Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note, wish I did. Last chapter's song was correctly guessed by kie-san to be The Killers' "Mr Brightside" – a cookie for your effort!
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Mind Games
Chapter 2: A Dentist's Dream
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You love the way I look at you
While taking pleasure in the awful things you put me through
You take away if I give in
My life
My pride is broken
You love the things I say I'll do
The way I'll hurt myself again just to get back at you
You take away when I give in
My life
My pride is broken
Well, it was safe to assert that Yagami Raito was officially having a bad day. As if waking up nose-to-nose and hopelessly tangled in the chains attached to the wrist of one Ryuuzaki, he was now forced to endure spending the rest of the day joined to this same infuriating person. Not that Raito had a lot of choices in this matter. It was all L's fault, once again. Ordinarily, if something embarrassing had happened to the young Raito, his first reaction would have been to either avoid the witnesses for the rest of his life, make it look like it wasn't his fault, or claim not to remember the occurrence.
Sadly, in this case, none of those options was open to him.
Now, Ryuuzaki had been a perfect gentleman about the whole ordeal. He had sat patiently outside the bathroom door while Raito tended to his new bruises without so much as a complaint, and had even offered him some healing balm. He hadn't said a word about the controversial situation to any of the team, and by the looks of his vacant expression, wasn't going to any time soon.
The spindly detective had plugged himself back into his computer and was tacking away at the keys like a university student needing to hand in their thesis the next day having ignored it for the past year. The constant drilling on the keys was a nuisance to Raito's sensitive hearing. He still hadn't managed to get enough sleep to stop himself from feeling irritable, and so far, Ryuuzaki was not helping matters. He could even annoy Raito indirectly. That in itself was an admirable skill, or at least one that usually didn't survive for very long, if Raito had anything to say about it. Or more appropriately, Raito's fist had anything to say about it.
"Have you found anything, Yagami-kun?" To his surprise, L voluntarily broke the silence. Maybe he'd noticed Raito glaring at the back of his skull as if willing his eyes to become lasers and burn holes into the detective's brain, therefore preventing all but the eventual issue of being handcuffed to a corpse. He hurriedly blinked and adopted a startled expression. It seemed slightly more suitable for the present company.
"Not yet, Ryuuzaki," he answered monotonously, glancing back down at his desk. Different colours of important papers were strewn everywhere. Raito didn't like coloured paper. It dumbed down perfectly serviceable reports into something that all but the colour-blind couldn't understand. It was annoying, and he couldn't handle many more annoying things at the moment. "There reports are all too vague on the details of what happened before the murders. I'd like to actually see if there's a common trait. Perhaps Kira has to do something specific to each of the victims in order to kill them."
Ryuuzaki turned slightly in his chair, head now over his shoulder to stare at the other youth. Ye gods, he's eating a lollipop. Raito quickly quashed that miscellaneous thought and concentrated on fixing L with a pensive stare. "We haven't actually seen any of the murders until we only have a body to work with. Maybe there's some sort of trigger that we can't see on the body when it has ceased to function."
L blinked. "What made you come up with that theory?"
"Because all the other ones we have at the moment at useless," Raito added a detersive laugh to that statement before it could spark an argument. "We haven't gotten any closer yet, so maybe we need to look in a different place. Branch out a little."
Matsuda sat up straighter in his chair. "Hey, Raito-kun's got a good point there! We should arrange to see just what happens before the murders!"
Raito closed his eyes. Damn. If Matsuda agreed with a plan, then it was obviously a bad one. "And how do we arrange to do that Matsuda, if we don't know who the next target will be?"
"Oh…" the young man trailed off, hopeful expression crushed as he sat back heavily in his swivel chair. "I suppose you're right, Raito-kun… but it is a good idea if we can use it."
"Hm," remarked L in a notably obtuse fashion. He was staring intently at Raito, eyes locked with concentration. There was something predatorial in that gaze. Raito had a feeling that even though all he'd done was make a suggestion that would have been forced out of him either way, he had just done something incriminating.
"What makes you think that Kira needs to do something to the victim before killing them?" queried L mildly. "After all, he has managed to kill people whom he has never seen up until the moment of their death." The detective was nonchalantly examining his fingernails as Raito cursed mentally. What a stupid idea to have thrown into the open… he'd needed something to say, but that particular something had only made him look foolish.
"Yeah, you're right," he yawned. "Sorry. Still sleepy." Hoping to close the conversation, he bent over his stack of offensively bright and chirpily covered papers and feigned studiousness. It was so annoying to pretend to be researching something that he could accidentally blurt the answer to in his sleep. Even more annoying to be stuck with Ryuuzaki, who was not only persisting in suspecting him of being a homicidal maniac, but had to make him look bad in front of the other idiots. Hateful business. The sooner the chain was off, the better.
Hours ticked by and no one moved, until finally the clocked rolled over to six o'clock. Downtime. It was a mutual understanding that everyone would go their separate ways at six, whether it was only for a temporary dinner break and return to work for a couple of hours afterwards, or to head home entirely. Raito watched out the corner of his eye as one by one the other members of the Kira team filed out of the door, chatting amiably.
"See you tomorrow, Raito, Ryuuzaki."
Raito lifted one hand by way of a parting gesture, still poring over his paper and penning the occasional note into the margins. Everyone was gone now, save for Ryuuzaki. Even Watari was nowhere to be seen. Not that Raito was ever particularly fond of the old fossil.
A couple of minutes. "You want to get some dinner?" questioned Raito by way of conversation. He reclined in his chair, spine cracking audibly in the process. "I've found nothing groundbreaking to do for now."
Ryuuzaki turned from his own screen, face starkly pale after what Raito assumed must be years of sitting in front of the monitor, or perhaps from a vampiric genetic disorder. "Watari's busy, Yagami-kun. You'll have to wait until he gets back to order something to eat."
Well that was aggravating to say the least. Raito moved one arm over his stomach to suppress a grumble that was threatening to erupt. He hadn't eaten a solid meal since breakfast, and had only drank liquid caffeine throughout lunch. If he didn't get something to eat soon, the noise from his stomach was going to become intolerably embarrassing. "Don't you have anything to keep us going in the mini-bar fridge?"
L stared at him as though he had suddenly come across a new species of animal, but shrugged nonetheless. "Take a look."
Typical. The bar fridge was conveniently located at Ryuuzaki's feet, and yet he couldn't be bothered to check it for Raito. As the pale youth turned back to his screen, Raito huffed and sat up, stalking out of his chair and over to Ryuuzaki. The other teen seemed to be completely enthralled with whatever monotonous document he was reading. Raito snorted softly, just loud enough for L to hear it and to consider feeling foolish. At which point, Raito himself was met with a slight crisis.
To reach the fridge, he had to kneel down. Down to the level where Ryuuzaki's feet would be if he actually sat like a normal human being. Raito didn't like that idea much at all. He hesitated. If he turned around and went back to his chair, L would ask him what was wrong, which would only be even more awkward. A denial of his hunger would only backfire. But what if another horrible situation befell him as soon as he knelt down? What if Ryuuzaki finally overbalanced from his ridiculous position and fell on him, only to have the rest of the team and a couple of stray television crews come into the room?
Maybe he was just being paranoid. Or maybe he was just being an intellectual. It was hard to tell sometimes.
He had taken too long. L rolled one lazy, staring eye up at him, thumb pinched resolutely in his mouth. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Sore knees," he lied smoothly. Damn. Here goes nothing. He gingerly crouched onto the ground, focusing intently on the little fridge. I must not look at Ryuuzaki. I must not catch his eye. I must not see anything from this angle. I must pretend that I am completely at ease with being at seat-of-chair level, in a completely non-dodgy, non-questionable sense of the word. Damn.
Prying open the bar fridge, Raito's mouth fell open in dismay. What was this rubbish?
Ryuuzaki leant forwards in his chair, head lowering to be level with Raito's as he joined in the spectator sport that seemed to be unfolding before his fridge. "Is there a problem?" Raito jumped, turning his head slightly and nearly shooting backwards in revulsion when he noticed how close Ryuuzaki's face was to his own. Not again, damnit! Despite Raito's less than appreciative reaction, L seemed not to notice. He was too busy staring into the depths of the fridge, with something akin to affection in his eyes.
"You want to have some of that?" Raito stared in disbelief as L pointed calmly towards a large slice of strawberry sponge cake. It had to be the most intolerably sugary thing that he had ever beheld. Even from a distance you could smell the sugar on it. It glittered in little crystals on the thick layers of icing; three colours, no less; on the glossy, glazed strawberry itself. The sponge was a custardy yellow, and looked as heavy to eat as a house brick.
"Are you kidding? My dentist would have a heart attack," laughed Raito weakly.
"Excellent," replied Ryuuzaki, reaching out and seizing the chilled plate on which the sugar-encrusted questionably edible product was perched. "I was hoping you'd say no."
"Then why did you offer?" queried Raito mildly, still examining the contents of the fridge. A can of American frosting, several chocolate bars, a jug of custard. A whole range of sugary products that he couldn't even name. "Don't you have any fruit, or savoury stuff in here?"
"Strawberry's a fruit," pointed out L with a mouthful of icing sugar. "And I only offered it to you because I knew you'd say no. It was therefore a polite gesture that wouldn't cost me anything."
Raito snickered. "That's unusually manipulative of you. And no, I disagree. After what that strawberry's been subjected to, it is most certainly no longer a fruit. What's that?" He pointed at another package.
"Crème caramel."
Ick. "Do you only eat sweet things, out of curiosity?" Now that Raito thought about it, he had never seen the remarkably skinny detective eat anything that contained less than 39 sugar. Just how on earth did one manage to retain such a punitive weight with such a horrible diet in Raito's opinion?
L didn't answer. He was too busy licking a great chunk of icing off his fingers, eyelids lowered with something approaching glee. Raito studied this peculiar expression intently. How very odd. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Either he should poison a slice of cake, and get rid of Ryuuzaki entirely, or cover his handcuff with icing, since there was a very high chance that L would eat it despite himself, and also free Raito at the same time.
Wait… he didn't just think that did he? How revolting…
And speaking of revolting, he was still at foot level with Ryuuzaki. Staggering to his own feet, Raito glared down at L from his much more reassuring height. "When will Watari be back, Ryuuzaki? You've got food now, but I'm still starving." He tried to present it with a humourous slant. It was so taxing on his brain to be humourous when it was clamouring for food.
"Watari won't be finished running errands for at least another two hours and forty-five minutes," informed L. He glanced up at the silently fuming Raito. "If you're that hungry, Yagami-kun, there is plenty of food here. You oughtn't sulk just because it's not your favourite dish."
"It's not that," hissed Raito. "It's that I happen to value my teeth enough to not to want to coat them with that sugary garbage."
"Then brush your teeth before you go to bed for once."
Raito could have sworn that a vein above his eye just twitched.
"Come on Yagami-kun," coaxed Ryuuzaki. He bit off a chunk of the rich sponge cake, eyes closing appreciatively. "It's really not that bad, I assure you. There's some fruit flan at the back if you'd rather try something less…artificial." There was a hint of a chuckle in that comment. Raito felt like grabbing the offered fruit flan and upending it over Ryuuzaki's head. That'd shut him up, even if it was only to eat the flan before it was wasted.
"Fine," he sighed in a spirited imitation of an amiable defeat. "But only if we definitely get something more substantial to eat later." Knowing L, he'd take the fact that they'd both consumed cake (shudder) to mean that they'd eaten enough for the night. It wasn't that Raito didn't like cake. He enjoyed it on occasion, it could be said. But what he did not like, was living off the same staple diet as his unwitting adversary. For all he knew, not consuming one's own body weight in sugar every three days was all that was preventing him from sitting like a hunchback and looking like the lovechild of an owl and a spider.
He poked around the back of the fridge. At least there was nothing moldering away back there; nothing survived here long enough. Ryuuzaki saw to that. There was the fruit flan in question. It glistened with a thick coating of glucose syrup. How disgusting. But it was primarily fruit, it had to be said. A mixture of kiwi fruit, strawberries, blueberries and peaches lurked in a colourful array of sugar-infused nutrients. Raito's stomach snarled threateningly, and he could have sworn that he'd just heard L suppress a snort at the sound. This was a do-or-die situation for his dignity. Gingerly prying the cling-film wrapped plate free from its confines, Raito stared down his nose at the inoffensive dessert.
Ryuuzaki was watching him over the strawberry horizon of his disastrous reply to juvenile diabetes. Watching him with an expression seemingly too aware, too calculating for someone so sleep deprived it looked as though they'd used a felt-tip pen to colour in the bags under their eyes. Watching for what? A reaction of some kind?
There was no fork, so Raito grimaced as he plucked a glossy kiwi fruit from its syrupy prison between pastry flan and sugar coating. He attempted to surreptitiously scrape off the worst of the sweetner, but desisted as L cleared his throat. He looked over at Ryuuzaki, who was still staring at him. "What?"
"Don't play with your food," he chided, as if to a three year-old. He plucked the strawberry from his own thick slice of cake and popped it easily into his mouth, as if to demonstrate. He chewed for a moment, swallowed and stared pointedly at Raito. "See? Non toxic."
How humiliating. Raito gritted his teeth and stared at the kiwi slice with more than a little apprehension. Just what test was he taking in agreeing to eat this foul thing? Did the percentage of his likeliness of being Kira increase or decrease based on how he ate a piece of fruit, or reacted to the artificial sweetness of it all? This was getting too bizarre even for Raito's skewed tastes.
Tentatively, he lifted the soggy, pathetic little slice of fruit to his lips, parted his teeth and gulped it down. The sugary layer that he hadn't managed to quite scrape off hit his taste buds like a flamethrower. It was repulsive. Did he dare to shudder, or stick his tongue out with disgust, if indeed he could lower himself to do something so base? What would it mean to L if he did? Would he guess that he was Kira simply because he couldn't appreciate the sweet things in life? Because he would do even things that he didn't like if he were dared to? What did it all mean? Raito was used to having all the answers, but he had never come across an adversary of this kind before.
Looking back at Ryuuzaki, Raito searched those enigmatic dark eyes for an answer that he desperately wanted to find. What had L deduced from that foolish little escapade?
"Hm. So the fruit flan was off. I was wondering for a while, but by the look on your face it's just as well I didn't try it, ne?"
Raito couldn't respond. He was too busy spitting out what remained of the flan in his mouth into the nearest wastepaper bin, regardless of what a sight he made.
That was the last time he was going to trust L not to manipulate him like that.
Ryuuzaki chuckled lightly, voice unusually carefree. "You are too easy, Raito-kun. A joke!"
Raito coughed weakly, dropping the wastepaper bin and glaring over his shoulder at the spidery detective, staring owlishly back at him. "What do you mean 'joke'? That it wasn't off, or that the joke's on me?" He highly suspected both.
Ryuuzaki tilted his head to one side, as if perplexed. "I played a joke on you, Yagami-kun," he replied calmly. "There was nothing wrong with that cake. I just wondered how you would react is all. Your natural aversion to sweet products combined with your distrust of me has just been exposed." There was a note of sadness in his otherwise chipper voice. "Did you really think that I would try to give you food poisoning?"
"You think I'm Kira, don't you? It would make sense if you tried to haze me a little." Raito managed to slow his breathing down, suppressing more or less all of the anger that had flooded his system at Ryuuzaki's little 'joke'. "After all, if I'm a heartless criminal, then surely a little poisoning wouldn't go astray," he said bitterly. And to his surprise, the bitterness was authentic. He knew that Ryuuzaki lived every day in search of finding Kira and presenting him to the justice that any mass murderer would receive. Life imprisonment. The death penalty. It was hard to believe that the same person who currently lived chained to your side, who would offer you some of his prized strawberry cake, would just as easily throw you to the wolves.
Not that he would have expected anything else.
At that, L shook his head in mirth. "You tell me not to relate everything to the Kira case, Yagami-kun. Now you yourself are doing it. The fact that you are so guarded makes me think that the chances of you being Kira are even higher."
Damn it. Raito gritted his teeth. This wasn't going very well at all. He needed to start being a bit more friendly, to win L's trust, otherwise he was never going to get off the hook.
A smile faintly sketching itself across his features, Raito lifted his free arm to his shoulder, scratching his neck in a sign of embarrassment. "Look, I'm sorry I reacted so badly, Ryuuzaki-kun. I'm just so hungry that it was like a personal assault when you told me that you'd let me eat something out of date. I shouldn't have snapped like that." Tentatively, ever so slowly, he reached out with the same hand a placed it on Ryuuzaki's shoulder. Something inside him recoiled at the contact, and at the same time something inside him lightened at the look of surprise that crossed L's pallid face.
Maybe there was hope for this little game after all.