CHAPTER ELEVEN

Reasoning and Reasonable

They weren't quite sure how, but some way – L and Light managed. Put two geniuses together and they were bound to find a solution to living with each other only several feet away. Several days after the launch of the new Task Force Headquarters – that was much larger than it necessarily had to be, but why not? – they skipped the tour and started getting to work. Seated in front of the computers, Light flicked back and forth through documents and occasionally scrolled down the footage on the huge screens.

L, on the other hand, was sprinkling almonds over his ice cream. And by his side was Elaine, her head on the counter as she yawned. L's black eyes flickered towards her. "Perhaps you should call it a night," he suggested in a mutual tone as he stuck the spoon in his mouth. Light stopped and leaned over to look at her.

She looked tired, as always. He remembered the first time he had met Emiko and the way she seemed to glow. These days, she just looked sickly. "Yeah, Emiko, you don't have to –"

"But you guys are still here," she said stubbornly and got up. She cracked her neck and stretched her arms behind her before going back through the newspaper archives again.

If she had to be completely honest, she would say she was jealous of Light. As soon as he teamed up with L, they were constantly together and talking. She felt like the weaker link, like she had just lost her partner. She never had to share L before and although she knew at first she wanted his contribution, the fact still bothered her. She knew that she was being irrational but she couldn't help but feel the need to prove herself. She wanted Light to know that she wasn't simply like a hired actress and she didn't want L thinking that she had no purpose in the investigation.

She had finished going through the last several months of news of the murders – both during and before Light's imprisonment. But nothing stood out at her like they usually did and with each hour invested, she only grew more frustrated. Her fingers dug into her hair and she groaned before grabbing L's dish and reaching over him to get a spoon before digging in.

She already had enough of Misa bugging her about getting fat for eating cake. For God's sake it wasn't as if she was ignorant to calories, carbs and fats – but like L, she found out that you can burn calories as long as your brain was working. Differentiating from days of starvation over stress and compulsive work and days of eating purely sweets – getting fat wasn't a concern. Still, she was far from healthy and now exhaustion was being added to that already long list.

L watched her warily and then sighed. "That's it," he said and placed one foot on the ground and then the other. He nodded towards the elevator. "Go to bed, Emiko."

"No!"

He stared at her so intently that even Light turned around. He blinked, glancing in between the two dark haired people and got up and stretched restlessly. "I think it's time to get some sleep too." He checked his watch – an expensive one – before smiling at Elaine. "We'll go up with you."

This caught her attention. She had to admit, she was terribly curious to see how their sleeping condition would be. But her eyes were tired and her eyelids didn't want to open despite the amount of times she would rub them. She yawned and gave in, having the comfort of knowing at least that Light was giving up for the day too. "Okay."

xxx-xx-xxx

Unsurprisingly, as soon as her head landed on the blanket – she couldn't sleep. Her body was restless and ached for a relief but her mind wouldn't stop. With a deep inhale, she pulled herself up and simply stared into the blackness that filled her unnecessarily large room. For several minutes, she simply sat and tried to enjoy the warmth and softness but her anxiety grew. Her lips twitched as she imagined what was going on in the room next to her – where Lawliet and Light slept. Was it on the same bed? Or were there arms awkwardly dangling over an empty space?

But L didn't even sleep on a bed, that was a fact. His back wouldn't be able to withstand being…not curled up, not after years of that awful habit. When L slept, he simply leaned back against a wall or a chair. But where would Light be?

Deciding to act on her curiosity, she moved out of her bed and didn't bother changing. She was, after all, in her natural outfit of boxer shorts and a white shirt. Her legs felt too bare but she only planned to sneak a glance. Once she crossed the cold, sparsely lit hallways, she stood on the tip of her toes to look through the rectangular section of glass. She could only make up a hazy orange emitting from a lamp.

Figuring that they were awake, she turned the door knob quietly and slipped in the room. "Ryuzaki?" she whispered, turning a corner. Their room was split in three parts and the beds were farthest from the door. The middle section held a balcony with a ceiling-to-wall glass door covered by a thick curtain. Next to it on a chair was L squatting with his arms crossed and chin dipped towards his knee. His eyes were lazily examining the contents displayed on his laptop screen before they moved towards her.

"Hey," she whispered, waving. He put a finger to his lips and lifted his other arm with the chain attached. Her heart quickened when she saw Light asleep on his side facing towards them, his hair falling over his forehead in a way that made him seem very, very young. A part of his arm hung over the bed despite the extended length of the chain.

"Why aren't you sleeping?" L asked her quietly, speaking in English. She heard the faintest familiar accent in his low voice and suddenly she was homesick. She had missed the environment very much and being surrounded in Japanese culture wasn't bad…but wasn't ideal either. Cases didn't usually take this long and they had never stayed anywhere for this duration.

"I couldn't," she simply said and the native language felt oddly foreign to her. She winced.

"What's wrong?"

"I miss home."

"Home?" he repeated, lightly confused. They didn't exactly had a home in the past several years, more like extremely familiar home bases. He caught on. "I know this case is taking a long time, but this Kira is proving to be more challenging than we thought."

"That's what you get for assuming it would be easy to track down someone who only needs a name and face to kill," she pouted, hugging herself. She awkwardly sat squished up next to him but leaned in against him anyway. He felt her loosely waved hair tickle his cheek and he sighed, relaxing back into the tall chair. For a moment they simply sat next to each other, lost in thought.

She realized that there, next to L, it felt a bit more like home.

"You should sleep, Emi," he said quietly and she despised that he couldn't call her Ellie like he so often did. She liked it when he called her Ellie. It was like an adjective of L – of his own identity. She closed her eyes but shook her head. "I can't," she murmured softly yet she felt sleep creep on the fringes of her mind now that she was comfortable.

"I'll get you some warm milk."

And then he got up and ruined the moment. The warmth left her all at once and cold air rushed in as she sat alone. He took a key and quickly unlocked it to her surprise. "What happened to twenty four?" she whispered urgently. He gave her a look.

"I would go crazy if I was attached to Light Yagami for that long," he simply said before he walked off, curled over like a mantis and she felt an uncontrollable smile pull at her lips. She hugged herself once more and her eyes wandered to the blindingly bright screen with a flinch.

Light stirred.

"Emiko?"

She blinked, but there was a resistance as she had to fight off her fatigue at last. "Sorry," she whispered. He looked down at his wrist and his eyes followed the trail that led to the ground. "Where's L?" he asked with a yawn. She didn't answer, and simply put a finger to her lip as if asking him to keep it a secret. He smiled before rubbing his wrist underneath the cuff. He still looked so…young. Maybe sleep did that to people, it stopped time and the world for those several hours and the lingering affect was still present.

Or maybe because now, Kira's...power...wasn't tainting him anymore.

She felt her chest tighten. "Light," she began and untangled her legs clumsily as she crawled on the bed, crossing her legs once again. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" he echoed and rubbed his eyes. God, he looked so normal that her guilt only grew. For the past several days, they never had a chance to talk and explain the past. They had already moved forward to the present. But that was what adults did, right? So why did she feel like it was too easy for him to get over the fact that she had been around him to gather information? Her eyes softened.

"I didn't use you," she said in a low voice and looked worriedly back out around the corner. "Well…I did at first – but that was before I met you. You have every right to think bad of me but –"

"But I don't," he finished and he sounded awake. They were sitting next to each other, with Light half under a blanket and leaning against an arm as his palms pressed down on the mattress next to her. They weren't touching but they were close – close enough that she could feel the heat coming off from him. She was glad the room was dark because she was fairly sure that she was beet red at the proximity.

Light wasn't Lawliet. She didn't know Light like that – and that kiss that felt too long ago for it to be relevant now but she just wasn't...used to being so close. "I understood why you had to do what you did, and I don't blame you. In case you haven't noticed, I am well aware of the extent Ryuzaki would go through to solve the case and I don't put it past him to ask a girl to do what you did."

She laughed at that but then stopped and leaned back. His eyes widen just slightly as he became more awake. "Did I say something wrong?"

"Misa," she said instantly and then laughed nervously. "I'm sorry, this must be inappropriate…what with you –"

He tilted his head. "Emiko," he said slowly, his golden brown eyes boring into hers, "I think you know my relationship with her." Or lack of. His words weren't a comfort to her. Still, she smiled at him.

"I really am sorry," she said. Although admittedly she felt like she had to compete with him, it was probably her tiredness that made her grouchy. Right now she wanted nothing more than to slip under warm covers and fall asleep. Before she could continue, her mouth opened involuntarily and she let out a yawn. His mouth tugged at a little smile.

"Good night, Emiko."

"Good night." She left the sleeping quarters and blinked when she saw a dark haired man lean lazily against the wall, his shoulders hunched and one hand in his pocket while the other ran over his lower lip. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth – and then stopped.

She ran. And she didn't stop until she threw herself onto the bed and dove into the cover of the blankets, her heart racing in her chest – yet she felt something dropped. It took an hour of going back and forth in her mind until she finally pinpointed what she had felt when she saw Lawliet watching her.

Guilt.

So a lovely reader is waiting for more Elaine/L, so...get ready for it :) After re-watching majority of the series, I have finally ended writing this story...so it's going to be quick updates (based on the views cause like...if nobody's reading, I don't want to throw out the chapters. Does that make any sense?) So...

Reviews would be lovely!