It's been a while, and I am sooo sorry for taking so long! Hopefully none of you lovely people want to murder me, but finally, a little bit more of the story emerges. I hope there's an improvement in my writing for you guys to see, because I personally feel that my other writing has sent me forward leaps and bounds!

Enjoy the chapter guys! And sorry again for the delay!

Chapter Four

The Fun Never Ends

"Hannah. Hannah pick up. Pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up. HANNAH PICK UP THE DAMN PHONE OR-"

"Yes, my duckling? What is it?" Emily growled into the receiver, definitely not feeling up to jokes at the moment. She was too freaked out for that right now.

"Hannah, this is serious."

"Emily, I am serious. What is it? You sound stressed." Hannah really did sound concerned over the line, and Emily sighed and rubbed her eye with the palm of her hand.

"Don't laugh at me, okay?" Emily pleaded. "I'm totally for real about this."

"Alright. I'm listening." She said soothingly. Emily bit her lip. Thinking for a moment about just how serious this might be getting, she changed her mind about talking over the phone. She wasn't being paranoid, just…playing it safe. Yeah.

"A-Actually, it can wait. Sorry, I was spazzing. Do you wanna come over later? We could have hot chocolate…" Emily's free hand moved to begin twisting her hair frantically in the nervous habit of hers. Please understand. She thought. Please please please get the message and say yes.

"…Yeah. In fact, I'll come over in about an hour. I don't have much to do today. Wanna watch a movie or something too?"

Barely managing to keep the relieved sigh from escaping her, Emily nodded despite her friend not being able to see it.

"Yeah. That sounds awesome. I'll make some snacks."

"Coolio! See ya later alligator!" Emily smiled.

"In a while crocodile." She responded. Taking the phone from her ear, she ended the call and tossed the thing onto the bed beside her. She then hunkered down with her pillow to wait.

Emily hoped to god that she wasn't going insane.

About an hour later, and Emily had left her blankets and pillows to go and prepare the promised snacks. She filled a bowl with M&M's and had just shoved the popcorn into the microwave when the doorbell rang, the familiar voice of her bestie calling out from the other side.

"Duckling! I'm here! And I come bearing gifts!"

With a grin Emily abandoned the popcorn to its buttery fate and answered the door. "What gifts?" she said immediately. Hannah gave her a playful pout as she came in before shutting the door behind her to keep out the frigid air.

"Is that all you think of when I come over? The stuff I bring?" She teased. Emily visibly relaxed, her shoulders sinking and the stress practically dripping off of her person. She hadn't even known she'd been so wound up.

"Usually. Whenever you don' t stuff I just zone out, and can't seem to pay attention…" Emily grinned at the black haired woman when she punched her lightly in the arm.

"You little butt." She muttered, dumping her purse and scarf on the floor. She did, however, bring up a grocery bag filled with something wonderful indeed.

"Ice cream!" Emily squealed, practically ripping the container from her hands. Hannah just laughed and the two went about preparing their things. That meant an abundance of pillows and blankets, plenty of junk food, the container of ice cream, and a nice selection of movies.

Once everything was settled and the movie was in the player, Hannah picked up the remote and instead of starting the movie, put it aside.

"Okay, Hashbrown. Spill. What had you so worked up over the phone?"

Emily, who had previously been content to shove ice cream into her face, froze mid-bite, and slowly lowered the spoon back into her bowl. Staring into her lap, she contemplated for a moment.

If she was wrong about it, then she'd just look like an idiot. (Which honestly happened most of the time anyway.) And now that she actually had Hannah with her, she was beginning to doubt herself all over again. Maybe she had just…said it without realizing?

No. She was sure she hadn't. He had said Andrew, and she had said Emily. That was it.

Emily took a deep breath.

"Okay…" She began. Already the urge to begin messing with her hair had her moving to do so, but she quickly forced herself to sit still, hugging the pillow she was wrapped around under the blankets. "First things first." She said seriously, looking at Hannah from the corner of her eye. "You have to promise not to laugh or anything, because I am not exaggerating at all. I swear." The girl nodded solemnly, and she took another deep breath to contine.

"Alright." She said. "I…think someone is stalking me." Shooting a quick glance at Hannah, she saw her brows were furrowed, but whether in confusion or concern, she couldn't tell. She looked back at her blankets and started again. "I'm…not sure. I ran into this guy, and he seemed pretty nice, but he was cosplaying as this character from an anime. He bought me some strawberries for running into me, even though it was probably my fault, and then he left. I didn't realize he had been cosplaying until after I got home, though. That was months ago though.

"Then, recently, I was out getting groceries, and I ran into him again. We starting talking and stuff, nothing unusual besides the fact that he was in the same stupid cosplay as last time. Maybe he just dresses like the character every day for normal clothes, or something. I don't know. But then he told me we were being followed." Here, she stopped for a moment as her voice hitched, but only paused shortly before continuing. Her hand was up in hair and twirling and tangling the strands and she didn't even notice.

"He said the person following wasn't violent, and probably wasn't even going to approach us, especially since he was talking with me. The stalker never did, but he could have been lying or something. Because right when he said good bye, he said my last name…but I never told him my last name." Emily looked up at Hannah, eyes wide. "What if he's the one stalking me?"

Hannah sat back against the couch, one hand on her chin and the other supporting her elbow. Her eyes were narrowed in that way that showed somebody was thinking pretty seriously about something.

"…I don't know Emily. It sounds kind of…unlikely." Hannah finally muttered, looking at her apologetically.

Emily slumped.

"I knew it." She mumbled.

"Now hold on!" Hannah said, waving a hand in her face. "Let's go through this. You met him that first time a few months ago. Did you just come from work?"

After a few beats of silence, Emily nodded.

"I don't see what that's has to do with-"

"Hush." Hannah commanded. "Then you got a snack or whatever with him. I happen to know for a fact that Ricky makes you wear a nametag, and that for some idiot reason your last name is on there. Right?" Emily nodded hesitantly.

"So there's the last name issue solved." Hannah smirked, counting it off on her fingers. "As for him being a stalker, or possibly a stalkee; maybe his stalker was an ex girlfriend and he wanted to get away from her. Exes can be pretty annoying. Talking to another girl was probably his best bet at that, and he knew you, so he wouldn't be going up to a complete stranger." Emily nodded again, thinking.

"He did mention something about walking me sense he knew me…" She conceded. "But what if he was lying?" She asked. For all either of them knew, L, Andrew, whoever the hell he was had been lying and just used it as an excuse to walk with her! But then again…he could have not said anything about a stalker, after all they had started off the conversation pretty normally…

"Easy." Hannah said confidently. There was a gleam in her eye that Emily didn't particularly like. "Maybe he told you that so he could talk to you, because maybe he likes you."

Emily's thought processes ground to a stop.

After a few moments of incoherent spluttering, she finally managed to squeak out a single word.

"What!?"

Hannah immediately began laughing at the complete shock on her friend's face, as though the mere idea of someone liking her was inconceivable.

"Your face!" She wheezed. "Jeez, Emily! I can't believe you didn't think of that! That maybe he liked you and wanted to have some kind of reason for talking to you other than being creepy and recognizing you on the street!" Hannah sighed happily and wiped imaginary tears out of her eyes. "Priceless." She sang.

Emily grumbled to herself as Hannah finally got the movie going. Admittedly, it did make some sense. More sense than the idea that she was being stalked by a fictional detective, anyway.

God damn it. I need to stop being crazy.

Now finally having a viable excuse as for why the L look-a-like knew her last name, and made the stalker comment, Emily managed to shove the rest of the disturbing facts into the back of her mind and focus back in on her life.

She didn't dwell on the fact that he dressed like L, and wore no shoes, and held his phone and food in those same weird ways, and sat crouched in his seat, and hunched over, and basically...acted like L.

All of the facts that just didn't add up got shoved into some dusty closet in the back of her mindspace. She might not ever know his actual reasons for telling her he was being stalked, but now she had some pretty plausible reasons, and that was enough for her.

It was just her bad luck that not a week after all of these things had been resolved that a certain slouching dark-eyed customer came wandering in on one of those horrid slow days, shuffling around to study the café.

To be honest, Emily didn't even notice him at first. She was too busy getting two teenage girls their pumpkin spice rip-offs to really take notice of the latest caffeine-starved citizen. It wasn't until after several minutes of studying the random decorations on the walls that he approached the counter, looking surprised.

"Hello there, how can I- oh. Uhm, hi there, Andrew. Can I...get you something?"

L smiled.

God damn it.