The Little Things Give You Away

By AishiExcel

Don't own anything. Half credit goes to Nikkiacat.

Speaking of Nikkiacat (you know, that author I'm always plugging?) I'd just like to make an advertisement in her favor. She's just published her fourth-ever story on and it'd make me super happy to know some of my readers checked her out! I promise she's funny, and her writing isn't atrocious XD So… you can find her on my favorite authors list. Help a newbie to the site grow!!

Now that I've made that PSA, here's my next chapter! Are you on the edge of your seat? Excellent… (Now I sound like Mr. Burns, LOL.)


"Have you ever heard of the elusive Dr. L?"

Light raised an eyebrow and peered into those coal-black eyes. "The elusive Dr. L?"

"Yes." Ryuzaki seemed rather amused. "He's something of a legend around the hospital. It's said that when nobody else can solve the case, Dr. L swoops in with just the right information to piece the cure together. The most mysterious thing is, no one has ever seen L's face. He's never so much as entered a patient's room before."
L's voice had the tone of someone bragging.

Light smiled. He couldn't help it, it was borderline smirk. He was right. All his theories were right, weren't they? "I presume this legendary L might actually be a skinny guy with panda eyes."

"I'm not that skinny," Ryuzaki countered. (But he really was. Light imagined that his ribs were visible under his baggy clothes.)

"Nevertheless. It's clever." Light had to hold back a laugh. He knew it! He was always right! "Do any of the doctors around the hospital know your identity?"

"What identity? I'm just Ryuu, the idiosyncratic oddball that makes all the nurses laugh."

Light smirked. If that was right, and none of the doctors or nurses knew who he was, then Light's theory about Ryuzaki's education had to be right. If Ryuzaki had to hide behind shadows and pseudonyms, there was a high chance it was because he had no medical degree.

"But why would… Dr. L… keep up the façade?" He put on his most innocent and inquisitive look. "Shouldn't he come out and be recognized for his talents?"

"Dr. L has no need of those things."

"What about money?" Now Light was getting straight to the point. He had no illusions about this eccentric fool doing what he did solely out of kindness. Ryuzaki looked like a lot of things, but a bleeding heart wasn't one of them. "Surely L gets paid somehow for his assistance. How can he get paid if no-one knows his name or who he is?"

Ryuzaki returned his attention to the Discovery Channel. (It was talking about the mating habits of wildebeests. It was rather disturbing how raptly he was watching it.) "Dr. L receives no pay."

"Then why would he take on cases?" Now Light's mind was beginning to form questions. The HOW he'd gotten easily enough, but WHY? "Purely out of the kindness of his heart?"

Ryuzaki's lips turned up as he went to chew on his thumbnail. "No, I think that if he had to state a motivation, it would simply be this: Doctor L likes challenges."

The teenage star sat back to absorb this information. It wasn't what he expected to hear. He'd have accepted Ryuzaki as an altruist before he thought of that. For the challenge itself? A game the faux-physician played, where the only reward was the game itself?

Could Light ever live a life like that?

The more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. When he thought about his career, he had a list of motivations that went on and on. He did it for fame, for recognition, for a living, to make his parents proud…

But did he act for the love of acting?

Living a life like Ryuzaki, a life where he gained nothing from his profession but the satisfaction of a job well done… It seemed redundant and stupid.

Or was it just impossibly wise? Like some kind of Zen master?

But that brought up the image of Ryuzaki with a shaven head and in monk's robes, and that wasn't an appealing sight at all. Light shuddered and picked his cup back up, taking a long swig as if washing a bad taste from his mouth.

The 'elusive doctor L' noticed his silence and turned to look at him once more. "What was Light's childhood like?"

Light nearly spat out his coffee. That came totally out of left field.

"What?"

"I was asking Light what his childhood was like. What did he want to be when he grew up? What was his home like?"

"That's awfully personal, Ryuzaki…" Light said cautiously. What gave this man the right to ask him that?

"I simply wanted to know more about my first friend."

That's right… first friend. Only friend. Thinking of Ryuzaki, all alone in the world, almost made Light's heart break-

Light shook his head. What was he thinking? This was the stranger who barged into his house and made himself at home. He was a mystery to unravel, a fun thing to pick apart, and nothing more. Once Light had solved every riddle that made up Ryuzaki, he'd be done with him and never see him again.

Even if he was the amazing L's only friend.

Ryuzaki pressed onwards. "So? How was it?"

Light looked away from the… medical wonder. For some reason, he couldn't stand to look at him.

"It was okay. I had a nice home, I was the top of my class at school. My dad worked a lot. He got injured a few times, which was scary… he's a cop, you see."

"That's a dangerous line of work."

"Yes, well, that's what we always told him. And yet he still hasn't retired, even though he has no need to work anymore since I send money home."

"He sounds like a noble man."

"Noble… I guess that's a good word for it. He's… gallant. Old-fashioned, like one of those knights you hear about in fairy tales." Light shrugged a little, as if casting off a weight from his shoulders. "But I wanted to be a cop when I grew up, too."

Ryuzaki seemed interested. "How did you get from policeman to actor?"

Light realized he was giving up more information than he'd taken, but it seemed harmless to tell this. "I wanted to be an undercover agent. You know, taking on the roles of others, wearing disguises, infiltrating. It seemed glamorous. I figured I needed to know how to act to be an undercover cop and… One thing led to another and I got discovered when I was fifteen."

"And the rest is recorded in gleaming color in the pages of Teen People, issue 476."

Light shot a strange look at Ryuzaki. "Yeah.. I think that's the issue."

"It is. I know. The hospital stocks many issues of Teen People."

Right. No wonder he knew those bizarre, old interviews Light had done ages ago. Another mystery unraveled.

"Yeah, so.. there you go."

Light looked down into his coffee cup, at the mating wildebeests on the screen, anywhere but into those dark-shadowed eyes. (But he didn't really want to watch the mating wildebeests, either. So he fixed his gaze rather firmly on his coffee.) This all seemed too… intimate, too cozy. He couldn't get too attached to Ryuzaki. He'd already decided it was better not to have anything to do with him, right?

Light cleared his throat. "Um, what time will you be needing to leave, Ryuzaki?" It was getting close to eight o' clock. It had been around seven by the time Light came home from the studio, and nearly an hour before Ryuzaki called had been wasted watching TV in a blind rage… Actually, when Light looked at his watch, it was closer to 8:30. Had Ryuzaki actually been here that long?

"No time in particular. I can call my ride at any time."

Light tried to figure out a polite way to say 'call your ride now, because I'm done with you.' Nothing came to mind.

Ryuzaki spoke before Light could suggest that he was ready to go to bed. (Which was better, because, unless they were over sixty or under six, almost no-one went to bed at 8:30.)

"If Light could make a list of all the things he wanted to accomplish in his remaining lifetime, what would it be?"

That sounded like a corny question a magazine interviewer would ask. Light considered loading it with the usual bullcrap everyone wanted to hear, but abstained.

"Why would you ask that?"

"It simply tells a lot about a person. I assumed we were getting to know each other."

More like you're getting to know me and evading all my questions, Light thought, but he made no comment. "Well… I suppose everyone essentially wants to accomplish the same thing in his or her lifetime. We all want to have a successful career, find our supposed soul mate, have a family… it's not very complicated."

"But is that what Light wants for his future?"

"Well, I've never really thought about it." Light looked upwards, as though searching for divine inspiration. "But I guess, yeah, it is. It'd also be nice to travel a bit, see the world, but that's not a priority. My work will probably lead to a fair bit of travel anyways." He cast that seeking gaze on Ryuzaki. "What does the miracle doctor L want to accomplish?"

Ryuzaki chewed pensively on his thumbnail. "I think I would like to fall in love."

Light waited for more, but nothing came. "And?"

"I can't think of much else."

Light nearly exploded. "That's ridiculous! Surely you have some kind of ambition. I mean, you can't live as a shadowy doctor forever, never getting recognition and pay for your abilities! Surely you want to make a successful home? Raise money? See the world? SOMETHING!?"

Ryuzaki's tone seemed almost… acidic as he said the next statement. "I simply won't ever accomplish those things, so I have no desire to."

Light was baffled. "What do you mean you won't accomplish them?"

"It's as simple as that."

Light couldn't figure this guy out. He CHOSE to live as a mystery, hiding behind a pseudonym and working for only satisfaction, but yet he sounded bitter that it was all he'd ever do? Couldn't he change things?

"At any rate," Ryuzaki continued, "I do wish to fall in love. That seems like a rather pleasant experience."

The teen star sat back against the couch, crossing his legs. "I wouldn't have taken you for a romantic."

"I'm not. But I would like to be."

"Why? So you can sigh and dream and wish your life away?' Light had never been a romantic. He liked the idea of family, and of raising children, but love seemed like an unnecessary and foolish step in the process.

On the TV, a narrator with an upper crust British accent explained how wildebeests migrated. Ryuzaki continued to meet Light's eyes instead of watching it. "Men with beautiful girlfriends should not sound so jaded. I assumed you were madly in love."

The teen star winced. Oh, right. He was the happy loving boyfriend. He abandoned all his roles at home and often forgot to put them back on. "Yeah, I guess. I'm just cautious. Don't give my heart away too easily."

The doctor-for-pretend shrugged and finally looked back at the TV. He picked up the remote and changed the channel. It was some Lifetime original movie, something soppy like they specialized in. "Jaded," Ryuzaki commented.

Light rolled his eyes. "Well, enough about that. You tell me something about you. What do you do in your spare time?"

"Watch TV and read magazines."

"Anything else?"

"No."

He was being as unresponsive as that first day Light had met him. It got irritating quickly. "You have to have some kind of hobby besides solving unsolvable cases and rotting your brain on TV and magazines."

"There isn't that much to do at a hospital."

Light paused. "But what about when you go home?" Then it hit him. There was no going home. Ryuzaki lived at the hospital.


…. That wasn't a cliffhanger, was it? I mean, ok… it kind of was …. But not too drastic XD I'm really bad about ending on cliffhangers. How ELSE are you supposed to end a chapter?

In other news, I now have black hair, it's two weeks until I move in to the art school, and I… have been… to DISNEY WORLD. OMFG, it was amazing, I don't care what anybody says. Surprisingly, they have a lot of Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise there. And hardly any Alice in Wonderland stuff, which disappoints me. XD This proves how much of a nerd I am: I was walking around Disney World, and the whole time I kept thinking, "This really makes me want to finally play Kingdom Hearts." And then I got the wonderful idea that one day, I should cosplay Sora and walk around getting my picture taken with various Disney characters XD But sadly the only KH merch I found was a Sora figure in the Japan section of Epcot…

… But enough of that XD Review, my lovelies, and I might just post another chapter before school starts. I love you all!!