familiarity

'So you're really calling him Lawliet-kun now, huh?' Ryuk said, and he shook with delighted, wheezing cackles. 'You two really have teamed up.' His teeth were sharp and his blue-lipped grin sliced up his gaunt, high-boned cheeks. 'I don't think I've ever witnessed anything so terrifying.'

Light glanced at him from the corner of his scarlet eyes, gaze half-hidden by his hair. 'Scared, Ryuk?' he murmured.

'Positively shivering,' Ryuk grinned. His lips never moved when he spoke, his triangular teeth perpetually bared, his eyes eternally drifted off in slightly different directions.

'I see,' said Light boredly. His gaze flicked across the Shinigami's anemic, gangling form. 'Those wounds,' he noted, glancing back up at the Ryuk's face, 'those from the Shinigami King?'

'Huh?' Ryuk uttered. He might have blinked, if he'd had eyelids with which to do so. 'You noticed?'

Light looked at him sedately. 'Did you really think I wouldn't?'

'I suppose not,' Ryuk admitted, long arms and legs hanging limply as he flapped slowly but silently beside them. 'Yeah, they're from him. I didn't necessarily always act as a Shinigami should.' He lifted his clawed, black-clothed hands in a vague, almost resigned gesture. 'The punishment really wasn't so bad, though.' He dropped his hands again, adding, almost sadistically gleeful: 'I've seen much worse.'

'I'm sure,' said Light placidly. With a blasé, apathetic curiosity, he tilted his chin up slightly to regard the Shinigami. 'Do you know how much the Shinigami King can do to us? Do the same rules apply to wandering spirits as to Shinigami?'

'I wouldn't know,' Ryuk said. He cackled, the sound dehydrated and asthmatic and full of schadenfreude the way a scarecrow was full of straw. 'We don't get beings like you two around here too often.'

Light let out a jaded sigh. 'As helpful as always, I see.'

'Yup!' said Ryuk cheerfully.

Lawliet was watching them with blackhole eyes. 'You two really are quite close,' he observed, a thumb pressed to his lips.

Light glanced over at him, red eyes languid and half-lidded. 'What did you expect, Lawliet-kun?' His tone was mild. 'Ryuk followed me around for years.'

Lawliet shifted his gaze upwards, pale thumb rubbing over his lower lip. 'So Kira-kun's only friend in the entire world was a Shinigami,' he murmured. His hand moved away from his mouth as he turned his head to look over at Light again, his eyes dark and callous. 'That's a little sad.'

Light's stare remained bored and lethargic. 'Says the person who had no friends at all.'

Lawliet leaned forward to bite his thumb, but his gaze remained steadily on Light's face. 'Touché,' he murmured.