Raito's eyes snapped open and he found himself gazing into the darkness of his bedroom. Why his eyes were open when they should be closed he had no idea. If he had to guess some outside stimulus had been the cause; but waiting revealed nothing, and Raito was all too ready to leave it that way.
He closed his eyes.
It must be the wind.
Plick
Unless the wind could tap on his window.
Raito opened his eyes and stared bleakly into the darkness for a second time.
Throwing the covers aside, he sat up and reached towards the lamp on his night-stand. An amber glow washed over his bare legs and chest, but fell short of the window, leaving the space in front of it to the shadows. Raito stood up and walked towards that space. The dresser had cast a block of shadow across his path and he paused in it. He gave the window another careful look.
What if it was a shinigami?
Scenarios like that sometimes played out in his head while he was going through his day. He had never believed in the supernatural, but it was out there, somewhere. Supposedly above him. Kira had even drawn a little diagram in the journal of what he supposed the Shinigami realm looked like.
The drawing must have been based on a recount from Ryuuk, he was sure. It was strange. He felt the familiarity of that name every time it broke over his tongue, could feel these phantom emotions from just the suggestion of this creature: a strange comfort; a puzzlement; a sadness, like something was missing. This shinigami had obviously meant something to him, and yet…
He could not even recall his face or his voice. It was pretty sad. Should there be a shinigami outside his window, how was Raito to know it was Ryuuk. Did he even want a shinigami outside his window? Stupid, could he even see it if it was there? Would he even be able to hear the sounds it made as it tapped on his window?
The answer was he couldn't. Not anymore.
Tonight it seemed he was prone to some dim-witted thoughts. Usually he was quick to wake, but his brain was still fogged with sleep, unable to filter out the sense from the nonsense.
L would probably enjoy that—a stupid comment or two from him. One day he would have to let one slip and see how he reacted to it. But knowing L he would probably give him a preserved strawberry or something from his pocket.
Frowning as he recalled more of L's grosser habits, Raito ambled over to the window and unlatched it. He let it fall open, looking to the left and then to the right; then he looked down into the yard.
No. There was no shinigami present, but possibly something worse.
"Hellooo, Raito-kun."
Much worse.
"You would think that after the fourth pebble you would have woken up. I did not think you were such a sound sleeper. And by the way, where are your clothes?"
Sighing and rolling his eyes—he wanted to make certain that L got the hint—Raito eased back from the window and closed it. The detective was going to have to use the door if he wanted to talk. Raito had thought that was winningly obvious, but then again L never liked to take the obvious route in life. He supposed it was one of the reasons why he liked him so much, but it was also one of the reasons why he disliked him too.
Raito returned to his bed, but before he could even settle in comfortably, he heard L throw another pebble against his window.
He turned towards the sound and glared.
Did L not understand what a door was used for?
Plick
Unless that one time they'd had sex against it had confused him.
Plick
In any case, he wasn't moving from this spot.
Plick
L needed to learn how take 'no' for an answer.
Plick
And he also needed to learn how to use a damn door.
Crick
Raito started up from his bed and ran over to the window throwing it open. "Stop, stop," he hissed down at L, who almost immediately dropped the rock that he was about to hurl. Frighteningly enough, there was a line of stones of increasing size and destruction by the detective's feet. Raito could only assume L was planning to pelt his window until he paid attention to him or broke through the pane and got the entire orphanage to pay attention.
"You shouldn't leave when someone is trying to speak to you. It is rude."
Raito really didn't want to hear this from a guy who was throwing rocks at his window three in the morning.
"I have something important to tell you. Can you come down here?"
Sighing, Raito propped his chin up on the window-sill. "What's so important that it couldn't wait until morning?"
"I have a sudden craving for Toffee, but there is none in the house." L looked up at him like Raito should immediately understand.
"And…"
"And what? There is no Toffee. It is only natural that if there is no Toffee in the house we must go find some."
How was that natural? Raito wanted to ask but instead chose to focus on the "we" part of the sentence. "It's late…. Do you need it right this instant?"
"I would also like to spend some time with you," L said, and Raito was really "touched" by how the spending-time-with-him part seemed like an afterthought to the Toffee-hunt. "We had a fight, but Raito-kun knows that I miss him when we are apart." Innocently, L clasped his hands behind his back and looked up at him with doleful eyes. And with said eyes so large, it turned out to be a rather effective ploy at gaining sympathy.
Raito was not the most generous person when it came to sympathy, but he found it hard to say no in this situation. He knew L was used to being waited on hand and foot by Watari, but with the man no where in sight when the detective had his specific late-night cravings, there was nothing to be done but wait 'til morning.
L had been spoiled—whole-heartedly, unbearably spoiled; and Raito should not be feeling sorry for the detective because he could not suck it up and settle with one of the many other sugar-infested treats lying around, but he was. Like an idiot. He knew how high-maintenance L was when it came to the things he put in his mouth. L didn't need much in the way of creature comforts (the way he dressed and slept attested to this), but he was unbearably uncomfortable if he was unsatisfied with his food.
The texture had a lot to do with it, Raito had noticed. He liked cakes most of all because there was the sugar content and the colorful designs to contend with, but it was the smooth and rich consistency that made him continually go back to it. He could snack on cheap candy and crackers all day, but his cakes were always from good bakeries and the flour it was made from was always good quality. Sensitive as his mouth was, he could not put up with anything less.
And the fact that L was always after him for hour long make-out sessions helped in ascertaining the degree of pleasure he simply received through his mouth.
For L, oral fixation really was putting it lightly.
"Fine," Raito said backing away towards his closet. "Just give a minute."
When finished putting on his sneakers, Raito stuck his head out of the window to judge the distance to the ground. He looked down at L, and then glanced at the ledge he would be using to get down to the shelf of the first floor window below him.
As Raito began to straddle the window-sill, the leg out stretching towards the ledge to gain a foot-hold, he had a weird moment of déjà-vu that made him stop.
Well it was understandable why this would be familiar: Kira had used his bedroom window when he didn't want to alert the household to his comings and goings at night.
But why Raito was sneaking out of a window now when there was a perfectly fine door staring him in the face…? He had to wonder if there were times when being a teenager had more of an effect on your behavior than your brain did. He also hated the fact that he was doing the very thing he had frowned on L for.
Lowering himself onto the ledge, Raito crouched down and eased onto the shelf of the window below him; then he jumped the remaining distance with an easy grace that made L give him a knowing look.
"I am really not surprised by how good you are at sneaking out of windows in the cover of night."
Raito said nothing and began in earnest to smooth out imaginary wrinkles on the front of his red button-up. He waited for L to walk ahead before he raised his eyes.
"Do you think Misa-san would like to come with us?" L asked as they passed by her bedroom. "I bet she is also very good at sneaking out of windows: she was your partner in crime."
Raito scoffed at the back of L's head. "We never committed any crimes."
"So it was just the crime of being young and beautiful. That must be the reason why I spent all my time chasing after you, not because either of you posed a threat to society."
"Didn't you?" Raito chuckled.
"I am going to answer that question with a firm 'no' and if possible a kick."
Side-stepping L just in case the detective made good on his promise, Raito stopped below Misa's window and picked up a pebble from the ground. He tossed it up in the air and caught it, then repeated the motion a few more times as he pensively gazed at the window above him. A thought had come to him, but he was uncertain if he should say it out loud.
"Do you think she knows?"
"What?" L said behind him.
"About who she really is. About us. Do you think she suspects we're not who we say we are."
L came to stand beside him. "There are times when Misa-san will look at me with a very attentive stare, like she is trying to figure something out. I feel like she senses that something is off, but she does not let that stop her from being happy. It is in her nature. Why do you ask?"
"Because I sometimes wonder if I would have been better off if I never knew either." Raito raised his hand, paused in thought, and then tossed the pebble at Misa's window. "I'm not ashamed of who I was and I don't think it was wrong the things I did, but you have to understand…" Raito turned to look at him earnestly. "The thing I lost or the thing I was about to gain, it meant a lot to me, because of the ideal it represented and because…I sacrificed so many of the things I held precious in order to obtain it. It just hurts that I… failed. That I could work so hard and still—"
"I understand. You had to choose for your sake," L said rather coldly. He seemed to realize he had put his defenses up and his voice softened in apology. "I also made a choice for my own sake, and even though it hurts you, I cannot do anything but hope that someday… it will stop hurting." L touched a hand to the side of his face and Raito helplessly leaned into it.
But they were startled apart when the window above them banged open and a blonde head poked out.
Raito cleared his throat, recomposing himself. "Down here, Misa" he called and stepped forward to get her attention.
"Raito!" the girl cried.
"We're going into town, so if—"
"I'm coming!" she said and disappeared back into her room just as abruptly as she had come out.
Raito closed his mouth, left open mid-sentence, and glanced back at L, who was now looking down at his feet.
Their eyes met.
"We will talk later."
"Later," Raito agreed and felt strangely lost for words. He turned back to Misa's window, hoping that the blonde would hurry up and get down here. Things were always weird between him and L, but never to the point where he couldn't figure out what to say.
Thankfully, Misa was fast and she was at the window in under a minute.
"She dresses faster than you," L suddenly said beside him.
Raito could not help but roll his eyes. The weirdness between them evaporated in that single moment. "She's a model. They learn how to dress quickly or they lose their jobs."
"I should make friends with more models then," L said and at the moment he got hit in the face with a falling hand-bag.
Raito thought it was exceptional timing.
"Sorry. It slipped," Misa said somewhere above them.
L picked the black purse off his face, rubbing his nose. "It is okay; we will call it even since I can see up your skirt from here."
There was a vine-trellis beside Misa's bedroom window that she was using to climb down to them. When L's words floated up to her, she stopped in the middle of her descent and reached down towards her foot. "You're not supposed to look!" she yelled as she threw a slipper at his spikey-head and he ducked.
"I do not know what man will not look when you tell him not to. I suspect none of these men are down here," L said, continuing to tease her.
Misa reached down for another fashionable projectile but lost her hold on the horizontal support she was gripping. Luckily for her, Raito was there to catch her.
"My knight in shinning armor," she cooed and wrapped her arms around him.
"Stop playing around," Raito scolded them as he tried to dislodge Misa's arms from around his neck. He put her down on her feet.
Raito didn't want to be the kill-joy of the group, but for some reason he always ended up as exactly that when Misa and L began to act like children. It was really unfair since he had never had to serve such a role in any group setting. He was usually the group-listener or the group problem-solver, never the group 'Misa why are you asking me about my favorite color and L stop telling her what it is because you don't know' person. He supposed it was because these two were very strange and they couldn't carry on a civil conversation if it ran over them and then backed up and ran over them again.
"You two are going to wake the entire neighborhood."
"I'm sorry, Raito," Misa apologized, "I'll be as quiet as a mouse"; and then she absurdly began to tip-toe off.
As Raito watched her, tick in eye, he had to wonder if the blonde just did these things to humor him.
"You give the neighborhood too much credit," L said coming up beside him, close enough now to whisper in his ear. "They have yet to hear the noises you make when my head is in your lap, so—"
Raito pushed L to the side, not caring in the least to hear the end of that sentence.
L was such an obnoxious asshole sometimes.
Walking off ahead of the pair, Raito strolled over to the garage where Roger's Mercedes Benz was parked. He had never actually hot-wired a car before, but he did know how it worked in theory, and it would be interesting to test it on one of these older models.
Raito looked away from the garage as if stung. He definitely shouldn't be thinking something like that, especially when the car didn't belong to him. Plus it would be problematic if they did take it out.
Raito knew how to drive, but he didn't have a license and he doubted L had one either. Misa was the only one with a license, but what good that would do them in another country, not to mention that L had made her get rid of all forms of identification the moment she had joined them. L had given them fake IDs, but if they were pulled over by the cops, how were they going to explain themselves when it showed up that none of them actually existed? In fact, Raito thought morbidly, he was supposed to be dead. L was supposedly dead too. And Misa was missing. In the NPA database, she would probably have something like "Kidnapped" next to her name.
Wow… they were all a mess.
Sighing (he was doing a lot of that these days), Raito looked at the garage one more time. He doubted that anything more than the inconvenience of having to lie to law-enforcement—with his bad luck someone that looked like his dad—would come of them being pulled over if they did decide to take the car. L could always call Watari and have everything straightened out faster than if they did provide correct identification. But he definitely didn't want to put himself in the position to be singled out and he doubted that L would either.
"Over here," Raito heard L call behind him, and he turned to see L walking off towards the Church, Misa waving at him to follow and then pushing L in the shoulder for something he said to her; but what it was, Raito did not catch.
"Did you know that the best place to hide your bicycle is inside a church?" Raito heard L say to Misa when he had caught up.
"People feel less inclined to steal in front of statues of Mother Mary and large crucifixes with Jesus staring down at them, bloody and in the middle of sacrificing himself for their sins. It is a very good deterrent for some people."
Then Raito watched as L nonchalantly picked the lock on two of the bicycles chained to the end of a pew.
"They will not mind," L said as he turned towards him.
Raito supposed the detective was referring to the kids whose bicycles he was borrowing, but Raito was too busy marveling at how L's words never quite fit with his actions.
They walked out of the main-gate like it was a normal gate, normal in the sense that it would not set off a silent alarm in Roger's office or cell-phone —a precaution in case anyone found out that this place was more than an orphanage—and Raito was grateful for the small preservation of normalcy.
The moon was high in the sky, and a thin veil of light was thrown over the darkness. Raito could see the blue-black of L's bicycle, more that moonlight sheen off the chrome than the actual shape of the thing, and he followed the detective quietly, Misa at his side. He watched L nudge the front of the bicycle's tire with his foot. He was wearing the usual ratty sneakers he went out with in excursions, the same pair that he'd worn when they first met.
"I have room for one more person, Misa-san," L said as he got on the bicycle.
"I'm not going with you." She stuck her tongue out at him and tightened her grip on Raito's arm. "I'm going with Raito."
"But as far as rides go, I am much smoother than Raito-kun."
You wish, Raito thought as he mounted the bicycle in one easy slide and waited for Misa, who sat saddle-style behind him because of her skirt. In the corner of his eyes Raito caught the movement of her legs bobbing up and down, the creamy skin glowing in the moonlight. Off to his other side L's white t-shirt glowed as well, a ghostly white that shone like a beacon in the darkness. Raito looked down at his own attire—the deep red of his shirt, the dark blue of his jeans, unable to retract even a fraction of the light spilling out from behind the clouds. Where he was sitting it was so dark that it seemed like a hole had been carved into the space. He was indistinguishable from the darkness around him except for the glow given off by the people around him.
He had not dressed for the occasion of a full moon, Raito thought idly, brushing off the almost-realization by pedaling out into the street, his thoughts fleeing away as he steadily gained momentum, until L skirted out right in front of him—to annoy him no doubt—and then slowed down just as abruptly, so the front wheels of his bicycle were now lined up with his.
"I am beating you."
Raito hadn't even known they were racing. He ignored L and continued to keep his eyes ahead.
"Misa-san, did you see how I beat Raito-kun?"
"I didn't see anything like that," she said indignantly and tightened her grip on his midsection. Then Raito heard her whisper in a conspiring tone, "Go faster so you can beat Ryuuzaki."
"He cannot beat me," L bragged.
At that challenge Raito sped up and suddenly veered in front of L. He smirked when the detective's bicycle wobbled at having to slow down so suddenly.
"You know that kind of maneuvering is dangerous when you have someone with you."
"Then stop doing irresponsible things yourself," Raito replied.
"Like what?" L was behind him now and he was weaving to the right and left, being as distracting as he could possibly be. He came up beside him with his hands in the air. "Look, no hands. Can you do that?"
Raito chose not to dignify that with a response and kept his eyes on the road. He knew how much it bothered L when he didn't pay attention to him, so he really shouldn't have been surprised when L playfully kicked the spooks of his front wheel and sped off, leaving Raito to balance himself out and glare at his back. The detective seemed to sense his ill-will and turned around to smile at him, like a child that had made mischief and knew he would get away with it.
The rest of the bicycle ride was spent with him and L weaving in and out of each other. Speaking had been forgotten in favor of the droning sounds of the wheels and the repetitive motions of pedaling and easing up. Raito had lost himself in the silence of the moment. He could feel Misa's grip on him relax, could see out of the corner of his eye that L was staring ahead at the road and at the same time was looking at something else, something beyond the road and beyond the immediate present.
Raito took a deep breath. The air smelled like wet grass and gravel, and there were so many stars in the sky tonight, more than he had ever seen in his life. Raito looked down at his hands on the handle-bars and then ahead at the road. There was a steep drop that would take them into town, and he stopped pedaling and let himself fall forward toward their destination, like one of those shooting stars in the sky. He went down so fast that it was more like flying than any other mode of transportation.
Raito stopped on the sidewalk and Misa jumped off the back. She checked her purse subconsciously, and then followed after L, who was already heading towards a 24-hour convenience store. But then she stopped, turned around, and came back to retrieve him, like he wouldn't understand to follow them now. Raito wondered if they should just leave the bicycles here on the side of the street—it didn't seem very responsible—but to say anything about that to L was a waste of time if he knew the detective.
The lights in the convenience store were harsh and cheap, and he had to blink to get the glare out of his eyes. It was somewhat comforting to know that convenience stores everywhere, no matter if they were in Japan or England, shared the same deficiencies. It was almost like he had stepped into the convenience store near his cram-school where he would sometimes stop off to buy the occasional magazine or manga. The cashier smiled at him when he passed by and he politely smiled back, which made Misa, who had been engrossed in a poster of some romance movie, grab him by the arm possessively and glare at the unfortunate girl behind the register.
When he and Misa passed by the candy aisle, he saw L with his head tilted and seemingly deliberating between the coveted bag of Toffee and a more festive bag of Smarties. After a second he grabbed both bags, doing away with the illusion of a choice, and then moved onto the other selections with the same grab-mentality.
Raito didn't think it was such a good idea to leave L alone when he bought candy, especially since Raito would undoubtedly be the one carrying all of it in the end. But Misa wouldn't let go of his arm for anything—she was still giving icy glares to the unsuspecting cashier—and pulled him past some of the other customers and over to the magazine stand. Misa reached over for the latest fashion magazine, but then when she realized that she needed her other hand to turn the page, the hand that was gripping Raito, she sighed and Raito was able to shrug her off. He ambled over to the other side of the magazine stand, right across from her—a small conciliation to keep Misa from giving the cute cashier another dirty look—and then began to browse the selection the store had to offer.
There was a London Times at eyelevel, and on the front page, in Cloister Black, was a headline that made Raito stop:
"Where have Kira and L gone?"
Raito had the urge to pick up the newspaper and flip to—he checked the bottom of the article where they would say on what page the story would be continued—but then he concluded after a pause that there was no way the article's wild guesses could be more interesting than the truth. The fact that Kira and L were currently in a convenience store in Jolly old England, Winchester, and L was buying candy—buying the entire store for that matter—and Kira was reading the article that posed the inane question in the first place, made him want to walk up to detective in aisle four and shove the paper in his face. He really wanted to share the irony with someone who could properly appreciate it, but his curiosity on other topics of world news made him pass it by, particularly a tabloid next to his elbow that made claims that Kira was none other than the American President David Hoope and his entire Cabinet, who were taking justice into their hands and in quote: "Wasn't it like the Americans to do something so bold and controversial." Raito lingered on the word bold in describing his actions as Kira and he thought he liked the sound of it, though he would have preferred heroic or revolutionary.
He certainly hadn't wanted to turn anyone into his scapegoat, but it probably didn't help that when Raito had been killing criminals, a majority of the crime-lords he had wiped out had come from America.
Picking up the magazine, Raito flipped through it and enjoyed all the wild speculation and pointing of fingers that had nothing to do with the truth. He especially liked how the writer of said article had used David Hoope's biography and all the major instances in his life to show the evolution of Kira. They opened the article with an overview of his younger days as a governor for New York and his unrelenting fight against organized crime, even when he should have been focused on other more pressing matters at the time. From there they bought in testimony from "behavioral experts" that easily threw around the words "unconventional thinker," "potentially dangerous single-mindedness," and the clincher, "misplaced righteousness." Raito found himself rolling his eyes despite himself, so caught up in the article that he didn't even notice when L had come up behind him, not until the detective grabbed him by the waist.
Raito dropped the magazine and turned around to see L smiling at him. He didn't smile back.
"What?"
"Time to go," L said simply. Then he bent down and picked up the magazine for him. He glanced at the cover. "I wonder how you can read this garbage and not implode and suck the universe into the black-hole you leave behind."
Raito snatched it from him and put it back on the shelf. "Are you done?" He glanced down at his arms. Where's your stuff?"
"Up at the check-out line," L said.
Raito gave him a strange look. "You just left it there?"
"Yes, I still need to go buy it, but I do not carry money on me. Misa-san should have my credit card."
"So you just left it with the check-out girl?" Raito asked again. He felt sorry for anyone who had to deal with L for even a second.
"Yes, did you not hear me or were you too interested in reading about the American President and his new nickname?" L picked up a TV-guide and began to thumb through it in that odd way he had. "By the way, I have his number. I prank call him sometimes."
"You what?"
"I am kidding," L said plainly. "Not about the number though, because I do have it. Did you not realize it when you went through my database and saw the initials DH? If you call that line they will put you straight through to the Oval Office. It is very convenient when I am in the country and I need the aid of the FBI." L held the corner of the page, turning it. "Oh, and 'Lady and the Tramp' will be showing tomorrow night."
Raito wondered what that had to do with anything, but he quickly came to the conclusion that it was best to abandon that tangential ship and focus on something actually relevant to their prior conversation. "So… who else's number do you have?" Raito asked, suddenly curious.
"More world leaders, boring chaps…" L said distractedly as he continued to thumb through the TV guide. "And unfortunately no celebrities."
Raito was suddenly very interested in hearing L's definition of the word boring; it seemed a bit skewed. "They run an entire country."
"It is not as fun as it sounds, but then again your type of fun has always been on the dic-tatorial side of things," L said, with a stress on the "dic" part.
"Shut up," Raito retorted. "I forget why I even try to talk to you."
L finally put down the TV guide. "Do not be that way. I will give you free reign over my database of World Leaders. You can call them and give them unwanted advice for running a country."
"I already have free reign," Raito countered. "You gave me the entire system months ago. I've deciphered most of it, but there are still some sections that remain in code—your contact list is probably one of them."
"Then I will buy you a country and let you rule over it. Your birthday is in February so that gives me about seven months to internally sabotage the government of your choice."
Of course L was joking, but sometimes Raito couldn't tell because he always had the most matter-of-fact way of conveying himself.
"Whatever," Raito said. He was about to go over to Misa to collect the credit card—L didn't seem very interested in waiting in line and seemed more interested in sending him to do the buying—when the detective suddenly grabbed him by the arm.
"Look at what evil has transpired while we were away from Misa-san."
Raito looked over the magazine stand and recognized the customers he had passed by when the blonde had been dragging him over here. They were three guys, all dressed in varying degrees of scruffy looking jeans and t-shirts. Raito wasn't very impressed as he watched them try to chat up Misa and the blonde tried her best to keep up with their English.
It didn't surprise him to find Misa speaking to them. Her pop-idol career had made it so she was never one to ignore people. Friendliness had been one of her selling points, after all. Plus, she knew how to handle herself in front of a crowd, especially in front of one that mainly consisted of males.
It wasn't hard to imagine that Misa had gotten all kinds of creepy letters from her fans. Indeed, one of them had tried to attack her, and Raito was sure there had been other instances throughout her life that she would never speak of aloud. It was the curse of being pretty and sociable. People loved to take advantage of that. These three were nothing but a small percentage of men that would try to pick Misa up and would end up failing miserably. Raito wasn't blind. He knew that men stared at Misa. He had stared at her when they had first met, and L had checked her out with the same ideas in his head.
"You should do something about this," L said, and Raito turned to give him an indifferent look.
"Misa can take care of herself." The three that were hanging around her seemed to be high-school age. Raito didn't really see them as any threat.
"But Misa-san should not flirt with other boys; she should only flirt with us," L concluded.
Turning to give the detective a dumbfounded look, Raito suddenly wondered what it was like to be in L's head. It must a very confused place, especially with him misinterpreting Misa's annoyance with him for flirting when it was definitely not flirting.
Right?
Raito threw a suspicious glance over at the blonde and wondered if she flirted with L when he wasn't around. If she did then it really was none of his business. Misa could flirt with whoever she wanted and L could do the same. It wasn't like he was in a serious relationship with either of them.
But if he found out that those two were sleeping with each other behind his back, he swore to God he would break up with both of them and make them so miserable that they would wish they had never been born.
Clearing his throat after that bit of unpleasantness, Raito brushed past L and walked around the magazine rack. "C'mon Misa," he called, obviously not in the mood to wait for his chance to politely cut into the conversation, and Misa practically jumped at the command, waving at the boys as they stared at her abrupt departure and what they considered her tyrant of a boyfriend. "Are you coming?" Raito called back at L, too, and the detective smiled mysteriously at him as he left the magazine stand behind.
L hadn't bought as much candy as Raito had thought he would, which was a supreme relief for the person that would have to carry it back home. He thought maybe something was horribly wrong with L, possibly he was sick or dying or something to that effect, but he quickly came to the conclusion that only a meteorite in the sky or a black-notebook could kill L, and anything less powerful would only make him stronger. Plus there was the ice-cream that he had bought and sat down on the sidewalk to eat. Raito didn't think he would be eating ice-cream on the sidewalk if something was wrong with him… well not physically, anyway.
Raito also took a seat on the sidewalk, slowly unwrapping the paper around his ice-cream cone. L was already two-thirds of the way done with his by the time he and Misa started on theirs, which would prove to be a problem later on when L started giving their share clandestine looks and taking "covert" bites out of Misa's ice-cream when she wasn't looking.
"Ah, he keeps biting my ice-cream," Misa lamented and showed Raito the teeth-marks. "Tell him to stop."
"You should not accuse innocent people of crimes when you have no proof to back it up," L told her.
"He did it again!" Misa cried in his ear.
"And again I say where is your proof, Misa-san?" L wiped his mouth as he stood up from the sidewalk. Then he innocuously took up residence next to him; Raito felt L's shoulder bump into his arm. "Did Misa-san ever think that she has misjudged her own appetite? For instance, if I am eating a chocolate mousse and I reach the bottom of my glass sooner than expected, isn't it natural to say 'what has happened to my chocolate mousse?' And isn't it natural to think that someone other than myself has partaken of my chocolate mousse while I was not looking? It is human psychology to blame others for one's own misdeeds, after all."
Raito pretended L had just said something incredibly smart and sexy instead of something incredibly dumb and un-sexy so he could still enjoy his vanilla ice-cream cone, which after taking a lick, he realized… had a big chunk taken out of it.
He turned to look at L… and then handed him his ice-cream cone, because it just wasn't worth it to sit here and rationalize with a person that thought it was okay to eat other people's desert when they weren't looking.
"You are very generous, giving me your ice-cream without any prompting from myself. Misa-san should take Raito-kun's selfless act as an example. I am not so keen on vanilla, but I would like her strawberry-raisin flavor very much."
"No," Misa said and took two big bites of her desert, one after the other, which naturally resulted in a brain freeze. "Owee," she lamented, holding her head in her hands.
"Your delicious ice-cream has put you in a state of distress. I shall help you," L said and made Misa take another big bite to keep him at bay, which naturally (stupidly) resulted in another brain freeze.
"Owee…"
Raito sighed and pretended to not know them.
Individually, L and Misa were quite annoying—sometimes manageable, but nonetheless annoying. Collectively, however, their annoyance level was past tolerable.
Looking at this in mathematical terms, he would even say that there was an exponential factor to their collective annoying behavior. Like, for instance, if he were to depict this moment on a bar graph, with the x-axis representing minutes and the y-axis representing annoying levels, the first bar would be 1 on the annoying scale, and then the second bar would be 2, and then 4, and then 8, and then Raito exploding in a volcano of rage, and so on.
How he had not strangled these two in their sleep—he had plenty of chances—was somewhat shocking to him when he considered how both their lives were major hindrances to his own well-being. He could be a perfectly free individual with these two not here.
Raito stared out at the lot across from them, perfectly dark and perfectly peaceful. The outlines of the store were grayish and semi-visible if one looked hard enough, melding into the darkness like it was a part of the nightscape. The street lamps on their side of the pavement gave off a harsh white color, penetrating all the darkness in and around them; but, though harsh and blinding, a fraction of that light could not even reach the other side of the street where the dark storefront floated, seemingly unattached to its surroundings. Raito stared at it, but the full weight of what he was looking at did not reach his side of the pavement. The profoundness only stayed on that side while he sat on the opposite, gazing at it, not really a part of it anymore. He felt removed from that profoundness, not because he had become terribly different from the person he had been in the past—if he was being honest he felt there was no difference at all—but because there was this immediate presence that would not let him go over to that side. He was still undecided on whether this presence was beneficial or detrimental to him in the long run, as the light on this side of the pavement never seemed to reveal anything but the harsh reality of life.
Raito felt L's shoulder bumped into his arm again. Misa had grabbed a hold of his other arm and was leaning into it and speaking about how mean Ryuuzaki was. Raito looked her dead in the face, their already close proximity made her seem closer, and Misa blushed at him and said he had dreamy eyes, to which L piped up on the other side of him, as he ate Misa's ice-cream, that indeed, Raito-kun did have dreamy eyes. But men who had dreamy eyes could not be trusted.
Misa frowned, shoving Raito's chest back so she could see Ryuuzaki and complain to him, face to face, about how he had ruined a perfectly romantic moment between lovers. L said that he was sorry, and if they wanted to make-out in front of him he would not hold it against them. Misa seemed to lose her nerve at that sentence and settled back onto the sidewalk with a pout.
Not only had silence fled to the opposite side of the pavement, but maturity as well. L and Misa were older than him, but at that moment Raito felt like a babysitter. He would have gotten up and cut this little school fieldtrip short, but his legs remained stationary. It was a strange sensation—to know what he wanted, but at the same time unable to act it out, or possibly unwilling to. He was certain he knew what he wanted. Raito leaned back on his arms and stared at the darkness across from him, contemplating.
L was standing and picking up his bags. Raito watched him as he hooked them around one of the handlebars on his bicycle and turned back around. "I have gotten what I want," he said, "but I am sure that my needs are not the same as yours. So is there something that you want?" L turned to look at him. "Raito-kun?"
"Huh?" Raito said stupidly, startled by the sudden attention.
"Is there something you want?" L asked again.
Raito stared at L as if he'd grown a second head, confused by a question that he'd been asked many times before in his life—when he'd scored perfect marks on his tests and his mother believed he was the type of person that depended on materialistic things to motivate him to succeed; when his guidance counselor looked over his impressive academic records and asked him what career he wanted to pursue; when his dad had pulled him aside one day during the Kira case and asked him, pleadingly, "what do you want to do, son? How do you want to handle this?"
And for each of those questions Raito had delivered a perfect answer: he accepted the gifts from his mother because that made her happy and proved that he was a good son; he confidently told his guidance counselor that he would be the chief of the NPA, putting his fears to rest that one of the best would ever stop being the best one day; and he looked back into his father's eyes and lied like a bastard about how he was not Kira and how all of that would come to light after L had finished his ridiculous investigation.
"Raito-kun?" L said again.
Raito felt Misa shake his arm. "Yeah. Anything that Raito wants to do. Anything and we'll do it."
Raito looked at them, not really knowing what to say next. He was confused as to why he could not provide the perfect answer. It should be simple: he knew them both so well.
"I don't really want to do anything," Raito said hesitantly.
L looked at him for a moment. "I did not think it would be such a hard question. Are you that boring that you cannot think of something fun for us to do?"
Raito felt L hit a nerve. "Shut up," he said under his breath.
"I am not picking on you." The way L smiled said he was so to picking on him. "I am sorry if I hurt your feelings. I will go to Misa-san for ideas on what is fun from now on. Isn't that right, Misa-san?"
"Raito is a lot of fun," Misa said, rushing to defend him. "He's just being nice. He wants us to choose for him."
He wanted no such thing, Raito wanted to say, but ended up remaining silent. L was staring at him with a stupid smile on his face, like he could read the thoughts as they formed in his brain.
"I know!" Misa said like she had gotten an idea. She stood up and grabbed Raito's arm, trying to pull him along. Raito didn't budge from his spot on the sidewalk.
"It's nearly the end of summer but Misa-misa has yet to go swimming," the blonde pouted. "And there's that lake on the way here. The path's not far from the road we take, and Ryuuzaki should know the way."
"Like the back of my foot," L said. "But does Misa-san want to venture into the woods at this time of the night. There is a full moon out, but it will still be dark. Plus I do not think any of us has brought the correct swimming attire." He pulled at the neck of his t-shirt.
"I don't need…whatever Ryuuzaki just said," and Misa began to grin at Raito suggestively.
Raito could have slapped her in the head. "We're not going skinny-dipping in a body of water that's infested with—" God knows what. "We're just not going," he said, and that was the end of that.
"It's quite safe," L defended. "I jumped into it many times during my youth and I grew up perfectly normal."
Raito and Misa turned to stare at L.
Now they were definitely not going anywhere near that lake.
A week before…
Raito Yagami believed, without a doubt, that he was God's gift to women. So L was really not surprised when he found Misa, one summer evening, crying her eyes out. He had come across this situation a couple of days after his own falling out with Raito, and it just proved how little Raito Yagami cared for the feelings of others.
One had to ask themselves how much emotional destruction one human being could leave behind in his wake? Raito was just a boy, about to be a man, and yet he had wrecked so many people in such a short period of time that L was afraid to see what scale of devastation the future would bring.
Misa was seated on the couch in the entertainment room when L came in and he quietly took a seat next to her. He glanced at the kerchief that Misa was using to muffle her sobs—most likely given to her by Raito to stop—and then stared blankly ahead at the television screen, a music video playing, the volume, however, so low that he could barely hear anything.
"Ah…" L started up and then touched his toes together when he could not find the right words to say.
Misa raised her head and stared at him closely, keenly, as if she could sense within him the male presence in all its inconvenient, insensitive glory.
He waved at her.
"Do not mind me; you can go on crying. I will wait until you have finished to ask my questions."
Sniffing, Misa wiped at her nose, straightened a bit, and then rested the handkerchief on her knees.
"So you are done?"
Misa squinted at him and he assumed from irritation until her eyes trembled, widened, and fresh tears welled up.
"So I was wrong," L muttered and tried not to get himself accustomed to that feeling.
"He said…" L's ears perked up as Misa finally spoke. "He said he didn't love me."
L stared blankly ahead but not out of sympathy. Misa wasn't so fragile that a few rejections from Raito would set her off like this. Such words, he had witnessed countless times before, had bounced right off her. He knew she was a confident girl, especially in romance, where years of male adoration had contributed to her positive out-look on love. Misa was confident in her ability to make any man fall in love with her, and L certainly liked that about her, so it was sad to see how Raito was crushing her spirit.
But still there had to be more to the story. And indeed, Misa was not long in clarifying the problem.
"He said he'd never love me…but we could…still have sex. He just didn't want me to think that it… meant anything to him."
Well, Raito certainly had a way with words.
A precise, completely heartless way with words. L could see why Misa would be disheartened.
It came as no great shock to L that Raito was sleeping with the blonde. He had sensed something was going on the moment Raito became less demanding for the top position. And it wasn't like Raito was hiding it either. Sometimes he smelled like perfume and other times, when L was taking off his clothes, he found lipstick all over his collar. The first time it had happened L had wanted to kick him out of his room—kick him out of the window for that matter—but he sensed he was being tested. Raito was watching him for a reaction, and L was not about to let him think he had any more power over him than he already did.
From the start he knew Raito was not loyal, but he had still sought out a relationship with him. When the worst thing his partner had done to him involved attempted murder, every other wrong seemed to pale in comparison. It made him seem overly forgiving and patient when he was so accepting of Raito's flaws, but both he and Raito knew where this all really led to. Knowing all of a person's worst flaws, especially a conceited person like Raito, put L in a position slightly above the brunette. He knew all his major flaws, knew them like he knew himself, and when he said something about them to Raito he was exercising him own control. It hurt Raito and made him sad—those failures and his knowledge of them—but L saw no other way to win against Raito.
All this had undoubtedly twisted him.
He hoped there was a day when he could tell Raito that flaws were normal. They didn't matter. He loved him all the same. He hated how they fought and constantly brought them up; he hated how he constantly brought them up. He thought Raito deserved better, but L thought that he deserved better too.
And sitting here with Misa, he thought she deserved better as well. He could empathize with her, as Raito's swift emotional rejection to her was identical to his rejection of him.
L would never begrudge Misa her true feelings, as she had every right to seek out her own happiness. He also felt that Misa possibly had more of a right to their mutual love interest, as she had laid claim to him when L had only wanted to claim him into the nearest cell. He didn't think these things could be squared away with something as simple as "first come first serve," but Misa had been struggling with her emotions for Raito much sooner than he had. She was due some respect and some consolation, which was something that any discouraged heart would need, if only because L knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of Raito's "tactful" blow-offs. He thought he knew what to say in these situations.
"You mustn't take Raito seriously."
"Huh?" Misa asked.
"I mean, you shouldn't take what he says seriously. Raito-kun is shy and he does not know what he wants." Raito was as shy as a plague and he knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. But L's words were not there to paint an accurate picture but to make Misa feel better.
"He is playing hard to get. He wants you to chase after him."
"Really?" Misa asked.
"Yes, really"; or that was what he told himself, anyway.
"Oh…I knew that!" Misa said, covering her embarrassment. She wiped at the last of her tears. "I was just…testing, Ryuuzaki. Did it work?"
"You are very good at fake crying. Even better than Raito-kun."
"I'm an actress. I'm supposed to be good at that stuff," she boasted, completely ignoring his last statement. He supposed that Misa only listened to half of the things he said, which did not hurt his feelings any, because he only listened to half of the things that came out of her mouth as well. He thought it was one of the reasons why they got along.
"But I wonder how Ryuuzaki knows that too," she asked, referring to his knowledge of the elusive, man-eating creature known as Raito. She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes with a mischievous grin. "Does he have experience in romance? Oh, does he have a girlfriend?"
"Something like that," L said, though there were really no girls involved. "The person I am involved with does not wish to commit and I am having a hard time convincing this person otherwise, so we remain in a tentative relationship."
"Why doesn't she want to commit?"
"For many reasons," L said seriously. "There are too many to count. But mainly it has to do with our past. I was not good to… this person… and they were definitely not good to me. We had a very big argument in a church."
"You were going to get married and she left you at the altar," Misa said excitedly.
Tapping his bottom lip, L titled his head in thought. "I suppose you could put it that way." There had been an altar in the church… though it was covered in blood by the time they left… and there had been a priest… who had also been covered in blood. L tapped his lip again. "It is a complicated affair. We took some time apart from each other. This person changed back into the person they were before we began our relationship. I told myself it was over and it was better this way, and then after three grand months of strutting around, I slept with this person the first chance I got."
"That's so romantic," Misa crooned.
"It really isn't," L said flatly, as she had just had a run-in with the other half of the relationship he had talked about and it had left her in tears. It was really the farthest thing from romantic. It was hard and it made him want to kick people in the street that did not deserve to be kicked.
"Hopefully, one day I will wear this person down until they have no choice but to accept my feelings."
"You could always secretly get her pregnant," Misa said, with an innocent face of all things, and L gave her a wary look.
"Did I ever tell you, Misa-san, that you are a very scary person to go to for romantic advice? Though I do respect your directedness and determination when it comes to love. You will go to any lengths to be with the person you love, no matter what heinous crime you must commit in process. I think it is very noble."
"I'm not committing a crime if I tell Ryuuzaki to impregnate his weird girlfriend," Misa said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"I was not saying you were," L said, realizing that Raito was not the only Kira that did not like to be called a criminal, even hinting at it was a big No-no. He supposed it stemmed from their unwavering belief that they were pure and could do no evil. They were certainly the worse kind of people to go to battle against, L thought. He was only glad that one of them had forgotten about who her true enemy was and the other was too busy trying to suck the power out of him to worry about other things. It made his life a little easier, at least.
"While I appreciate Misa-san's advice," L continued, "wedlock would not work in my case. I would have certainly tried it by now if it did and thrown a big party with an unnecessarily large cake."
"Why would it not work?" Then Misa's eyes widened in realization. "Ryuuzaki's impotent!" she concluded loudly as Raito walked by the door and halted.
"Oh, does Raito know about Ryuuzaki's condition?" Misa said when she noticed him there, her forgiveness of the man that had put her in tears not even a question of time. "Since he's a boy too, he could probably give Ryuuzaki advice on how to get his mean church-deserting girlfriend pregnant. But only a little advice since my Raito is far from impotent. You'll probably have to go to the hospital for that."
"I'll send him there right now," Raito said, stepping into the room.
"It was nice having this chat with you, Misa-san," L said while jumping over the back of the couch in the vein of self-preservation. "I hope the next time we talk and share things you will be stricken with amnesia right after. Goodbye," L said and dodged Raito on his way to the door, taking off at full speed when he reached the hallway. Raito turned around and took off at a sprint right after him, and Misa did not think she had ever seen Raito run that fast.