A.N: I'll start off right off the bat, and just come out with the truth.

There is a reason this story hasn't been updated, and it may make many people angry.

I honestly wasn't happy with some of the reviews/PM's I've been getting, and that's the honest truth.

There was a portion in this story that was taken from Twilight (I know, many either cringe or squeal at the sound of its name), and many people either fangirled or were angered at the fact. I understand why; not everbody is a Twilight fan. I'm not going to lie; even I'm not a Twilight fan. However, I've never read the books (never intend to either) and have seen the movie once (once, damn it!) and the line that I put in the dialogue is what inspired this story. It was so melodramatic that it got me thinking 'OH MY GOD, I CAN IMAGINE L SAYING SOMETHING THAT CHEESY WHILE LIGHT IS ALL 'WTF?!'', and it helped birth this fic. Hell, there are so many other vampire!fiction references in this story, that it makes me sad that more people don't pick those up, but all of a sudden I put in perhaps three lines of dialogue from one movie, and everyone is up in arms. That bothers me. But I dealt with it.

No, what REALLY pisses me off is when people do this (and a lot have been doing it; NO LIE):

"THIS IS TOO MUCH LIKE TWILIGHT! ((ANGRY FACE)) WTF, HARI-CHAN?!"

... ... Seriously? REALLY?! Like I said, I've never even read any part of the series to know if this is true or not, but I am not trying to make a Twilight: DN adaptation. I only do that with movies I actually LOVE (Shameless Plug: like my MR!/DN adaptation fic, "When Dreaming Ends"... Please check it out! :D)and not movies that made me go to sleep as I watched them. I am not setting out to offend Twilight lovers, because I respect all fandoms, but I will not tolerate people who are willing to brush aside my writing because of one source of dialogue. What about the True Blood references? Or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer references? There are so many more, but those are just a few that I feel most peeps would recognize if they just looked (and those are all vamp!fiction that actually rocks!).

So... I think I feel a bit better. If I get flamed, I don't really care. But I won't lie and tell you that this story isn't two seconds away from being scraped by such a fact. I don't mind ConCrit, nor am I fragile by any means, but seriously you guys. If you have something nasty to say, back it up with something substantial, and that's all I ask.

This chapter isn't beta-ed, because I felt I made you guys wait long enough (I mean the people who obviously enjoy this fic and realize it isn't all sappy-garbage, of course) and I hope that the next chapter will be better. A little more plot, and then we get to the action again! I love writing action, I've realized... XD

Thanks for reading!

Title: One Last Goodnight

Chapter Nine: Behind Rose-Colored Shades

"Hello, Raito!"

Bright maroon-colored eyes, darkened only by the covered windows and lack of light within the hallway, narrowed as a familiar figure dressed in his normal dork-like attire smiled and waved at him, mustache twitching as a cup of what looked to be coffee was brought to his aging lips.

"Where did L go?" Raito whispered, still not entirely comfortable in front of the man who had, quite possibly, helped save his life. It was strange to feel so awkward in the presence of someone who had helped him adjust for the last three years without his own memory, but the questions built up inside the young student's mind were not willing to allow himself a modicum of trust towards someone whom had essentially lied to him for all intents and purposes.

"Did he pull his little disappearing act again?" Watari frowned as he rolled his eyes, not looking the least bit amused. "I'm afraid he does that all too often. I think he believes it makes him 'mysterious' in some way, but all it really does is make you think him a jackass, really."

Inwardly grinning at the stifled chuckle the boy hid behind a well-placed palm, Watari felt his spirits rise a bit in satisfaction. "You have many questions for me, I suppose."

"And you have many answers, I would think."

"If you have a bit of time, I think I could spare a few… details." Waving the boy over after him, Watari curled his free hand around the base of the stair banister and gave his charge a small smile, still seeming genuine even after the farce was no longer in effect. "I won't lie to you, Raito. It is unnecessary to at this point."

Still feeling a bit edgy with his surroundings, Raito picked at the baggy pajamas billowing around his lithe frame and steadily made his way to the stairs. "What about L?"

"What about him? He'll reappear when he is ready to, but for right now, I suppose the window shades are open for a reason. Taste for the dramatics that one has…" Holding back another grin at just how right the older man was, Raito sighed as he sped his feet up to match the other's wide pace.

With a strangely flighty feeling whispering about his chest, the teenager missed the pair of dark-blue eyes following his figure from aside a large grandfather clock at the other end of the hallway, L's slouched, if emaciated form almost completely invisible behind the tall base of the clock.

'Dramatic, indeed…'

"Sit, Raito, sit! You look positively starved!"

"O-ok…"

Taking in the feast sitting on the kitchen table in front of him, Raito felt a bit faint from all the excitement the day (and night) had afforded him thus far. Watari practically pushed the boy into the chair closest to him, setting down a plate almost immediately after. "You are much too young to already be so very thin! I always have to remind you to eat! Sometimes, I think you need me to function as much as L does!"

"L… You knew him this whole time, and you let me think otherwise." Raito muttered more or less to himself, trying to come to terms with the facts being presented to him.

"Mm-hm." Grabbing a large spoon, the older man began to dole out a large portion of scrambled eggs and bacon on Raito's plate and quickly placed a small stack of pancakes right next to them. "I knew both who he was, and what he was to you before you lost your memories, this is all true, but everything isn't how you think it is, Raito."

"What do you mean?! You lied to me, Watari. Other than my father, whose only halfway there all the time anyway, you're the only one I've come to trust in this silly little town! Do you even know how this makes me feel, realizing just out of the blue that my only true friend has been keeping such secrets from me?" The hand now gripping the spatula tightened its handle on the instrument, light blue veins all the more prominent against the pastel white skin. "I'm sorry, I think I should just g-"

"Wait." Before Raito could even move, his arm was pulled back to its original position. "I know what you're thinking, and it's not true. I didn't lie to you because L asked me to, Raito. If that were the case, I wouldn't have been able to live with it myself, let alone look you in the eye day in and day out."

"Really?" The stoic brunette tilted his head unconvincingly. "Why is it that I don't quite believe you?"

"Please, Raito, understand that if I have done you any harm, it was not my intention to do so. Yes, someone did ask me to keep your life from you, but… the person who wished this…"

"Watari-"

"Raito, listen for once in your young life. The reason I've done all of these things and kept all this to myself is because the person who asked this of me was…" The boy's eyes faded back into their original almond-brown as Watari's clear ocean-blue gaze shone behind his spectacles. "Was you."

Raito felt his jaw drop on its own accord, wondering if the people surrounding him lived to see him in a permanent state of shock.

'Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore…'

'What are you doing?'

Sachiko froze as the familiar monotone voice tickled into her ear, the curtain within her room blocking all vestiges of the early morning light; beckoning her into a state of unconscious bliss as the bed in the center of the room called out to her with a silent plea.

Unfortunately for herself (or maybe for his sake…), a certain nightwalker with a death-wish the size of all seven continents put together in one didn't seem to get the hint.

'I think the better question, L, is what are you doing? Or at least, what do you think you're doing?'

Sighing as she kept in her tantrum-waiting-to-happen, Sachiko pulled at her chin-length locks, the leather material of her gloves crinkling at the force as she did so. Quickly tugging the material away from her porcelain-smooth hands, the lithe woman snarled rather violently as the lack of sleep began to toy with her mental facilities.

"You've created a mess, L Lawliet, and right now, you are walking a very, very thin line. Don't push my damn buttons, mister." She muttered out loud, projecting the message within her own mind for the double the effect.

'Is that so? What have they said so far about the attack?'

"Nothing that I haven't been able to contain… though knowing Akio, he'll spin this to his advantage somehow." Sachiko pulled off her coat and vest only to throw them across the room, her bed no longer appearing as inviting or tempting her to fall back into the slumber she had been restricting herself these past couple of months. "We'll both have to be careful at this point… have you spoken to Raito or Soichirou yet?"

'Watari has spoken to Soichirou already, and he is currently speaking to Raito. I suspect that after that enlightening conversation, I'll have to put my own two cents in or face your son's frightening wrath…'

"Oh, don't you get all sarcastic on me! You should have done all that from the beginning, like I told you to!" Carefully holding the pendant she wore between age-worn hands, the eternally-youthful woman sighed as she felt the last bit of her patience slowly drain away… "I gave you three months to fix this, and now, it doesn't even look like you have that much time. If he doesn't either forge a new connection with you, L, or get his memories back and remake the old one, we are both fucked."

'… … You do realize that he will hate you, you know. No matter if he has his memories or not, he will hold you in distain. I, at least, hold the advantage of the 'if he doesn't remember' scenario. You, however…'

"I know my own situation, damn it. And I accept it readily." Sitting down on the large chair that seemed to shimmer to life in front of her, the dark-haired beauty slumped against the warm, soft fabric cushioning her back. "But besides all that, with the way everything is headed, it seems as if Raito's true wish is going to be granted after all…"

'I will not let that happen, Sachiko.'

"It's not your choice to make, L. And it was selfish of you to ever try to block him from making his own decision on the matter."

'It does not matter whether it was or not. I will not let him be another pawn in neither your or our people's game of chance. I would rather he hate me and live than… than die with the honor you have ingrained in him yourself.'

Feeling the last bit of her strength drain away, Sachiko sighed as she vacantly stood up and dropped down onto her bed. The last bit of her consciousness tickled with the presence of her friend, but even that was not enough to keep her awake.

'Whatever you say, dear, but unlike you, L, I must sleep now. The sun beckons me to do so…'

'But what shall I do about this, Sachiko?'

Opening her crimson-red eyes, the youthful-looking woman said nothing more as the pseudo-warmth of the imaginary sunlight (light she had never seen, except for the light she had been blessed with all those years ago…) she could only recall in passing images and instances within her dreams and Soichirou's vivid descriptions.

'Keep him, L. Tell him the truth and try to keep him for as long as you can. It's all you can really do…' Feeling the younger man retreat from her mind, Sachiko closed her eyes once more.

'Isn't it?'

"You know what my next question's going to be if you're going to answer me that way." Raito snapped as the older man placed a cup of coffee in front of him, the bright light cascading from the open kitchen windows blazed spectacularly on the boy's golden skin. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Raito, before you lost your memories… let's just say that you had a feeling that such a circumstance might occur." At the boy's open-mouthed gape and shocked wide-eyed stare, Watari let out a small sigh as he pulled his glasses off the bridge of his nose and wiped the slightly-smudged lenses with the handkerchief lying just beside his right hand. "Just before you first met L-"

"The very first time, you mean." Raito interrupted, the irritation lingering over his voice as Watari held back his amused grin.

"Yes, the first time, I was introduced to you as your guardian by…"

Feeling himself hesitate, the old librarian almost winced as the boy leaned in a bit further from his seat, mocha-brown eyes now straining with an unnamed emotion quietly displaced within the already-confused glaze staining over his disfigured expression of discontent.

"By?"

"By your mother, Raito." Already feeling the volcano beginning to erupt before he could have a chance to process the information, Watari continued on, fixing his glasses back onto his face as he cleared his throat. "You had just turned about 12 at the time that I had met you, and once you hit that age, certain… people felt it was time that you became educated about your family ties."

"Family… ties?"

"I don't know how far L wishes to go in your own past, to be quite frank Raito, but I will tell you this-" Leaning forward so that Raito could see just how serious he was, Watari lowered his voice as he hoped for both his safety and Raito's that there were no other prying ears except for the one's that were attached to the boy's 'stalker'. "You are both more and less than what you think you are. Human, yet not all what one what define a human to be. Alive, yet still…"

"Not." Raito whispered, sitting back with a tremulous quiver of his lips. "My mother… she was different, wasn't she."

It was a statement that Watari himself could not rebuke, just as Raito had come to expect. The sudden boiling anger and drawn-in resentment peaked over the boy's limit as he gave the older man a glare that could rival the coldest of ice and snarl that could only be described as monstrous.

"How long were you going to hide this from me, Watari? When you had no other choice but to say something, like when I was finally on my deathbed or lying in an alleyway bleeding my guts out? I trusted you when I trusted no one else. And this is how you treat my confidence? By hiding not only who I once was, but what I am now?" Pushing himself out of his chair, Raito held back his urge to yell and curse and caught grip of his raging temperament before it could get the better of him. "Oh God… I can't even look at you right now."

"It was not my idea," Watari pleaded with the boy, standing up to catch the boy should he choose to run from his words, "they said it would be for the best, and that you would come out for the better by not knowing about what you had forgotten. I did not agree with it, but if it gave you a chance at a normal life, I could not deny you the opportunity to try to make it work Raito! And on top of everything, you yourself made me swear to only reveal all this if, and only if, you were able to gain back some semblance of memory once again!"

"Meaning what? That even I'm hiding something? That's… that not even the point, though, Watari." Raito replied succinctly, eyes once again molting over into a deep, blood-stained red. "You honestly don't get it, do you? Everyone else, I could accept. Even my own damn father, who for all that I could care knows everything or nothing about this at all. But you? You've seen me in my best and worst, Watari. You were the closest thing to a real parent I actually had, since all my dad did was work or mope over my mother in his room. I hope it makes you happy, knowing you were the status-quo. So, thanks for taking that respect and throwing it right back in my face."

Whipping around the statuesque-librarian looking every bit as horrified as he felt, Raito attempted to quell down his guilt and melancholy by not staring him in the eye and marching back into the room he had woken up in, wishing that he had not opened up his eyes at all.

'What a wonderful start to such a crap-tastic day!'

"And it will only get better and better…" The withdrawn student mumbled through clenched teeth, feeling his hands clench into fisted balls of anger, just waiting for the right moment to simply snap.

"Yes, Raito won't be coming to school today." Soichirou felt his cheek twitch in annoyance as the secretary on the other line became abruptly silent, knowing that his son's track record with school was, for once, going to hinder him instead of help him. "He's feeling a bit ill today, and I feel that it would be much more beneficial for him to stay home today than to contaminate any of the other students or give a less than stellar performance in his classes. You understand, don't you?"

"O-of course, Yagami-san! It's no problem whatsoever!" The secretary seemed honestly stunned, and Soichirou had no doubt that his teachers would be equally as stunted once they heard that their star-pupil would not be attending class that day. Though Raito did not notice it (blatantly due to his own teen-angst and drama, which Soichirou would gladly admit was all his mother's in personality), he was very well-loved by his teachers and fellow students…

They were just too scared of the poor boy to show such genuine affections outright.

'You always do fear what you don't understand…'

His son used to always complain about the stares and strained whispers directed his way, even before he lost his memories and became even more estranged with society. It had bothered the lonely parent at first, to watch his only child become alienated within a circle of his own peers, but even he had felt the same strange pulse that pulled people both to and away from his son.

'To be one thing, but then be another…" The executive whispered under his breath, rubbing the furrowed drench between his brow and sighing heavily. "How do you live when you're being pulled away in two constant directions all the time within your own mind?'

Perhaps that was why Soichirou had been so happy to find out that Raito did not have his memories. The choice wouldn't need to be made if Raito could not remember what that choice was, right?

But it seemed all that was a father's lost hope; a disillusion to accompany him in daily life, and involuntarily shade Raito from a reality that would not dare leave him alone with his own pain and suffering that he could not (at least now) understand.

'If there is a God… please forgive me.'

Though Soichirou knew that it wasn't God he should've been asking for forgiveness from…

In this instance, God hadn't done a damn thing.

"YOU!"

L almost shivered as Raito snarled at him and violently threw the lamp that had lain on the dresser beside his still form at his head, having heard every word between the younger man and his guardian just minutes before. Quickly ducking the flying object before it could even reach his person, the dark-haired near-immortal blinked at the familiar fury within his companion's aura and backed away from the hot-headed male in distress.

"THIS IS ALL YOUR DAMN FAULT, YOU STUPID BLOODSUCKING BASTARD!"

Closing the opened door behind him with a tight slap and an unadulterated twitch hanging from his eyes, Raito nearly stomped over at the spot on the bed where L now sat and put his hands on his hips, not noticing just how effeminate he actually appeared to be.

"I… apologize?"

"This isn't some sort of gameof wills, L-" Stamping his foot on the ground, Raito held onto his shrieks and attempted to calm his own ire. "This is my life! So stop toying around with me and just tell me the damn TRUTH!"

"You have done nothing but cause me trouble and make me question myself and everything around me ever since I have met you! You refuse to tell me what I need to know and then expect me to open to you with great abandon, acting as if you don't dangle the fact that you seemingly have all the answers over my head every time we even speak to each other! I can't live like this, wondering who my enemy is and keeping myself distant from all of my friends. I just can't L."

Huffing out of breath, Raito dropped down to the floor, face red from the physical manifestation of such exertion. Not wanting to look up at the pale drawn face no doubt giving him a pitiable look of concern, the teenage student crouched into himself in a creditable imitation of L's own fetal stance and let his head fall into his arms.

"Raito…"

Shaking his head with a stubbornness even Raito could not believe he had, the boy refused to speak.

"I cannot fix this if you do not let me, Raito-kun." Running thin fingers through his disheveled midnight-black hair, the elderly nightwalker gave the boy a desperate stare. "All I wish to do is help you-"

"STOP LYING TO ME!" Raito's muffled yell was heard quite clearly with L's superior hearing, making him wince in pain and discomfort. "You don't want to help me, you only want to help yourself!"

"… … Fine, if you believe that, then it must be true. What can I do to make this better for you, Raito-kun?" L stared down at the boy kneeling before him on his knees, both terrified and confused. "Tell me how to begin to fix this, and perhaps you may be able to… feel better with yourself."

"Just… make it stop. Make it all stop-" Raito finally unfurled himself from his awkward position on the floor and looked up at the man with glassy eyes framed by long dark eyelashes coated with speckles of teary water, his face heart-breakingly vulnerable and filled with an anguish that even made L sympathetic at the sight. "The dreams, the flashbacks, the pain, the awkwardness-all of it. Please."

"Raito-kun will only be satisfied until he has the truth," L let his lips thin out as he allowed his hand to trail over Raito's head and gently brushed a few trailing strands of hair away from his forehead. "But the truth may come at a heavy price…"

"What do you mean by that?"

"… … It is like I told you once before, Raito. A connection must be established before one is able to have as much power over one's mind as I did yours at one time. In order to give you back what is rightfully yours, you must give me two things in return."

"You said that before, but you wouldn't tell me what!"

"I feared Raito-kun's reaction at the time, as I sensed the underlying frustration within his usually calm temperament. I thank my instincts immensely for not going through with what I believed to be a disaster-in-the-making, now that I think about it…"

"L!"

"Ah, I apologize, Raito-kun. You are expecting an answer now, yes?"

"No," Raito snarled, looking every bit the un-coiffed teen he should have been. "I'm just sitting on my ass about ready to flip a shit because it's my scheduled time of the day for such a meltdown-OF COURSE I'M EXPECTING AN ANSWER, YOU MORON!"

"No need to yell, Raito-kun, my hearing is quite extraordinary." L cleaned out an ear, as if to fortify this fact. "There are, indeed, two conditions to such a request, and what they require the both of us to do-"

"I thought you meant this was just for me to do?"

"And when did I specify such a condition, Raito?"

Raito gave the man a blank stare, his eyes flashing a stark crimson-red for half a second.

"… … I hate you."

"I love you too, Raito."

"Guh!" Raito just about ripped his hair out, eyes tearing at the effort to reign in his now out of control temperament. "Are you ever going to give me a straight answer?"

"Are you ever going to calm down?"

"I would love to, just let me know when you're not being yourself and I'd gladly show some self-control on my part!"

At the scathing scowl now set over Raito's lips, L finally gave out a long-winded sigh and placed his hands over his hips in a familiar form of exasperation. "Fine, Raito-kun, I concede. I shall stop beating around the bush."

"Finally…"

"But you are not going to like what I am going to say in return."

"Fine, whatever."

"Raito-kun, are you sure-"

"Just tell me already, L! What is it that you're being so damn secretive about!"

"… … In order for me to overturn your memory loss, two connections must be made to substantially reform the same connection we lost. Because we already had such a strong connection, it would take double the effort on my own part to reverse that hold I held over you at the time."

"And…what kind of connections?"

"Of the… well." Even the older man drenched in faux-darkness seemed a bit flustered by the conversation at hand. "Of the physical and emotional kind."

"Physical?" Raito deadpanned.

"Yes."

"Emotional?" Raito's face blanked even further, if possible.

"Mm-hm."

"… What do you mean by physical and emotional connections?"

"… … In our kind, we have certain ceremonies that help placate the intimacy needed to close the gap between us. An… instant re-direction of emotional compatibilities so to speak."

"Ok. We can do that!" Raito raved, not noticing as the older man nearly smacked himself in the face.

"However, it would effectively tie you to me."

"I don't follow how this is any different than how we are now, L."

"… … would you rather I put it bluntly, Raito?"

"PLEASE, and THANK YOU-"

"It would be, essentially, a supernatural form of marriage, Raito-kun."

"See? Was that so-" Raito stopped himself mid-sentence, eyes becoming wide like saucers. "Wait, what?"

"Marriage. Does Raito-kun not know what this means?"

"DON'T BE A JACK-ASS, L! I'M NOT AN IDIOT!"

"Alright."

"You have got to be kidding me…"

"No. No, I'm not."

"God, stop answering me, you moron!" Raito shouted, glancing at the clock and being thankful that Watari had left a good ten minutes before to do his job, so as to not hear the tumultuous meltdown that was Yagami Raito. "What would make you think that I would even consider-I mean, IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?! We're both men, for god's sakes"

"With my people it is. For the most part, humans are really behind the times, Raito-kun."

"And what's the other thing we've got to do, then?!"

L stayed silent, his eyes becoming impossibly wide as they shimmered a light sky blue.

"L… what is it."

"If the idea of marriage does not appeal to Raito-kun in any way, I believe that telling him will be-"

"L, what is it?!"

"I believe alluding to the idea would be far better than actually stating the-"

"L!"

"Term which would only serve to upset Raito-kun even further." L finished lamely, eyes dimly glowing an effervescent blue. "Raito…"

"Yes, L." The twitch in the boy's eye would have been amusing if L hadn't been so worried about the amount of violence about to be inflicted on his person. Even if he did heal very quickly, that didn't make altercations of the physical kind any less painful to deal with.

And L was not a glutton for pain by no stretch of the imagination.

"I only have one question for you."

"Oh, c'mon, L, stop beating around the bush and just come out with it already-!"

"Raito," The dark-haired vampire whispered, interrupting the boy's tantrum before it could gain any force behind it. Allowing his more tactless side to "Do you feel a certain… attraction to me at all? In the primal sense?"

Silence was Raito's reply as wide saucers for eyes almost enveloped the boy's visage.

"Raito? Are you… do you understand what I am trying to say?"

Once again, the room was completely silent except for L's own voice.

"For humans, sex is the fundamental climax for one's attraction to another-"

"Why the hell are we talking about this?!" Raito finally burst out, face a bright cherry red.

"However, for my kind, sex is... not the only means to such an end."

Wide brown eyes stared at the night-walker, circumventing any sort of comment that Raito may have had once again.

"Another way we seek pleasure, as well as sustenance, is biting and ingesting each other's blood."

"..."

"It's intensely pleasurable, as well as intensely informative." L concluded, that tiny shit-eating smile hanging off of his lips. "Your memories, your thoughts, your subconscious... all of it would be open for me to see."

"Don't you have access to all of that now?!"

"Only under your permission, Raito-kun, and even then, it is incredibly dangerous to delve into someone else's mind in such a manner." L deadpanned. "Haven't you noticed that in order for either of us to read anything on each other, the other must be receptive to this fact? If not, it could prove fatal to one or both of us."

"So..." Raito muttered uncomfortably, all too aware of the other's perusing stare. "All you would need to do... is to bite me?"

L grinned.

"It is a bit more complex than that, but essentially, yes."

The 17-year-old sighed as he dragged a hand down his face. "Why does it sound as if I'm the one getting the shit-end of the stick here?"

"If there was another way," The vampire sincerely spoke, his voice soft and apologetic, "I would implement it. But, Raito, you must understand that the spell you were placed under was meant to be irrevocable, even by my own standards."

"So..."

"Yes, Raito-kun." L cringed as the boy's face morphed into one of righteous rage. "It was not meant to be reversed."

"I just… I can't believe this. As if my day can't get any crappier. Between being told that my only trustee was lying to me for over three years, you coming up with those two asinine conditions and that I wasn't meant to remember anything, I have to say that this is the suckiest day EVER! You're talking about getting 'married', in your society's terms and… and… basically con-con-consensual biting, and weird voodoo spells! What the hell?! Oh shit, I think I'm gonna black out." Stuttering for breath, Raito nearly pulled his hair out by the roots, chocolate-brown eyes once again glistening a dull carmine-red. "That's it. You're. Out. Of. Your. Mind. You are out of your mind, and I am out of mine for even considering all this as possible!"

"So I've been told on many occasions by many different people. Raito-kun should really calm himself before his hysteria causes him to hyperventilate uncontrollably." L patiently sat where he was, the dark shade of the sheets of the bed underneath his still form emphasizing his incredibly pale skin and now ink-colored eyes. "Why must Raito-kun be so adamant about repeating things that do not bear repeating?"

"Oh, trust me, IT BEARS REPEATING! What do you think my father is going to say if he finds out about all this crap?! 'Oh dad, don't worry, I'm just getting hitched and letting this guy bite me in order to return myself back to what I used to be like! It's no trouble whatsoever!' That doesn't work in the real world L!"

"Raito, please, you'll disturb the residents in the library just next door to us if you continue to keep screeching at such ferocity." Looking slightly dumbfounded by the sudden proclamation, Raito plopped down on the bed beside L and ran a hand through his golden-brown locks.

"I forgot that this place was connected to the library… wait. You said… Watari said…" L waited for the inevitable explosion, picking at his canines with the shell of his thumb as he held a small smile on his lips. "YOU'VE BEEN STALKING ME FOR THREE YEARS, AND JUST NOW HAVE THE NERVE TO TELL ME YOU COULD POSSIBLY BRING MY MEMORIES BACK?!"

"But only under-"

"Your two crazy-ass conditions; I heard you, you ridiculous buffoon!"

"They are not exactly conditions as they are things that would make it possible to override the bond we shared before; as I have already said, Raito-kun." The vampire calmly explained, wondering if Raito could actually burst a blood vessel with all the stress he was piling on himself. Bringing a hand up and smoothing out the other's hair before Raito could begin to try to tear it out strand by strand. "I apologize for the stress you are going through now, but I will not lie in saying that I do not wish you would not take everything to be such a chore..."

Bringing his head up, Raito blinked as those dark eyes became all the lighter; pools of translucent blue shaded by a ring of darkness around the edges of the iris. A sense of tranquility flooded through his senses as he took in a deep breath, fingers lightly trailing down his scalp and across his cheek before brushing against his lips in a familiar fashion...

"I... I've-I've got to go." Stumbling out of the other man's hold, the dazed teen stormed out of the room and ran out of the apartment now lit to the brim with sunshine (that would definitely come in handy whenever he decided to come during the day, if not at night).

As Raito sped away from the vampire staring at his retreating figure through the shroud of shadows still available to him, L felt eyes begin to hurt from the blaze of light infecting their now luminous sights.

Sachiko hadn't been kidding when she had pegged him about his suicidal tendencies…

'So adamant about wanting to know more about his past, yet so resistant to hearing the truth he so desperately needs to hear…'

But it was no bother to L.

'You can't hide from this forever, Raito. Especially now that you along with your subconscious is crying out to be released from my own spell…'

The boy would come back to him on his own accord-

Eventually.

Raito tried to catch his breath as the bright glossy sheen of the afternoon sun beamed down on him with a vengeance, casting the street and the wayward boy now wandering them with a rose-colored light.

Tears underlined the boy's hazel eyes as he then halted his steps and stared up at the burning expanse of sky, fingers trembling against his sides.

'Why is everything in my life… suddenly falling apart right in front of my very eyes?'