Author's Note: It's not fanservice; it's filler! …wait, that came out wrong.
How do I love the Task Force? Let me count the ways.
Thanks to Eltea for the beta! :D
XII. Priorities
The worst thing—arguably; there were a lot of contenders—was that he wouldn't have a chance to change his clothes.
Socializing and slaving away for the betterment of society were, ideally, two different spheres, and Light tried to treat them as such. The bar and the office were not the same thing, and walking into the former dressed for the latter was like painting "I'll drink until I forget how bad this week was" on one's forehead in neon.
The neon was even more effective when clubbing was involved; black lights accentuated it nicely.
There were a few parts of post-work bar stints that Light did enjoy however, including the fact that, upon reaching a critical volume of alcohol, Matsuda would listen to conspiracy theories like this specimen for hours.
And Light did have hours of them to tell.
He wouldn't be raving about Elvis's underground bunker tonight, however, because his salvation had come in the form of the two most beautiful words in the English language:
Designated driver.
Mogi had also been appointed to the post, because even after Mr. Wammy had picked up the boys on his way back from the airport—including a reluctant Mello plied with promises of action movies and ice cream—with Naomi in addition to their regular numbers, Light's car didn't have enough seats to transport them all.
Somehow, he was less surprised than he would have liked when Matsuda, Aizawa, and Naomi all piled into Mogi's Mini Cooper the second they reached the parking lot, leaving Lawliet as Light's only passenger.
They exchanged glances. Behind his thumb, Lawliet looked very amused.
Light led the way to his Accord, twirling his keys around his index finger. "Naomi's awfully quick on the uptake," he remarked.
"I think a blind tortoise could follow their lead," Lawliet replied as he climbed into the passenger seat.
"I think that's giving tortoises too much credit," Light muttered, turning the key in the ignition.
Lawliet seemed to be contemplating the idea as Light followed the packed Mini out of the lot and onto the street, though the issue didn't stop him from drawing both knees up to his chest, his heels resting on the seat, and reaching out to consult the wisdom of the radio.
He paused momentarily when it advised them to "Run to the Hills"—which sounded to Light like the safest possible strategy—but only settled for good when another station offered input from Light's antithesis, a band called The Darkness.
The song, of course, was "I Believe in a Thing Called Love."
Light resisted the urge to slam his forehead down on the steering wheel, traffic accidents be damned.
"What do you have against classical music?" he asked.
"Nothing," Lawliet answered idly. "But you can't listen to one radio station all your life."
Yeah, Lawliet twisted Light's dials, all right.
Maybe that was what they were calling it these days.
Preoccupied with slapping himself mentally, Light noticed only belatedly that he had been following Mogi's Mini along a route he didn't recognize—Matsuda wasn't leading them to the usual bar.
All too soon, Light understood the discrepancy as a sign appeared by a different establishment.
It read Karaoke.
Touta Matsuda was the Devil, and they were all very, very doomed.
Lawliet, Light noticed, looked intrigued.
Howling from the speakers, Justin Hawkins wasn't helping. "I wanna kiss you every minute, every hour, every day…"
Light was going to crash his car into a storefront any second now.
—
Evil incarnate beamed at them as they entered via the attached restaurant, Light feeling vulnerable without the tie and jacket he had abandoned in the car in the vain hopes of looking as though he belonged here.
"Like it?" Matsuda asked.
I would like it if you flung yourself onto a flaming pyre of cocktail napkins doused with vodka and gasoline, Light thought.
"This is a very interesting place," Lawliet answered for both of them before Light could channel the general sentiment into a more courteous turn of phrase. Sure enough, Lawliet was peering around at everything, enchanted by the patrons, the waiters, the deejay, the décor, the lights, the barstools, and—in particular, Light noted, hiding a smile—the menu.
Lawliet's fascination with it was such that Light chanced a peek over the other man's hunched shoulder, at which point he realized that his coworker's thrall was merited.
—
An excellent meal followed, and they split the bill like regular colleagues—the sort who didn't divide homicide paperwork much the same way—and got a good laugh out of Naomi's assurances that her contribution wouldn't come from their tax dollars.
Lawliet had ordered himself a massive lava/mudslide/choose-your-own-cataclysm cake, in the face of which his spoon looked rather inadequate, and had just begun to dig into it when Matsuda made a survey of their corner booth.
"Is everybody ready for the first round of drinks?" he inquired. "I know I am. What are we in the mood for?"
"I'd like to see what they have," was Naomi's verdict as she pushed her chair back and stood. Aizawa concurred, and Matsuda looked to Lawliet.
"What can I get you on Shuichi's dollar?" he asked cheerfully.
Lawliet managed to pry a portion of his attention away from the chocolate fudge sauce, albeit only enough to blink ambivalently.
"He'll be happy with anything sweet," Aizawa assured Matsuda, starting towards the bar. "Mogi, can we borrow you to help bring it all back?"
Just like that, Light and Lawliet were alone at the table.
Light suspected a conspiracy.
Nevertheless, he didn't intend to waste the opportunity.
"L?" he prompted. "Can we talk?"
Lawliet blinked at him as well—and then took pink tongue to silver spoon, sending Light's stomach through a grueling acrobatic routine.
"What do you want to talk about, Light-kun?" he asked.
Light glanced in the direction of the bar, but the others were still engaged in the process of choosing their poisons.
"I was hoping," he explained, struggling not to fall into the vast gray eyes, "that we could talk about… us."
Lawliet blinked again—which was remarkably distracting; he had the loveliest eyelashes—and then gazed at his dessert.
"Do we have to have this discussion now?" he wanted to know.
Surreptitiously Light examined the contents of Lawliet's plate, but there didn't seem to be anything especially time-sensitive about a mound of chocolate. Admittedly, the ice cream had started to melt.
"We might not get another chance this evening," he pointed out. "They're all cops, and between the four of them, they're not likely to miss much."
Lawliet's eyes went even wider, and his bottom lip crept outward.
"But I have cake," he said.
Light sighed to concede defeat. "What you don't have," he muttered as Lawliet happily returned to the food, "are priorities."
There wasn't long to brood before the drink-mongers returned, Mogi bearing something very, very pink.
He set it down in front of Lawliet, and Light stared at the glass, then at the culprit.
"You got him a Shirley Temple?" he demanded.
Matsuda winked. "A Dirty Shirley," he corrected. "Don't worry; we'll see him wasted yet."
"After that," Aizawa added, the picture of innocence, "he's all yours."
Light wondered why it was that he worked with a bunch of lunatics.
Perhaps there had been some small print under his job description.
At a great deal of enthusiasm from the whole of the table, Lawliet forsook his precious cake long enough to sip at the corrupted child-star beverage, and his pale eyes lit up.
"Mikey likes it!" Matsuda crowed.
"Mikey's liver won't," Light commented under his breath.
The others had just started to get acquainted with their brown bottles when a generic ringer blared from someone's phone.
"Shit," Naomi said, snatching it out of the pocket of her jeans and flicking it open by her ear. "I'm sorry, babe, I forgot."
Light couldn't hear the voice on the other end over the hubbub of the restaurant, but it didn't take five police officers to figure out that 'babe' probably meant the source of the ring gleaming on her third finger.
"I'm having a beer with the guys," Naomi was reporting. "I'll…" She rolled her eyes. "Sweetheart, they're all accounted for."
If it had been a better time, Light would have protested vehemently. Being second to cake did not qualify as 'accounted for' in his book.
"It's just work stuff," Naomi continued before he could interject. "I'll call you when I get back to the hotel, okay? I love you."
Everyone made a distinct effort not to look expectant as she hung up, but Naomi took a long swig from her bottle and indulged their curiosity.
"Raye's the best guy I've ever met," she explained, "but he's a little insecure. Almost every single one of his ex-girlfriends cheated on him, some of them more than once, because he trusted them too much."
"Or not enough," Mogi murmured. "Maybe after a while, feeling like he assumed they were up to something made them want to prove him right."
Naomi paused. "I'd tell him you said that," she remarked, grinning slowly, "but then he'd never let me out of his sight."
"Speaking from experience," Aizawa cut in, waving his left hand to show his wedding band, "just… don't rush it. You've got the rest of your lives."
Naomi sat back contentedly. "I'm counting on it," she replied. "I've got a whole lot of baddies to bust before I settle down and learn how to cook anything that requires more than the microwave."
"Holy crap," Matsuda said.
Alarmed, everyone followed his gaze.
"Holy crap," Aizawa agreed.
Lawliet was blinking again, and he'd finished every drop of his drink.
"Let me get you another one of those," Matsuda volunteered, taking the glass. He stopped to give Light a hopeful look. "You could have one beer."
It was slightly depressing—and very telling—that Light wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if Matsuda and Aizawa had begun a bet about whether or not they could get him to drink.
As far as he and Lawliet were concerned, there was probably an office pool.
"No, thank you," he said.
"C'mon," Matsuda coaxed. "Just one won't get you anywhere near the legal limit. Besides, you're a genius—if anyone can figure out how to drive tipsy, it's you."
Light massaged his temples. "Intelligence quotient and alcohol tolerance are completely unrelated."
"He's trying to confuse you with his superior vocabulary," Aizawa warned.
Matsuda frowned reproachfully at Light. "Don't tell me you don't miss the glory days," he declaimed. "I'll bet you were a total frat boy back in the day."
Light smirked and swilled his water glass. "About the wildest I got," he noted, "was playing Fresca pong with my tennis friends."
Matsuda sat down again, covering his face. "The boy has never played beer pong." His voice was muffled. "I give up."
Lawliet was looking hungrily at Matsuda's unattended beer. "What's Fresca?" he inquired.
Light moved the bottle out of the way. "Soda," he answered. "More specifically, the lovechild of Sprite and Satan."
"I'm leaving," Matsuda announced. "Possibly to go jump off a bridge."
"Can you get me another drink first?" Lawliet asked, a bit too eagerly for Light's tastes.
—
In just over an hour, Light was attempting to be inconspicuous in the back of the room as Lawliet swayed in time to the karaoke song he had selected after a great deal of thought.
Lawliet's hair fluttered wonderfully as he bounced, and then he took up the microphone and sang in the surprisingly clear voice Light remembered from Saturday at the piano.
"Haven't we met? You're some kind of beautiful stranger… You could be good for me; I have a taste for danger…"
Why did it have to be Madonna?
Light was torn between hiding and making a point of not looking mesmerized.
"If I'm smart, then I'll run away… But I'm not, so I guess I'll stay—heaven forbid I take my chance on a beautiful stranger…"
This was a bit like a reversal of one of Light's recurring nightmares—except that, in the dream, Light had to sing "Like a Virgin" on pain of death, and he was almost always naked.
"I looked into your eyes, and my world came tumblin' down…"
Light really could not afford to imagine Lawliet singing naked.
It was very tempting to put his head down on the table and try to stop existing, but there was an extremely ambiguous puddle in the best available spot.
Four endless minutes later, a great deal of applause ushered Lawliet back to the table hosting Light, Mogi, Matsuda, Aizawa, and Naomi—their colleagues clapping loudest of all. For his part, Light had elected to focus on finding sanity-salvation alternatives to the most obvious solution: drinking vodka until he couldn't remember his address, let alone the uncanny warmth seeping through every inch of him at nothing more than Lawliet's smile.
It wasn't long before his phone vibrated in his pocket, and he drew it out, concerned.
The text he had received read, I think I'm drunk, Light-kun.
Light looked to Lawliet, who occupied the seat directly beside him, but the other man wouldn't look back.
Sighing inwardly, Light tapped out his reply: I'm sitting right next to you.
I am acutely aware of that, Lawliet fired back.
Light rolled his eyes. So why aren't we having this conversation out loud?
Lawliet cleared his throat. "Very well," he acquiesced. "I think I'm drunk, Light-kun."
"I never would have guessed," Light said.
"Be nice, Light-kun," came the reprimand.
"Nice guys finish last," Light returned.
"Not in team sports."
"Life isn't a sport."
"I disagree."
Light raised an eyebrow. "What sport is it, then?"
Lawliet paused. "A… marathon."
"A marathon," Light repeated, fighting a traitorous grin.
"…a marathon in which you die at the finish line."
This time Light's lips twitched despite him. "That's incredibly morbid."
Lawliet gave him a beleaguered look. "I told you, Light-kun; I'm drunk."
Light gave in and laughed.
He hadn't meant to lean in closer to Lawliet to do so, but before he knew it, he could smell the sharpness of the liquor on the other man's warm breath. Their eyes met, and Lawliet's glinted in the ambient light.
Then Matsuda's head inserted itself between them and began to sing, partially on-key.
"Can you feel the love tonight? It is where we are…"
"Tomorrow," Light noted, "I am going to enjoy singing to you when you're so hungover you can't see."
Matsuda drew himself up to his full height.
"I," he declared, "am immune to alcohol."
—
Shortly, Matsuda was demonstrating his immunity in the parking lot by executing a frighteningly sound performance of the Soulja Boy dance.
"I know part of 'Single Ladies,'" he enthused as Mogi nudged him towards the car. "Does anyone remember that Ciara song '1-2 Step'?"
Light supposed he should consider himself lucky that Lawliet was a very docile drunk, though there were white fingers on the radio controls before Light had even made it to a main road.
Light wasn't sure what was worse—the fact that the Seal song "Waiting for You" greeted his ears, or the fact that he could identify it immediately.
Music was not on his side tonight, but stoplights were, and they reached Pacific Heights in record time.
It was only in the driveway that Lawliet paused.
"Do you think I'll get alcohol poisoning?" he asked.
Light smiled a bit. "Not if you haven't thrown up yet," he noted. "But drink a lot of water. And hope that Quillish has invented a hangover cure."
Lawliet seemed a little disoriented—or as if he was waiting for something.
Light leaned across the parking brake, set one hand against Lawliet's neck, and kissed the warm forehead as best as he could around all the hair.
"Go," he instructed.
Contentedly, Lawliet went.
