soon be know as the BB Case.
And so it continues from then on: A, living in a villa in Paris, twenty-five years old but feeling like fifty, drinking moderately pricey wine while anonymously giving tips to the local police and occasionally doing the crossword puzzles in iLe Parisien/i. His official job is a police consultant, but they've recently stopped taking his advice, now that ihe/i is solving crimes for them -- that ihe/i being Kira.
Kira, killer, filler. A watches the news, follows the investigation through someone close to Wammy's House, knows L is on the case and yet can't help but feel his mentor is missing something huge. Something literally right in front of him that he can't see but A can. The absurdity of it all makes him laugh -- a backup better than his superior? Not in a million years.
And that's, of course, when L dies.
Roger Ruvie tells Mello and Near the news of L's unlikely demise, and it's immediately afterward when the news sinks into the two young men when the phone on Ruvies desk rings. The voice on the other line speaks first before Ruvie can say anything himself.
"I'm coming home. Don't bother activating L's replacements."
"Who is this? Who are you?"
"I am A. I am the new L." With that, the line goes dead.
A is on the morning flight out of Paris, and two days later is standing in front of Wammy's House, having already checked into L's old hotel room in Japan and flown all his belongings there, few as there are (mainly toilette, clothes, books, crossword puzzles and a tea set bought on a whim from a French marketplace).
He can tell both Mello and Near hate him, now that they've been relegated back into Back-Up mode. No, not even back-ups; more like in the running but not close enough to the finish line to be called a finalist. Near dislikes him quietly; Mello is like his name, melodramatic, glares and curses at him at all times, hatred bubbling beneath his pale surface.
The next morning, A is up at dawn, on the first flight back to Tokyo, ready to meet the Anti-Kira task force before more time is lost, before Kira gains more ground on them. As he dresses, A pokes himself in the chest -- there, it's the hole inside him that L has left, ever since the moment they first met, growing a nanometer a second for every second L is no longer with them, the living. A wonders if there will be a day if he'll have to strain to remember L's face, the lean of his body, all his little quirks and mannerisms -- but no, he is A, one of Wammy's children. Meaning he'll be long dead before that day ever has comes. Death would be preferable to forgetting the marvels of L (he remembers a late night lesson between the two that turned into a sporadic session of fornication, L's motions both mechanical and graceful, lending A a handkerchief afterward to clean himself up as he made a pot of very sweet tea).
The headquarters for the task force is unimpressive, A finds out. It's rather disappointing -- the place where L lived and breathed his last is sparse and cold and brings him no comfort. He spends two hours drinking red zinger while pouring over the case files, reading up on current affairs as well as the members of the secret force. There is Soichiro Yagami, his son Raito, Shuichi Aizawa, Kanzo Mogi, Hideki Ide, Touta Matsuda.
Matsuda. The man seems young and carefree, the soul of a adolescent in the body of a twenty-something detective. A mentally files Matsuda's face and data away in a place once meant only for one other person, who even now was sinking deeper into his subconscious, awaiting his revenge.
A week passed -- a week wasted, A thinks bitterly as he sat in his new apartment, files spread around him like a paper fan. They had spent seven days reviewing all the files they'd been looking at before L's death, including with the pages of Higuchi's Death Note and the notes by L they had found shortly after his death, locked away in a hiddy-hole under his desk.
Why would L do such a thing? A wonders, holding L's crib notes in his hand. Writing things down could endanger the operation; there was a good chance that, if Kira was in the Task Force's allegiance (there was no doubt in A's mind this was true) that he could have had access to the inner machinations of L's thought process, and that was dangerous indeed. He looks at a random page and smiles. It is a mixture of Latin, Slovincian and Heian-era hiragana written by a scattered hand (to match the brain inside, he thought, loose but dangerous).
He makes Roger Ruvie his new Butler, the second Watari so to speak. A and R spend most of the day studying files, watching old surveillance tapes, the TV always stuck on the local 24-hour news station, the web browser filled with tabs of local and worldwide news sites. They let the Taskforce know of their set-up, as if to say We're watching the criminals too, Kira. Try and kill one without us noticing. It wasn't the strongest card in A's hand, but he played it anyway, knowing enough of them would crumble Kira's resolve soon enough.
A's first act as L involving the police: search Misa Amane's home, rip it apart at the seams. She had been a person of interest, so much that L had her locked up for questioning for quite some time. A knew L's hunches were 99.9% right all of the time; he just hoped Misa wasn't part of the .1% that wasn't.
The following image is plastered on every news program and website that evening: a police officer in riot gear exiting the Amane home, holding up a black hardbound notebook. The Death Note. A watches from headquarters and smiles as R poured him another cup of earl gray; he imagines L sitting in the empty chair beside him, humming with something akin to satisfaction.
Three hours of questioning later, A left the holding cell where Misa Amane lay, pouting and crying and claiming she didn't know how that Death Note got in her room so "stop yelling at me, okay?". His head ached; he rubbed his temples with his fingers, smelled the scent of warm tea wafting in from the kitchenette upstairs.
A comes inside from the downstairs to find Matsuda brewing a pot of rubbed tea, whistling an upbeat yet uneven tune as he pours tea into two cups already set out on the table.
"Good morning," Matsuda says cheerfully, and A remembers dully that the arrest had happened at night, and it was now about six o'clock am. That's right, he thinks, Matsuda and Raito had slept over after the raid to go over the pages of the Death Note, while Mogi and Aizawa kept watch on Misa and Soichiro helped Ide smooth over technical issues of arrest and detainment with the metro police. R was probably out buying breakfast for the whole force (A was difficult when it came to remembering to restock the cupboards; he often forgot he wasn't the only one eating anymore).
"I made you some tea, I hope you don't mind I kinda picked one at random. Raito's fallen asleep, so it's only the two of us for now." A picks up a cup and gave it a sip, then wonders why Matsuda was looking at him most curiously.
"Is there something wrong, Matsuda?"
Matsuda blushes, becomes flustered. "It's just that, well, L usually put practically half a pound of sugar in his tea every time and you're drinking it straight -- it's just kinda odd, that's all." He looks at if he had offended A by mentioning L's name, but he has only humored the other man with the memory.
A pause and then: "Do you know why they started mass producing artificial sweetners?" A asked, watching Matsuda from over the rim of his cup.
The other man looks confused for a moment. "Not really. Why?"
"Because the head of the FBI at the time feared the sugar used in everyday consumption for things like baked goods, sweetening tea, et cetera, would eventually kill their top detective. So they started making sucralose in large amounts in the hope that he would use that instead, spare them the thought of him in a sugar-induced coma, unable to fulfill his duties."
Matsuda blinks, then smiles. "Oh! You mean L?"
A nodded and - he could not help it - smiled back.
After a moment, Matsuda asks, "Is that story true?"
"Hmm?"
"About the sugar."
A thinks for a moment, finger pressed to his chin. "Chances of it being true are . . . 85.4%, I'd say."
On her bunk, Misa frowns as she hears the soft notes of Matsuda's laughter echo from above.
"I'm going out," A says, and both Matsuda and Mogi almost fall out of their seats. A goes to only two places every day: his hotel room and headquarters. His leaving in the middle of the day is a bit of a surprise, but they don't stop him. Soichiro does ask him where he's going; A says to see the chief of police, a man he only contacted via phone or via online conference.
"There's some business I need to clear up. Should not take too long. Do look after the building while I'm gone, will you."
After an hour of not hearing from A, Matsuda begins worrying -- the chief's office isn't that far from HQ, could something had gone wrong? Raito, who is keeping surveillance of the police broadcasts on inmates suffering from heart attacks, tells him not to worry. All Matsuda can do to keep himself from finding their lead detective himself is make tea for everyone, make tea and keep smiling and not frantically call A's cell phone.
But he does call A's phone, and soon everyone is looking at A's desk, and the drawer which is now vibrating and emitting a quick beeping sound. Finally, it is Aizawa who opens the drawer, pulls out A's cell phone, which stops shaking in his hand a second later.
"Matsuda, Aizawa, go to the police headquarters," Soichiro ordered, "I'll call the chief, let him know you're heading his way. Ide, call R, tell him A has gone missing. Raito, Mogi, go to Misa's house and see if he's there. The first one to confirm A's location calls in immediately afterward, understand?"
They all nod and do as their told to the sound of Soichiro's worried grumbles as he starts up the GPS tracking system, hoping that A is at least wearing his belt with the chip inside the buckle.
A half an hour later, Matsuda and Aizawa come back empty-handed, and Soichiro berates them harshly for leaving so quickly and not waiting around to see if A comes back, makes them feel like schoolchildren who have done wrong in the eyes of their headmaster. Matsuda swallows hard, tries to remember the taste of rubbed tea and sugar from that morning while helping Aizawa and Soichiro get a signal on the chip in A's belt buckle.
The system is up and running and confusing everyone because the little red dot that is supposed to represent A is directly above the little white square that is supposed to represent the HQ building.
Matsuda imagines A walking around Tokyo, holding his pants up with one hand, drinking tea out of a plastic cup in the other. He pinches himself on the arm to keep from snorting aloud.
"What could this mean?" Soichiro wonders aloud.
"A could be here already and no one noticed," Aizawa suggests. "Maybe he's planning on surprising us with something?"
"Or he never left," Ide adds, frowning. It seems they were all thinking the same thing: he's more difficult than L ever was.
They heard several beeps from outside and a creak, like the front door was opening.
"Maybe that's Mogi and Raito back from Misa's house," Matsuda says blankly, one eye cast on the door leading into the rest of the building, which opened a minute later.
A pokes his head in and looks inside."Oh, did I miss something?" He stares, they stare back. "So it's just you four, right? Matsuda, Aizawa, Ide and Soichiro. Well, this turned out better than expected."
Soichiro is the first to speak up from his side of the room. "Where have you been, A? I sent the whole team out looking for you?"
Matsuda remembers the belt. "What about the chip in your belt buckle? We couldn't find you until just now."
A taps something out of sight, and on the computer screen his red dot vanishes. "I deactivated it before I left and turned it back on when I was outside the door. Didn't want anyone following me."
"Why would we do a thing like that?" Aizawa asked. A gave Matsuda a glance, and he understood: something he didn't want one of us to know.
"Mister Yagami. . ." He sighs, rubs his eyes and frown. "I was in your house, going through your family's belongings."
Soichiro roar, spring to his feet, and the others tense up, ready to restrain him ."How dare you? What gives you the -- oh God no."
For A held up the fruits of his search. A Death Note, wrapped up in an evidence bag; the tag marked the location of the object Yagami Raito's bedroom, desk, top drawer.
Raito came back half an hour later to the sound of handcuffs closing over his wrists.
Japan in February is cold, and it seems colder than usual this year. There's a trial, but A doesn't go, he's not required, and somehow he feels no one would want him there. He's the one who found Kira; he's the one who found Yagami's son guilty.
Guilty, and the verdict is life in prison, no parole, for both him and his partner in crime Misa. If there is some kind of irony in it, A does not take notice.
Something's burning in the street when he comes home from debriefing the chief of police. Someone's built a bonfire, small but bright, in the middle of the street. Even though the police will be by in the next half-hour to put it out, neighbors gather round and warm themselves around it while talking to one another, trading stories, talking about their different days.
A tightens his hold on the bag in his arms and is half-way to his apartment building when someone calls out his name (actually, his alias. He turns, and there's Matsuda, in a heavy coat and knit cap, waving as he stepped closer to him.
"Matsuda," A says as a greeting, frowns when they end up standing together next to the bonfire.
A is surprised to see Matsuda is frowning; it looks utterly unnatural on the young man's face. "I just wanted to come over and say thank you for your help in catching him," he said, voice lowered, "And I know you'll probably be on the next plane out of here in the morning, so, well, I just wanted to say so before that happens."
A tilts his head slightly. "Why would you presume I'm leaving?"
"Don't you leave at the end of all your cases?"
A laughs a slight coarse laugh. "I have not been the lead detective of that house for some time, or ever. There is no reason for me to leave here, as far as I can tell."
He looks at Matsuda and resents the look in the other man's eyes, like he can't decide to be shocked or scared at his revelation. He continued, "I am a back-up, and although I have completed the task given to me by the head of police, I have no obligation, moral or otherwise, to leave Japan."
They stand for a moment together, in silence, as people around them continue to natter on casually over their heads.
"It's in my bag," A finally says. He moves one arm slightly; the paper bag crinkles loudly.
"What do you mean, A?"
"It is in my bag; I took it out of the evidence room. Both of them."
A look of realization and horror flashes across Matsuda's face. "But why?"
A shrugs. "I had the idea that something better could be done with them." He saw justice doled out world-wide by a human hand with Death perched on his shoulder. He read the rules; you use the Note, there is no turning back, no light at the end of the tunnel when you die.
The look on Matsuda's face, the strangled way he whispers, "You just can't do that,"; this is enough for A. He sighs, says "I imagined that wouldn't work," and without any words threw the paper bag into the bonfire. There was a spark of light when the bag fell into the heart of the fire, but faded as the flames hungrily ate up the densely bound paper inside.
Overhead, A thinks he hears the flutter of wings, like a bird flying away into the sky, unseen.
The two of them end up drinking tea in A's living room, a rooibos blend served in his French tea set. He uses a phone book as a coaster; all other surfaces are covered with files and books, computers taken from taskforce HQ and once belonged to L. Dirty clothes are strewn over the backs of unused chairs for all the world to see, and it becomes painfully obvious to Matsuda that A was not expecting company that day (also, he really needed to clean up his place once in a while; what a difference compared to his old teacher).
A wonders idly as he drinks if asking Matsuda to clean up for him would be a inappropriate request. He decides to think on it later.
He breaks the silence first. "Do you remember when Raito was arrested?"
Matsuda nodded, yes, how could they forget what happened: the way Raito strained against his cuffs; how he made three fully grown men struggle to hold him down as he gnashed and wailed; how he cursed out A's name as he sunk the needle into the boy's vein, knocking him out so they could carry his unconscious form into the police car, drive him down to headquarters and officially arrest him once he woke up and was surrounded by armed police officers.
"Don't cry," A deadpans and Matsuda realizes his body is shaking from the force of the memories, from the trust broken between him and the man once destined to become the next great detective.
Matsuda did not know which scared him more: that someone so smart like Raito could turn out to be a mass murderer, or that someone so clever like A almost fell into the same trap.
A quote springs to mind: We come together, like drops of water, like the astral bodies. We oppose each other like magnets, like the colors of skin.
He can't remember if this is a poem or some childish prose from a back issue of a weekly shonen magazine, but suddenly it makes sense, for now A's hand is on his shoulder, as if to steady the younger man, but it's not enough, it's never enough until it becomes more than he ever expected.
Seconds pass; A's hand is pressing into Matsuda's hip, his mouth on his, their tongues overlapping and tasting one another (he thinks that Matsuda tastes like tea leaves and sugar and a hint of fresh satsumas which makes A frown and thinks why didn't I get one?).
Ten minutes later, they are lying breathlessly on A's futon, dirty and half-dressed, the taste of Matsuda's aroma thick and heavy in A's mouth. Matsuda shudders, touches A's arm lightly. Like a snake, he reels back from Matsuda's touch.
"I need to go out," he mutters, absentmindedly throwing off his remaining clothes -- his pants and everything underneath -- into a huddled ball before rummaging around in a mislaid laundry bin nearby. Matsuda can't help but frown from his position on the floor, watching A's naked body go through the only clean laundry he has on hand. The man's body is lean and pale and he wants to explore it with his hands until he knows every contour and fold like the back of his own hand. He blushes at the thought; it seems so unlike him, but there's something about A that brings out the odder qualities in him.
A is dressed and shrugging on his overcoat when Matsuda says, "What about --- well, what just happened?"
"Coitus, sexual intercourse, a meeting of two bodies in a sensual matter." A blinks. "Didn't you know what it was when you were doing it?"
Matsuda blushes deeper now, dragging a blanket over his chest. He watches A's back retreat through the front door and thinks, This can't possibly work, us together.
Two hours later, A returns, face flushed from the winter air outside, to find Matsuda asleep on his futon, limbs flung about as if openly hugging the air. In the light of the moon half-risen shining through the window, A undresses down to his underwear and socks, lies down next to Matsuda and folds himself up in the crook of the younger man's arm; the odd couple in rest.
'This can't possibly work, us together', but somehow Matsuda's girlfriend of one week breaks up with him, his landlord kicks him out and soon he's shacked up with A. A wakes up every morning at six to find the apartment cleaned and breakfast cooking away on the stovetop and he wonders if Matsuda plans to stay for the long run.
Now that the other man's worldly possessions are in A's living space, he looks around to see what's changed. Matsuda's back log of Weekly Shonen Jumps and detective pulps look odd next to A's collection of books: philosophy and fairy tales and mathematical theorems. Stories about numbers and equations, right and wrong and moral are wedged next to tales of ninjas and wizards and hardboiled detectives that make Raymond Chandler read like The Tales of Genji.
In the closet are A's long-sleeved shirts and fleece sweatshirts lined up next to Matsuda's suits and t-shirts, and none of the t-shirts are plain tees, because when Matsuda goes casual, he has to wear a shirt with some quirky phrase or logo or fictional character on it, for reasons A can't comprehend other than he must really, really like Astro Man or whoever he is.
It's nice, he thinks, this contrast. And then he wonders how long until he loses Matsuda for good, until the mark of 'A' makes him leave. 'A-per-se. Alienated. Abandoned. An hero.' Then again, it could be different.
Something starts during a trip to the supermarket. Well, technically, 'something' started in a dirty apartment on a dusty futon between the two of them, but now their relationship had gone from "I am curious about you, let's have sexy times and fight crime" to "I am curious about you, I want to know more about you that's more than your favorite technique in bed and what hours you'll be home from work". It finally dawns on him after spending some time in this thing between them, relationship or connection or whatever, that A is not his typical lover, and not just because he is Matsuda's first male relation, but because he is so fundamentally different and it draws Matsuda closer while at the same time frustrates him continuously. Like now.
"We've been together for seven weeks," Matsuda points out.
"Hm," A said, grabbing a carton of milk, puts it in the basket next to Matsuda's pile of snacks: panko rice crackers; spicy dried squid; different varities of bread; choco babies and fizzing cola candy, all purchased in Matsuda's attempt to introduce A to the great wide world of Japanese snacking.
"Isn't that, y'know, significant?"
A pulls on his lip and frowns, which is the sign to Matsuda that he's thinking about it.
In the car (Matsuda's, as A doesn't know how to drive and Ruvie was giving lessons via webcast to Wammy's House), he asks, again, "Isn't it important? Isn't this an important day to have been together seven whole weeks? That's a long time."
A fiddles with his seat belt, twisting the strap between his fingers, counting the individual strands of fibers with his fingers. "Hm. Seven weeks." He looks up, blinks at Matsuda's reflection in the front mirror. "Is it an omen?"
The detective is conflicted on how to knock sense into his partner-cum-"partner"'s head, either mentally or physically. He thinks that surely a graduate (all right, drop out) from Wammy's House could be so mind-numbingly dense at times about the most humanly fundamental of things. Especially given that on that day, Matsuda had ferried A through the local pharmacy, dry cleaner, bakery and supermarket and had not seen A even notice the bright pastel decorations covering every square inch of each storefront, or the specialty items laid out on display just for that time of year. Matsuda had even circled the date in bright red on A's calendar, the one that hung on the wall opposite A's sleeping space, as he was prone to forget dates without assistance.
It was taking quite a bit of will power on Matsuda's behalf not to pull A up by the bony shoulders and shout "It's Valentine's Day, you idiot!" as loud as possible.
"Drop me off at the station," A murmurs. "I need to talk to Chief Yagami. You can go home without me." Matsuda grumbles, but acquiesces. At home, he pulls out his favorite apron -- the powder blue one with mini Doraemons on it, like the one his mom bought him when he was little and making toast and eggs for the first time. Matsuda can't help but wonder what A's childhood was like, if he even remembers his parents or anything before Wammy's House, if the memories are too painful to drag up now. But yet, he still wants to know, and the wanting lets him know he can't let A go, not yet, even if he was quite insufferable at times.
He's in the middle of deciding what to make for dinner, fish or meat, when his cell phone rings. Matsuda has to wipe off his hands (condensation from the old milk A kept forgetting to throw out and now smells faintly of mold) before answering, but he answers just in time.
It's A. "Look outside the window facing the apartment complex on the south road. Headquarters reports a disturbance there, so could you check on that tip?"
"Look, A---"
"Are you looking? Something might be on fire, you know. That would be a terrible thing, someone's home burning down in winter."
Matsuda frowns, feels like his brow is going to sink into his forehead at this rate. "On my way to the window," he says, setting down the packets of instant miso A has taken a liking to and crosses through the apartment to the south-most window.
He draws back the heavy curtains and looks at the apartment complex, owned by old man Yamazaki who has often given Matsuda the stink eye as he takes the trash out in the morning (he can't decide if it's because he's in a certain sort of relation or if he just hates young people). The sun is coming in at an odd angle, so Matsuda has to squint, but after a while he notices no fire, but something equally odd. The windows -- no, the lights in the many windows sprinkling the front of the building seemed to be making a pattern. Not a pattern. Kanji. Symbols that, Matsuda realizes in a mixture of shock and awe, spell out a message meant only for him.
MATSUDA. I BELIEVE I AM FOND OF YOU. DO YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE? A.
Matsuda takes a moment to let it sink in, the enormity of it all. That A would do something like that. It was a declaration. Then he scrambles to retrieve the phone he'd sunk into his apron pocket, thanking all the deities in the skies that it had happened to stay on in his pouch.
"A?"
"Ah, Matsuda." A sounds calm, which given the circumstances, would be strange in another man but perfectly A in him. "I suspect you saw the disturbance at Yamazaki?"
"Yeah. I did." Matsuda can't help but look at the lights and laugh, and when A joins him, it is the sweetest sound in the world.
That night, they drink tea in expensive saucers and eat instant miso and baked salmon while discussing the latest cases hitting the Tokyo area (serial killers, arsonists, false Kiras, the usual suspects) and watching corny game shows on A's multiple TV sets, each screen set to the same channel in a radically different hue for fun.
After dinner, A pulls out a paper wrapped box from the table and hands it to Matsuda casually. There was no doubt about what was in it, judging from the overwhelming smell of cocoa coming from inside. He opens it, and there is a cornucopia of baked goods that look too good to be true.
"Aizawa's wife made all this, didn't she?" Matsuda says teasingly as he chewed on a nub of chocolate.
"Hmm." A bites the head off of a chocolate gingerbread man hybrid, blinks. "I will admit that you are right. But I can make sweets by hand."
"Why didn't you?" Matsuda managed between taking bites from a hunk of fudge in his hand.
"Maybe next year," A says, then covers his mouth with sticky fingers. "Ah. I shouldn't say that. It will jinx it."
Matsuda agrees, wants to tell him to shut up already and just eat, but he decides to kiss him instead.
Instantly, A reels back as if he's been slapped. "Y-you!" He starts rubbing the inside of his mouth with his fingers. "Oh, you know I hate that stuff. I'm going to taste like mint for days."
A is hopping around the apartment, face slightly red, trying to scrub the taste of mint out of his mouth and even though Matsuda should feel slightly hurt -- after all, you did kiss him with that mouth, what a reaction to have -- he decides not to. He'll never admit it out loud, but A looks too adorable to bother getting mad over.
Besides, there was always next year.
One year later
Birds flutter outside the window, creating a sweet song that the boy hears but doesn't hear. He probably does not even hear A's voice, but the possibility is still there, and it prompts A to keep reading. Sunlight from the morning sun filters through the ruffled curtains and lights the words on the page; they are in French but A speaks in Japanese, and the translation seems perfect.
"Then the King, who came up at hearing the noise, remembered what the fairies had foretold. He knew very well that this must come to pass, since the fairies had foretold it, and he caused the Princess to be carried into the finest room in his palace, and to be laid upon a bed all embroidered with gold and silver."
He can not help but glance over at him as he reads on. "One would have taken her for a little angel, she was so beautiful; for her swooning had not dimmed the brightness of her complexion: her cheeks were carnation, and her lips coral. It is true her eyes were shut, but she was heard to breathe softly, which satisfied those about her that she was not dead." The rise and fall of his chest is evidence of this, even if his eyes are open as well. Sleeping Beauty with eyes wide open.
"The King gave orders that they should let her sleep quietly till the time came for her to awake."
A lets out a little yawn that seems to surprise even him. A result of overtime at police headquarters, spending more time at the task force's new HQ than at home. Kira was in prison on suicide watch, but the sudden movement of false Kiras had forced the police to re-form the Anti Kira Task Force. Which is good, in a way, because that means more work for the A household and more money for the two of them, even if they only spend it on books and sweets and puzzles Matsuda always leaves half-done.
He looks again at the comatose boy, sitting up in bed, awake but non responsive. "How many years has the king let you sleep, little princess -- no, little prince?" He closes the book of French fairy tales with a soft thump, idly traces the curves and bumps of the book's cracked spine with one finger.
"But I'm awake," he says, then makes a curious 'oh' shape with his mouth as he realizes he didn't say that.
"As usual, you are the crappiest storyteller ever." B frowns, red eyes lingering on A's face. His eyes widen in anger as he realizes what just happened and what is going to happen to him. "Oh, fuck you."
The other man smiles. "Now that you've woken up, I guess it's time for you to go."
A stands up and makes his way towards the door as B shouts his name, curses at him, yells at him to come back and face him like a man, demands to know why A saved his life from life in prison years ago only to kill him now.
"I'm not going to kill you," A says plainly. He taps the book of stories in his arms. "The state will. Lethal injection and all that. I couldn't have them kill you while I was in France, could I? I had to save you until the time was right, until I could look you in the face. I'm afraid I won't be able to watch you die, but this is good enough. I had the chief of police put a hold on your execution, then had the M.E. put you into a forced coma until now. It's taken a year for the paperwork to go through, but now that you're awake, the state can legally take your life, and no one is the wiser for why."
"Fucker," B spits. "You would leave me here to be fucking murdered by this idiots?"
"There's always another way." A makes a motion with his hands, like a noose tightening around his neck. "Become a -- how do you say -- 'an hero'. Worked for me." He waves. "Good-bye, Backup."
The sounds of B's cursing follow A as he exits the hospital. A ignores the looks the nurses give him as he walks pass the station; he shoots back an apologetic smile, as if to say "What can you do?"; this boy who looks ill-fitting in his own body had just torn down the infamous Beyond Birthday with only words.
Outside, he breathes in the morning air, exhales, and lets go of the last link connecting him to Wammy's House. Let Mello and Near fight it out over who becomes L's true successor. A's had his year and, ironically, he finds he does not like it. He enjoys being the police's envoy and all the privileges that come with it, but when people in the task force look at him they only see the man from Wammy's, all grown up and itching to take L's place in the succession line. Which is not true. All A is itching for is a nice cup of tea, a crossword puzzle or two and Matsuda's smiling simple face to greet him at the door every day.
These are not impossible things. But making chocolates for his significant other before he comes home from desk duty might be if A doesn't hurry on home and start baking pronto.
A sighs. If he had known romance would be this hard before, he would have just let B kill him in his bed. Or at least bought a handbook. He feels the wind push him forward an inch, as if it was someone's hand telling him to move on already, feeling like the touch of an old friend. No, an old teacher.
"All right, I'm going already," he mutters, and he can still taste the sweet tea from years ago weighing on his tongue, only now its mixed with the taste of chocolate and gingerbread and the taste of Matsuda. He decides it's a nice taste after all, even if there's mint.
And that, of course, is when A lives. Somewhat happily ever after.