Slush Pile
A/N - Teru, Reiji, and B critique the fic that they star in while going through it line by meager line.
"Is this really necessary?" Teru flips through the pages offhandedly, wondering why an entire book was used to print one lousy sheet of paper. The bound pages look like a movie or play script, but all but the first page is blank. "She really doesn't have a high opinion of her work, so I don't know why she's wasting my time. I have cases to solve."
"I doubt you would be here if you were as busy as you claim, so stop pretending your time is so valuable." Reiji pulls a gleaming stainless steel cigar case from his jacket, drawing out a petit corona and snapping the case shut.
"Hmph," Teru says, amusingly inelegant as he wrinkles his nose at Reiji. He adjusts his glasses, having decided that his image could suffer a little by not wearing contacts. He prefers contacts in court so that he has no perceived flaws, but given the informality of this setting, he just wore the glasses this morning. His fanbase finds him more darling for it, calling him megane or some such nonsense with no regard for his intelligence or education, merely his looks. "Would you mind opening a window? I don't want the smoke all over my clothes."
"I would, actually. It's windy outside and I don't like to waste a good cigar." Reiji smiles in that infuriatingly lofty way at Teru, making sure to watch him as he clips the end of the cigar and takes out a torch lighter that costs more than Teru's entire outfit. "Care for one? I have extras."
"No, I don't smoke."
"I'm sure you don't. Do you do anything other than work?" He lights the cigar, toasting the end with easy familiarity; he enjoys the good life that Teru so disdains.
"I see no point in indulging pointless pursuits." Teru shifts as his cell phone vibrates and sees Reiji's iPhone light up at the same time from where it sits on the older man's stone coffee table. A muted chime from another phone tickles at his ears, the sound directionless. He looks around as he slides his phone open to read the text message, trying to figure out where the other person is.
Stop chitchatting. You're here to discuss the story, not snipe at each other, the message reads.
"What a bitch." Reiji sighs, casually maligning the author when he sets his phone back down, noticing that Teru has a similar expression at his identical message. "Where is Beyond? We're waiting for him."
"I've been here all along."
"Shit!" Reiji jumps and nearly drops his stick, juggling it as he tries not to let the burning end fall on his suit. Teru leaps off the sofa at the voice coming from underneath him, dimly hearing the continued string of invectives in English coming from Reiji in the background as his heart hammers in his ears.
A corner of fabric at the front of the sofa lifts to show Beyond concealed in the space underneath. He smiles at Reiji, who is horrified that the man was hidden beneath his furniture like an oversized cockroach, squeezing into spaces that should be too small for him.
"How long have you been there?" He asks, heedless of whether or not Teru knows enough English to understand them.
"Only since you sat down in here. I came in through your balcony while you two were in the kitchen."
Teru continues to stand, unwilling to sit back down now that he knows where Beyond is. He moves to the glass doors that lead to the balcony, opening them against Reiji's wishes while the older man is distracted. The movement conceals the slight tremor in his hands while he tries to get his heart to slow down.
"How sly of you," Reiji says with a rather mean tone of voice. "Now that you've amused yourself, please do us the honor of sitting down like a human being and discussing this paragraph of a story."
"There were exactly seven paragraphs and 196 words, not counting the title." Beyond goes back to Japanese when Reiji does. The older man is so annoyed at losing his composure that he tries to hide it by being a condescending bastard, Beyond notes.
"Thank you for that brilliant observation." Even Teru smiles at Reiji's sarcasm, for he has never seen the man so unsettled. Granted, he has only known him for a few paragraphs, but it seems uncharacteristic of him, quite unrefined from how Teru has imagined him.
Beyond laughs before sliding out from under the sofa. Defying both gravity and skeletal structure, he bends his knees, folding his feet underneath his hips before pushing off his toes and standing, his spine curling in a serpentine manner. The almost grotesque motion has a dancer's grace that Reiji and Teru both watch in horrified fascination. Beyond shakes out his wild hair in an incongruously graceless manner and heads for the kitchen.
"I'm getting something to drink. Discuss, I can hear you from there."
"Make yourself at home," Reiji says under his breath as he takes a lazy draw off the cigar. Teru sits back down on a loveseat rather than the sofa, picking the book off the floor where he dropped it earlier.
"What is there to discuss? It's so short." Teru says in an effort to start a conversation. The sooner they say whatever the author wants to hear, the sooner he can go back to the work that he doesn't have. He is in between cases right now, but there is a televised debate next week that he can start preparing for.
"It's short because it doesn't work." Beyond calls in a voice better suited to rasping whispers and creepily invasive dialogue. Speaking Japanese softens his abrasive voice, whereas English only aggravates it.
"I agree." Reiji says, opening up the book almost unnecessarily with his free hand since he has memorized the piece. It just gives him something to do, to stare at the pages. "We're all side characters for a reason. We don't have enough personality to actually interact; we just move the plot along."
"We can't interact because we're all loners, in a sense." Teru continues the train of thought that Reiji has started. He leans back, wishing he could turn pages as he talks. "I acted on my own because Light trusted me to make decisions, so I don't need to speak to anyone."
"The only reason I was with others is because I was part of Yotsuba's Council of Death, or whatever it was called. I have plenty of resources and no reason to be part of a group."
"That a tactful way of saying you're filthy rich." Beyond steps back into the room, stirring sugar into a stoneware mug of coffee. He doesn't like all of Reiji's things; they're too fine, too upscale, and the fact that they cost so much only makes him want to break them. The stoneware was the most unsophisticated piece he could find.
"It's impolite to brag." Reiji replies, rolling the cigar between his thumb and index finger. Even now he's not being smug, just stating facts.
Beyond dislikes him slightly less for that; at least he isn't an arrogant prick.
Teru, on the other hand, dislikes him more for being humble. He is still paying off the loans that grants and scholarships didn't cover. Reiji was schooled abroad with his father's money so he has no comprehension of difficulty, in Teru's opinion.
"I have no reason to be interacting with you two, given that I'm not even from Japan." Beyond contemplates annoying Teru further by sitting beside him before just perching on the sofa. "I made my own plans and don't work with other people."
"Except Naomi. She was rather pivotal to your plot." Reiji points out.
"She was nobody. She was a mouthpiece for L, nothing more." Beyond sips his drink nonchalantly.
Reiji notes that Beyond seems to believe the lies that he is telling himself and doesn't comment.
"So we've established that we have no reason to work together." Teru sums up their comments, wondering if that's the end of this brief discussion.
"Not only that. We have no ability to function together. Beyond would act on his own if he wanted to kill L, I have no interest in L or either of you, and you…" Reiji peers at Teru, his dark eyes piercing. "You can't work with anyone else. You style yourself an instrument of God, deleting those unworthy to remain on this earth. You can't work with sinners, like a killer or a hedonist. That is how you see me, isn't it?"
Teru opens his mouth slightly, then closes it, his cheeks pinkening in mixed rage and mortification at being so easily read.
"You have the same delusions your 'god' does, imagining that you have been selected out of all humanity to judge the unworthy."
Teru bristles further at Reiji's offhand words. The man is so thoroughly insulting him that he can't even form a coherent response.
"Now, now, Reiji." Beyond redirects the conversation by using the businessman's first name in a casual manner bound to irritate him. "We're never going to have a civil discussion if you antagonize him like that, even if it is true."
"This is why the story doesn't work." Teru bit out, closing the book and putting it on the table. "There are no reasons for us to be together or to meet, and we have no ability to work together."
"We might have been put into a grab bag and pulled out at random, really," Beyond says drolly, taking on the same high-handed tone of voice that Reiji and Teru are using. He doesn't care one way or another about the story, but it's interesting to watch these two interact. "I think it's just an experiment. What stranger combinations could have come about?"
"With three people that never meet? What about Near, Takada, and… Sayu?" Reiji blows a smoke ring without looking overly pretentious.
"Some of them know of each other's existence. What about three that have no idea the others exist? Like Halle, Wedy, and Naomi?"
"That's a good one. All fairly independent women, I believe."
Reiji's phone vibrates with another text.
What an idea! Thanks for that.
"Ugh, another chapter," Beyond says, following it with a gagging noise. "I can't wait to see what comes of this."
A/N - Another silly ficlet that I rescued from the hard drive. Why didn't I share these years ago? This one's going nowhere fast, but I have so few stories that aren't deadly serious.