Chapter two days late! GAH! SOOOOOOOOOSOSO SORRRRYYYYYY! I really didn't do it just to make you wonderful wonderful readers suffer an extra bit after that cliffhanger. I just ran into a rut on this chapter that I couldn't figure out how to get myself past. Finally did, though, and it worked out rather well, in the end, I think.
Please forgive me, O Glorious Readers. I'm but a humble writer that is slave to her own creative will, or lack thereof. I'm not worthy. -grovels-
fezzesandbowtiesarecool: And now I have a huge stupid smile on my face from reading your review. I get so panicked over writing L in these situations that I'll revise every little detail and still not be positive that it's L-like enough to pass my readers' inspections, so every positive review I get makes me breathe a huge sigh of relief. And did I say forty percent? Er, I meant eighty. Yeah, eighty percent O-O
Signora Ted: Patience xD Katherine didn't point out Light's surname lolness this early in the original, either; actually, it happened just after the last scene in this chapter in the original. So that'll be here soon xD Then the LDC isn't until waaaaaay laters x3 Much patience is required. Aaaaand fluffiness indeed. I still worry over whether or not I can still write fluffiness, or romance of any kind. Hopefully I haven't totally forgotten how.
Shadowess 88: Light and L being handcuffed together is going to put quite a damper on things for a bit; though I don't think Light has quite the insomnical capacity that L does, so he's bound to pass out after a certain amount of time. The Goddess of the New World needs his beauty sleep, after all…. -cough- Katherine herself has had trouble sleeping since quite young (reasons will be explained about later, likely by her; there just hasn't been any real opportunity to yet), which is why she can manage to keep up with him fairly well on that count. Misa… she notices something pretty early on, I will say that much. Shan't say no more, however. Castiel from Supernatural? Gaaaaah I haven't gotten to keep up with that show in so long. I think I ended up ceasing watching it right around the time Castiel was introduced, and I hate that I did. My mom and I used to watch it together, and I just kinda couldn't bring myself to for a while after she passed away. I'd love to get back into it, though. -makes note to download episodes she's missed-
Eien-no-itami: Are you kidding? Everything about Katherine early on in the original was absolutely ridiculous. Major reason for rewriting this. And then when I started, I started getting complaints about how she wasn't as smart in the rewrite… which was very important, given in the original she was way too smart, practically omniscient for the first half. -endrant- Sorry for the rant. But in short, no offense taken, given those are my opinions exactly. I was young and stupid and hope I've grown as a writer since then; I guess I have since you say you love this version. And thanks!
Long forgotten words: Two weeks? Ohnoes! D8 Well, I hope that it's too your liking when you can get back to reading it again! It's tweaked here and there, but this particular bit is kept mostly the same as the original, with added and revised description.
Disclaimer: I dun own. I promise. Please don't sue me. I also don't own Urban Dictionary, which I did mention in this chapter, so I feel I should mention that as well.
Warnings: Enough fluffiness to smother a larger-than-average elephant. For serious.
Quote:
"I wish we could have talked about this earlier," she said. "I feel terrible for being angry with my panda puppy all day now." She sighed. "I hate withdrawal. It really turns me into a complete monster."
The silence persisted, and Katherine frowned a little. He didn't seem terribly uncomfortable, not frozen as he had been earlier. As it stretched on, she opened her eyes and glanced up at him to see him looking quite pensive, almost agitated. After some time, he spoke.
"What exactly do you mean by 'panda puppy'?"
It was quite a feat on L's part that he managed, even subconsciously, to make his eyes grow any wider than they were under normal circumstances. They remained on the video feed of the suspects in front of him on the television, unblinking. If he was breathing at all, it was very shallow and unnoticeable; it was hardly any surprise that he had frozen; many people that had experience with normal social interaction would be nervous about making such a confession. Katherine certainly was; she had hardly expected L to beat her to the punch.
She observed him, stuck in a bit of a surprised silence herself—though she had expected it from his admission of the contents of that research document from the other night, actually hearing it was another thing entirely. After a long moment of watching him bite at the nail of his index finger, she spoke up.
"How much more?" she asked carefully. He showed no immediate signs of having heard her, remaining perfectly still. Sighing quietly, she said, "Ryuzaki…" She poked his shoulder lightly, an action that made him jump—at least the shock hadn't completely paralyzed him. "Don't get paranoid, it's… it's not a big deal. I'm just curious." He gulped noiselessly, but still gave no answer. She frowned. "I'm going to keep poking you until you respond." Still, no response. She poked him in the shoulder again. "Ryu—"
"With the research I did," he said suddenly, "it's likely only a fifty-two percent of a… a…" She prodded his arm. "… a small crush."
"I'm going to guess you were waiting for me to say something…" His responding nod was so short that she might have missed it had she blinked. "And you decided to bring it up since I hadn't been talking." Another very brief nod, and he gulped again. After a moment, she took a seat on one arm of the chair and placed a hand on his shoulder—L jumped once again, startled. "I'm really sorry about that. I was just… I needed some time to think about… similar things."
A silence rang between them for a moment. "Did you come to any conclusion?"
For a moment, she let her eyes swivel to the ceiling as though in consideration, in a more or less accurate imitation of the detective beside her.
"I believe," she said slowly, miming his regular calm and analytical tone, "that there is a ninety-seven percent chance that I may have a 'small' crush on you, a fifty-seven percent chance that it may be slightly larger than I'd like to think, and a one hundred percent chance that I will be imitating you quite a bit more in the future as I find it quite entertaining. And just for clarification," she added, letting her eyes fall back down on L, "there is a five-hundred and twenty-six percent chance that you are, indeed, a panda puppy."
L chose to ignore the last statement in favor of his own sanity. "You seem quite certain to have hurried off this morning."
Katherine sighed, lowering her gaze again. "I know. I'd been planning on discussing it then, but…" she shrugged, looking back up with an apologetic, half-hearted smile. "I chickened out."
"You 'chickened out?'"
Katherine rolled her eyes at his disbelief. "Even people with social experience have trouble with this sort of thing. And I can't really consider myself a socialite…. The only person I was friendly with for the first eight or nine years of my life was Al. Then Pat and Don, mostly. Don's younger brother was only around for a couple years, I was maybe eleven when he ran off, but he was quiet and I never really talked to him. I did go to school under a fake identity after I left the orphanage, but I kept away from everyone. I've really only opened up over the past few years and I'm still not particularly great at trusting people… except you, it seems. Maybe because you remind me a little of me before… well, before I got to be a bit more social." She laughed. "You know, plus around five thousand points of IQ."
She looked down at him—he was still at the other side, still flush against the left arm of the chair since she had blown up at him earlier. After a long, silent moment, she slid down from the right arm into the empty spot next to him, and she laid her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes.
"I wish we could have talked about this earlier," she said. "I feel terrible for being angry with my panda puppy all day now." She sighed. "I hate withdrawal. It really turns me into a complete monster."
The silence persisted, and Katherine frowned a little. He didn't seem terribly uncomfortable, not frozen as he had been earlier. As it stretched on, she opened her eyes and glanced up at him to see him looking quite pensive, almost agitated. After some time, he spoke.
"What exactly do you mean by 'panda puppy'?"
Katherine laughed, partly in relief that this was all his contemplation had been over. "Shouldn't you know? You are the only one currently in existence, after all." She grinned. "I'm just glad I got to lay claim to the world's only panda puppy before Light can get the chance to when you go and chain yourself to him." She received a mildly annoyed sigh in response and laughed again, closing her eyes. "Why don't you research it? Who knows, maybe you'll find something."
And so he did.
It had been nearly a week since the strange term had been applied to him, and a suffocating sense of curiosity had overridden the humiliation L was sure he would feel if he did look into something so nonsensical that it couldn't possibly have any real meaning. Perhaps it wasn't rational, perhaps it wasn't sensible, perhaps not even within the boundaries of sanity to even be curious about this. The probability of the existence of a panda dog hybrid was a far cry; even with genetic engineering, the odds that an experiment of that nature would ever be considered ethical were at less than ten percent. For once, he was the one using search engines for something completely irrelevant—but this had been gnawing a gaping hole in his skull for the past week, so he had the right.
The results were absolutely astounding. "'Results one of ten of about two million six hundred seventy thousand for… panda puppy…?' This can't possibly…" Frowning to himself, he clicked on one of the first links. Urban Dictionary described the phenomena as something not quite as phenomenal as the madness that had been plaguing L's mind: a Taiwanese puppy dyed to look like a panda, commonly used as icons around the internet. Not quite so phenomenal, but still plaguing him was the fact that this made very little sense for the context it was being used in towards him.
"Whatcha doin?"
"Nothing." L minimized the screen as Katherine was taking a seat on the arm of his chair.
"Really. Then what's that?" she asked, amusement dancing over her tone as she pointed down at the minimized window on the task bar. "You don't strike me as the sort that frequents Urban Dictionary. That'd more by my sort."
"I… it was a pop-up window."
"Then why are you turning red?" she teased, poking one of his cheeks. "Was my panda puppy maybe trying to figure out what a panda puppy is?"
"… No."
She laughed, obviously seeing through the lie immediately. "You'll be hard-pressed to figure it out," she said. "I sort of just made it up on the spot."
"But there were over two million results in the search—"
"The search you weren't doing?"
"I was searching for it, yes," he admitted. "I figured no harm would come in researching it when you had no intentions of explaining it. I still don't entirely understand, however…. Why am I a Taiwanese puppy dyed to look like a panda?"
"It's called a metaphor, silly." She grinned. "Shouldn't you know what those are? Or was English not a required course at detective school?"
"I'm fully aware of what metaphors are. I doubted you were implying I was literally the offspring of a panda and a dog. I just don't entirely understand the context of the metaphor itself."
She grinned. "Well, if you'd just said that in the first place, we could have avoided all this trouble, couldn't we?" L sighed. "All I was saying was that you're as cute as a hybrid of a panda cub and a puppy. Especially when you're so irritated."
Whether it was a compliment or not, it had been issued in the form of a challenge—and L already had negative points to his side, from looking up that ridiculous nickname rather than getting it out of her, from out and out denying it when she asked resulting in further embarrassment on his part, and now this. There was still some chance at retaliation—maybe it could at least end at a draw this time.
Before any response could even be thought of, Katherine put herself yet another step ahead without speaking another word. As L hadn't been watching her, had more been staring up towards the ceiling in thought, his shock was only doubled by the sudden move. Mere seconds after her last sentence, he felt a pair of soft lips touch his cheek. The small, chaste touch quickened his pulse as blood rushed to his face yet again.
This was normally the point of no return, checkmate, the weapon that ensured her a win nearly every time because there was simply no reaction to be had… and yet there was. There was, and it was going to have to be used eventually, was it not? It was a foolproof solution, yet it was near impossible not to overanalyze it and decide against it, decide to save the trump card for later. But no—not this time. This was later.
As Katherine's lips began to leave his cheek, he turned his head and captured her lips with his own. Her breath hitched in her initial shock from this sudden move, and after a moment, his action and his thoughts truly connected. He quickly pulled away, his eyes widening as he realized in an instant just how horribly his absentminded plan had backfired on him. He started to apologize for this thoughtless action, but he only managed the word "I—", stopping when he felt the fingers of one of Katherine's hands entwine themselves within his hair. He barely comprehended the fact that they were getting closer, unbearably closer, not until their lips were together again.
This time the shock was all his, but he certainly made no attempt to pull away—though this may have been because he had no time to before she was doing just that, having only brushed her lips to his for a moment, leaving their foreheads together and their lips only inches apart. The closeness was near unbearable, but a bit of normalcy returned when she opened her eyes and gave a sly smirk—somehow, despite the fact that this should have been a serious situation by every means, this actually seemed somehow appropriate.
"So what's the percentage on that 'small crush' now, detective?"
L blinked in response. Rhetorical question…? It seemed possible, but his mind wasn't functioning quite at full capacity. After a long moment of staring back into the blue-green eyes that hung perhaps an inch away from his own, he decided to reply anyway.
"One hundred." And with that, rather powerless to resist this new, unfamiliar temptation to which he had never before been subjected, he pressed his lips back to hers.
Once again, Katherine's breath hitched in her alarm at the sudden movement, but she managed to find it rather more quickly this time. It hardly came as any surprise to her that he froze again—little contact as he had with the outside world prior to the Kira investigation, to be thrown into something like this with one of the first people he had met face to face in his time solving cases would make this at least a bit awkward. It was lucky she had at least a little more experience—though she had only ever been greatly familiar with three other people through the majority of her life, she had been in a romantic relationship of sorts with one of them. Inwardly, she flinched—it would probably be better not to think about that now.
It thoroughly surprised her when, just as it seemed he might be relaxing a bit, L quickly moved away—she opened her eyes to find his on the screen of his laptop. "It's six fifty-eight. Matsuda-san's cell phone alarm will go off in two minutes."
"Wonderful…" she grumbled, glancing back at the sleeping members of the task force—she had practically forgotten about them. It was quite a good thing Matsuda hadn't picked this morning to wake up a few minutes before his alarm; though it was rare of him, he had done so before, and it wouldn't have been particularly pleasant if this morning had been one of the few times he decided to roll off of the sofa and stumble over to the coffee maker at, say, five minutes of seven. Needless to say, he likely wouldn't have needed coffee to knock away the drowsiness had he spotted them.
"Maybe," Katherine said quietly, though addressing L now, "Mattie-kun and Aizawa could use a day off. They haven't had one in quite a while, have they?"
"No…. Neither have you."
"I don't think I'd mind spending a day off right here," she said, smirking again as her hand slid out of his dark hair and down to his cheek. He blinked at her owlishly, with only the slightest change of expression—it seemed he had caught what she meant. "I pretend I'm leaving with them, but I've lost my bag and I have to find that before I can go. That should work, considering… I'm… well, I'm not entirely sure what I've done with it." She frowned for a moment, before going on. "They haven't had a day off in so long that I doubt they'd question it. They'll probably just be right out the door." She pulled her hand away, glancing at the computer clock again—less than a minute. "I'm going to go grab a cup of coffee while you think it over."
Moments later, the alarm went off. It was followed by an irritated sort of grunt, and the sound of a hand flopping onto the cell phone's table to grab the device responsible for the racket and suppress it. There was a drunkenly tired shuffle to be heard after this earful, along with a yawn to match. Without looking back, L spoke up.
"Is Aizawa-san awake?"
"Eh…? Yeah, looks like it," Matsuda replied through a stifled yawn.
"Then I would like all three of you to listen," he said, in his regular stoic tones. "As there is little work to be done aside from keeping an eye on the monitors, which I can easily do myself, you may all have the day off."
There was silence for a long moment. Katherine half-wondered if Aizawa would find some reason to protest this, and went into a silent panic as she watched L from a few feet away from Matsuda. However, it wasn't Aizawa who spoke up first.
"Are you serious?" Matsuda seemed to have managed to shake off his drowsiness quite instantly. "We can actually leave?"
"Yes," L replied.
"About time…" said Aizawa—Katherine's momentary paranoia drained away. "When?"
"As soon as you wish. Be back between ten o'clock and noon tomorrow, however."
No one had any protests to this order—Matsuda and Aizawa hurried off with rushed goodbyes, while Katherine began the façade of looking for her messenger bag. As soon as they were both out the door, Katherine headed over to it and listened at it; when their footsteps faded off in the direction of the elevator, she locked the door and walked back over to take a seat next to L again, this time squeezing into the chair next to him rather than sitting on the arm.
"That worked wonderfully," she said. "I doubt they'll even bother coming back if one of them forgot something."
"Probably not," L said, a bit absently. His eyes were swiveled towards the ceiling again, lost in thought. Katherine frowned over at him, before poking him in the shoulder.
"Something wrong?"
"I've never had a day off during a case before."
This time, Katherine blinked owlishly. "Never?" She shook her head in disbelief. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but… still seems pretty mad. You can afford to take a day off now, though, I think." She frowned when he remained silent. "Would you feel any better if we discussed the new Kira in a bit?"
After a moment's contemplation, he replied, "I don't think the day off is the issue. The problem lies in that… I'm… not entirely sure of how to spend a day off."
"Ah… well… you relax?" Katherine found herself wondering, quite abruptly, exactly what L did between the ridiculously complicated murder cases he spent the majority of his time solving—he certainly didn't seem the type to have a vacation home in Cancun, after all. Frowning over this, she added, "Though I'm going to wager a guess that's something you're not sure how to do, either."
L's eyes remained on the ceiling, still quite thoughtful. "I think I might be getting better at it."
"Do you?" she asked, smirking.
Katherine was answered a moment later by a pair of hands on her shoulders, and a pair of lips on hers, surprised right out of her smugness. Though his lips did move this time, even before hers, it was a rather slow, tentative motion; and he was still terribly edgy, even jumped when she looped her arms around his neck. Though his nervousness was nothing short of adorable to her, it only seemed he was going to get less and less comfortable if she only ignored it. She drew her lips away, sighing a little as she did—there was a look of horror in his eyes at this that only reflected just how anxious he had been.
"What—" he started worriedly.
"Try," Katherine interrupted him, moving a hand into his hair again, combing her fingers through the tresses slowly, "not to be so nervous."
Eyelids falling slightly at the feeling of the hand stroking through his hair, at the sound of the soothing voice, he half-mumbled, "Sorry…"
"You don't have to apologize," she said, grinning in mild amusement now. "Just relax."
"You just seem to know what you're doing a bit better…" Still, his voice remained little more than a mumble. He seemed to be relaxing a bit more, at least—Katherine, on the other hand, averted her eyes from his at the allegation.
"I… suppose you could say that. But I've only actually been this… close to one other person, so not by much. But from experience," she added, "I can tell you that the sooner you learn to relax, the better it'll be. So relax. And no over-thinking or over-focusing. I know you tend to do that, and that's just going to make you more nervous."
"But I—"
"Just don't," she said quietly, letting the hand in his hair come to rest at the nape of his neck, staring into his dark eyes. "Trust me."
Whatever he mumbled this time, she didn't quite catch it; and she decided she wasn't going to bother asking when he pressed his lips back to hers again.
The word of the day is fluff. I hope you don't have to ask why after reading this… or perhaps suffocating in it. I half-suffocated on teh fluffies while writing it.
And on that bombshell, I'm off. Already about halfway done with the next chapter, so it should be along quicker than this one was.