warnings: minor violence, general timeline incompetence, beyond birthday - you know, the usual.
notes: hello and welcome to the wow-you're-finally-updating show! i'm jaye, your host! no, but really i never wanted this to be one of those fics that would take months to update - mostly because those fics never really hold my interest well and there's a lot of re-reading involved - but alas, here we are. by my calendar (yes i have a calendar for this, don't think i don't) it's been about seven weeks, which is upsetting to me on a couple of levels. all i can say is that this is NOT an indication of a pattern. i don't expect any future updates to take longer than a month to be posted, at most. i just had quite a few things going on last month, including but not limited to: otakon! (which was hella fun), beach vacation with my family and, most importantly and writing-schedule affectingly, my long-distance girlfriend came to stay with me for a little while. so, i had my hands full, and my writing time got just about cut in half.
now, though, a few minor trips and occasions aside, my schedule is relatively free until january and my goal is to update at least five or six times before the end of 2013. so fasten your seatbelts, folks, this is going to be a ride of slightly increased speed. cowabunga~
special thanks to tai black, once again, for messaging me about updating. and thank you to everyone who reviewed last time, especially those I didn't get a chance to reply to. thanks, in general, to all of you for reading.
since it's been so long, i thought i'd do a bit of a ~previously on nights~ thing so that the very likely possibility that some people don't remember what the fuck even happened last chapter can be rectified. so, ahem, in chapter fifteen:
l and light checked out of their improvised love nest into a crappy hotel room outside of tokyo, where they proceeded to get very drunk and also very violent in the parking lot, and then tucked each other in and went to bed. the investigation team did some investigating and, with the somewhat unsavory help of aiber and watari, found light's secret apartment and, in it, (one of) light's secret boyfriend(s). mikami was just as shocked to see them as they were him and left promptly and the only conclusion the taskforce could draw from the encounter was that light was not in fact kira but, rather, just a big gay. in a completely different city, beyond birthday made mello breakfast, and elsewhere, wedy got a call directing her to a certain orphanage in winchester…
chapter sixteen - half measures.
"If the world go wrong, it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right."
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House
The boy at the door doesn't quite look the picture of dirty orphan - his clothes are clean, hair washed, fed well enough - and the quasi-dangerous but mostly bored expression he makes, tapping a cigarette against his lips, just serves to make him look like any little suburban prince, desperate to escape his domain. From the way L had always talked about his childhood, Wedy had pictured a little white house with dirty windows and weeds in the yard. Children with patches of mud on their knees. The boy at the door is too clean.
He doesn't say anything to her as she walks up the solid stone steps to the large double doors, just fiddles with his lighter, trying to spark a flame and pointedly ignore her at the same time. The knockers don't have the heads of lions on them, but that's about the only attribute of an early-19th century British country home that this place lacks, and she huffs to herself to have to stand in front of it and wait for entrance. She looks back at the boy.
"Are you the welcoming committee or something?"
He raises an eyebrow, fingers fumbling again on his lighter. "No," he says, too quickly. "I don't know." He eyes the sharp slit in her dress, touching the tops of her thighs and the edges of her pantyhose. "What are you here for?" he asks, with something that might be suspicion if it had more energy behind it.
Watari had told her to ask for Roger Ruvie, that he'd be expecting her, but she wants a better feel for her situation than that, so she smiles wide, splitting a lipstick grin at the boy, and says, "L."
And that seems to be all she really needs to say.
"What, really?" he says, scrambling up out of his tucked-up crouch against the brick facade to make them more level height. He can't be more than fourteen or fifteen, freckles splitting across his nose and wide, jittering eyes. Looks like he needs a smoke more than a kid his age probably should, so she closes up her grin and pulls out her own pack.
"Can I get a light?" she asks, ignoring his question. He blinks at her and she thinks he might play the smooth little bastard card and try to light it for her, but he just hands his lighter over, face blank, fingers twitching a bit. The spark and sharp bite of nicotine is ethereal when it hits her. There's something about this place on this foggy morning that's perfect for a smoke, the cold, dim light of fall tracked in with the mud.
She notices the dirt under the boy's fingernails then, and that's something, at least.
"What are you to do with L?" he asks, pushing the issue, eyes kept from going wide. He scratches at his thin arms, lanky but seeming more solid than he actually is, if only because he's more silent than not.
"Well," Wedy says, breathing out a plume of smoke that rather catches the boy in the face, "I'm his wife, of course." She quirks her lips prettily.
He doesn't wince for the smoke, possibly doesn't even notice it. "What." There's no enunciation. He blinks at her and she flutters her eyelashes back and then the door opens and a tall man in an offensively orange sweater and large eyebrows looks down at them, eyes flicking in between.
"Wedy?" he says to her.
She turns her best smile on him. "That's me."
He nods. "Come inside." He looks at the boy as he holds the door open for her. "Haven't you got revising to do, Matt?"
"No," Matt says, slipping away his lighter and following them in, eyes still trained on Wedy like she's some sort of unfamiliar beast that's burrowed its way into his home.
The man in orange sweater flexes his tightly muscled shoulders with agitation. He looks like a worn down body builder who was dressed by his blind, aged grandmother, or else has been taking fashion advice from Aiber.
"Then you've got breakfast to eat," he grunts back to Matt.
"Not hungry." A pause, with an agitated strain from both ends, and then, "She told me she was L's wife." He points one knobby, pale finger at Wedy.
"What?" the man says, blinking quickly and looking between them, like he's trying to figure out the joke.
Wedy's smile tightens. The kid's not stupid. Doesn't look or talk or act like a genius, the way one would expect a boy at a genius school to do, but he's not a gullible little idiot, either, which is more than can be said for most children. Wedy doesn't really like kids, and this one is no exception, but she doesn't bother using her flashy smile on him anymore.
"I lied," she tells him, not looking at the man or his ugly sweater at all.
"Why?" Matt says.
Her smile isn't faked this time. "For fun."
Matt watches her down the hall and she shoots him bedroom eyes over her shoulder, the way it's so fun to do with teenagers - drowning in hormones and floundering incapability. She'd done the same with L, and although that had never quite worked out in the ways she'd wanted it to, it had given her something.
Her phone buzzes at her hip and she flicks her eyes down to read another of Aiber's anxious text messages and is about to tap out a reply saying she's just arrived, when the man leading her stops and holds out a hand.
"No phones," he says.
Wedy huffs solemnly, but cuts off the reply to switch off her phone and toss it to him. He catches it in one firm swoop with his large rugby hands and nods at her with no trace of humor, then points to the door they're stopped a few feet from. "Here."
The man behind the desk twinkles his eyes at her, but tiredly. Where Watari is spry and capable, a seamless shadow with great control of his presence and appearance, this man is just old. He is an old person. He smiles like one and he stands from his chair like one, bones creaking in the crackling warmth from the fireplace and it's just like Wedy assumes a Dickens would be, if she were to ever bother to read him.
"Roger Ruvie?" she says, tilting her head the side as she peels her gloves from her fingers.
The man's back is slightly bent, curving down in crude estimation of L's measured arch - like the bastardized prototype of a newer model. He nods and holds out a withered hand.
"You're the operative Watari sent, I assume?"
"In the flesh."
She takes the offered hand, the fire-engine red of her fingernails contrasting sickly with Ruvie's spotted skin. The handshake is gentle until it's not, and then he's pulling her with startling strength forward by the palm. She jerks herself out of his grip on instinct, twisting neatly at the wrist and shoving him off.
He's smiling at her, but it's nothing like the movement suggests, rather a polite, humbled, apologetic smile. "You have strong wrists," he says. "That's good. I like that in a woman."
Wedy blinks at him, not sure if she should kick him over the desk or take the cup of tea that he's suddenly offering her, gesturing towards one of the finely upholstered chairs. It's almost a surreal situation - the boy with the cigarette, the man in the orange sweater, and now Roger Ruvie, the apparently benevolent proprietor of the establishment. She is possibly in an old horror film, or else just a P.G. Wodehouse novel that's borrowing the atmosphere of one.
She takes the tea cup, then says outright, "That's very strange." There's no dancing about these sort of things - pleasantries are for other sorts of people working in other sorts of businesses.
"You knew L?" he asks, as they sit down directly across from each other other. She nods, noting that he speaks of L in the past tense, which is notable so far as it's a contrast to Watari's phrasing. "Then you'll know that here we are in the business of the very strange."
His look then is the sort that's probably intended to be laced with mystery, and it's very charming and all, and would probably skate down the spine of somebody less professional, but she's here for one thing and one thing only. She sets down her teacup on the table, not having taken a sip.
"Look, I told Watari and I'll tell you: if you've got the cash, I'll do most things, but I'm not going into any situation where my chances of surviving are lower than my chances of profiting. So if this is going to involve Kira - "
"Actually, this has nothing to do with the Kira case," Ruvie says, continuing with the same modest efficiency. He picks up a scuffed manilla folder from the table beside him, loose papers sticking out at the edges, and hands it to her. "Read the file."
There is a knock at the door and Roger excuses himself politely, adding, "Have a scone, if you like. There's clotted cream. I won't be a moment."
He is a moment, and quite a bit more, stepping out to speak in hushed, important voices with the man in the orange sweater. So, Wedy has a scone. She continues to chew it even when she flips open the file and sees the mutilated corpse, the first thing on the first page, eyes gouged out of the head of a young girl. She licks the clotted cream off her fingers.
When Ruvie comes back in, she's sitting with her legs crossed, hands in her lap, staring at the file where she's set it on the table. She hadn't gotten through the whole thing, but she'd read enough.
"I apologize," he says. "Grady is a talented caretaker, but it's far too much work for just one person and we both know it. Believe it or not, though, it's rather difficult to find adults well-suited to work here." Grady, she assumes, is the man in the sweater, but she doesn't much care and doesn't much need to, just straightens her back, crossing her legs the other way round. "You've familiarized yourself with the case, then?"
"Beyond Birthday," she says, enunciating the strange name with a knowing sort of humor that says she knows it must be a codename, "escaped murderer. What do you want me to do about him?"
Roger's smile only grows as he retakes his seat, and Wedy's not sure, but she thinks she may be getting used to the particular sort of gleaming strangeness of this place, these people. He coughs into his handkerchief, then pushes his glasses up his crooked nose.
"Something that you'll need those strong wrists of yours for."
Light sleeps with tissues stuffed in his nose and L laughs at him before dropping off to sleep, head cushioned against his chest, and laughs harder when he wakes in the morning.
"You look like shit," he says affectionately.
Light scoffs, pulling himself out of bed and cuffing L to the headboard, giving the chain a few tugs to make sure it's secure. "Whereas you look simply dashing."
L can feel the bruises on his skin and assumes they show and likes that they show. It wouldn't be quite right for Light to be marked up and for him not to be, and any resulting smugness he might feel from such a situation would be overshadowed by the keen sense of displacement. Enemies, they're enemies, of course, but only by some vague and distant dictionary definition of the word. The reality is that they're on their own side, one they've built from scratch. The bruises are their gang symbol. The blood is the battle cry.
If only they had something beside one another to go to war with.
"Injury suits me," L says, stretching back on the mattress. His body aches with it. "People have always told me so."
Light smiles and the expression attempts cruelty but settles after a moment solidly on teasing. "Your conquests, you mean?"
L arches his back slightly, trying to stretch the sore parts, and the ache is good. He likes the ache. "I wouldn't call them that," he says.
"I would." Light toes on his shoes and picks up his jacket from where it had been discarded on the chair. "I'm going to go try to find coffee that is at least somewhat ingestible."
"Ten sugars for me," L puts in.
"And then we have to go back," Light continues, barely blinking at him.
"Already?" L says, tempering the curiosity in his voice. He has a tendency to sleep for long periods of time, it's true, but his biorhythmic clock isn't so off for him to have so wildly misjudged the time. He's fairly certain it's only been a day. "I know we're out of town, but Tokyo's not that far away and unless work hours have changed since I dropped out of operation…"
"Not for work," Light says, mechanically pulling on his jacket and lining up the sleeves with a rigid sort of propriety. "Don't feel too smug about it, but I haven't really figured out where to store you yet."
"Back in the city?"
Light nods. L frowns. Light had explained his plan last night, though L doubts what he'd heard had encompassed the full extent, and he thinks this is one of those details that should have been sorted out earlier. But then, Light had been running on very little time and he'd pulled the whole Mikami thing together quite spectacularly - that is, of course, assuming it's all gone off without a hitch, which their current uninterrupted existence suggests it has - and likely couldn't be bothered to consider this particular issue until things had calmed down.
That's somewhat sloppy, isn't it? That's the sort of thing L would do, not Light. Perhaps - god forbid - they're becoming more alike. Perhaps one of these days they'll just melt together into some large, amorphously sludgy substance, and live happily ever after like that. Sometimes L's almost sure that's already happened.
He smiles, thinks it might be edging smug despite Light's recommendation, and says, "I may know a place."
B goes to take a piss and Mello runs like hell. He doesn't even have his shoes on and his mouth still tastes like orange juice and out on the landing it's freezing cold, but he keeps going, keeps going anyway, doesn't think he could stop if he tried and -
Beyond is on the sidewalk waiting for him. Mello had half expected as much and even as he crashes into him, body moving with ragged inertia, he's more curious as to whether B had come out here directly or climbed out the window in the middle of his toilet break than he is particularly shocked.
He grunts with frustration as B's long fingers dig into his shoulders, crushing bone to skin with solid force. It's still early morning and the streets are uncrowded, especially in this nowhere part of town, and the few people about barely glance their way. Mello could start screaming 'Pervert!' at the top of his lungs, but - even the questionable effectiveness of such aside - something like fluttering self-consciousness stops him. He could be murdered here on the sidewalk and he is too embarrassed to call for help.
But then B lets go.
"I won't stop you," he says, with curious sobriety. His long arms drop to his sides, hanging there as if discarded. Mello blinks at him, uncomprehending. "I mean it," B tells him. "You can have your run of the city. You're not kidnapped, you're not my prisoner. You're completely free to go where you will."
Mello doesn't believe it, can't believe it, but as likely as this is to be some sort of trap or sick little joke, he still feels wild hope rising in this stomach. Something about the innate goodness of humanity, something about common sense, about being reasonable - about how of course B will let him go. Why wouldn't he? Why would anyone hold a fifteen year old boy against his will?
But then, why would anyone hold a fifteen year old boy to the floor and try to rape him? Why would anyone cut the hearts out of the chests of men he does not know? Mello really couldn't say.
He considers turning tail and just heading in the opposite direction, not listening to anything else B has to say, just getting as far away as possible. But he doesn't move.
Beyond smiles. "The thing is, you haven't really got anywhere to go, have you? They'll be looking for you. There are three bodies upstairs, and yours isn't one of them. They'll be looking. You've got no money, no way out of the city - "
"I've got money," Mello snaps, voice hushed. It's an impotent protest, but he can't quite help himself.
"No you don't," Beyond says, lips twitching with jagged satisfaction, "because I stole your measly little stash from that shithole apartment of yours." His voice squeaks in places and seems to be made of arches and undulations between masculinity and femininity, like he's wavering his way through puberty or else just switching back forth at will. "Under the mattress, Mihael? How trite. You can't go back there, anyway. That's the first place they'll look for you."
Mello doesn't know if B means the cops or the gangs, but he's not sure it matters. He's fucked, either way. He can't be killed and he can't be knocked off his course - nevermind that B is perfectly as likely to do both of those things at any given moment. He hasn't yet, though. If anything, he's done Mello a few favors. He saved him and, on top of that, made him breakfast. He brews good coffee.
He still smells like spearmint.
"All my shit's back there," he says after a moment, but he can feel the resignation already settling in. He is not going to run. He is not even wearing shoes.
"I'll buy you new shit," B says, stepping closer. "New pretty leather pants for your pretty little legs." He pops his eyebrows comically, then lifts a hand to prop up Mello's chin, studying him with sly amusement. "A hairbrush. A plane ticket. We're gonna find him, Mihael. He's out there and we're going to find him."
Mello wants to jerk out of his grip, but he doesn't. He feels something splitting in his chest, circling around down there with the exhaustion and tears and the heart that had soaked blood through his shirt. He thinks it might be relief. He's been alone for weeks, scrambling wildly but not getting anywhere, and Beyond Birthday is a psychopath, but he's also technically a genius. The reality is, for all his maddening effort, Mello probably cannot do this alone.
"And then what?" he asks quietly, breath whispering solidly in the cold morning air.
Beyond's grin splits wider. "And then we bring him home."
Mello's shoulders slump, ankles weakening, and he has to brace himself to stand, has to brace himself not to sink to the floor right here and now, but - but. He is not alone anymore. B's spindly fingers hold him up.
Light frowns, pressing down harder on the gas pedal. "I'm not holding you captive in a building that you own. I know you have a tendency to underestimate my intelligence, but this is a bit much even taking that into consideration."
L's curled up in the passenger's seat and ravaging the cheap mochi they'd picked up with animalistic intent. "Oh, come on," he replies around a mouthful. "If you thought about it for a moment you would see that it's brilliant."
"Chew your food," Light tells him.
"Yes, mother," L says, swallowing quickly and taking an overenthusiastic gulp of coffee. "Really, though, the best place to hide a tree and all that. No one would think to look for me at one of my own properties. The investigators don't know about it, so even if they suspect I've just skipped out on them like you said, it wouldn't occur to them to look there. And Watari most certainly knows that I've either been kidnapped or killed, so he's not going to check out my personal hide-outs. And even if he thought to take a chance on it, he would have done so already, and since I obviously wasn't there, there would be no reason for him to go back."
Light frowns. It's very possible that L has a point, but then - despite all of their recent proclamations of honesty - it's extremely unlikely that he hasn't got some ulterior motive. Light's figured quite concretely that L does not want to be rescued, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to escape. Being saved by some outside force, or even relinquished out of the goodness of Light's own heart, would evidently be too much of an embarrassment for his pride to withstand. There is no doubt in his mind, however, that L would still like to come out the winner of whatever game they're playing now. Perhaps that requires rescuing himself and turning Light in. Perhaps L just means to drive him crazy very, very slowly, until he snaps and just offs them both. But that would be more of a draw than anything else, wouldn't it?
Either way, the current circumstances outweigh those of the future, and he really does need somewhere to keep L, for at least the time being. The old apartment is known to the investigation team now and, even if everything with Mikami has gone exactly as planned, they may remain suspicious enough to check back in the future. He's had Misa hold onto the lease, of course, though more for appearance's sake than anything else.
He turns onto the main road. They're not too far from the city now and he needs to make a decision quickly. If Watari knows about it, it's risky, but - but then there are more factors than that, aren't there?
'"What about Aiber?" he asks, barely considering the question.
L stiffens noticeably in the seat next to him, the air around him drying up palpably. "Aiber's dead," he says softly, with something like concession in his voice. Like he thinks Light is just forcing him to say it over again for his own sick amusement.
Light rolls his eyes. "No, he's not. I saw him yesterday. Care to explain how you managed that, by the way? I really am rather impressed. Your acting's gotten better."
L rather freezes, mochi lifted halfway to his mouth, and turns to face Light more directly. "What are you talking about," he says dully, voice so utterly controlled that he must be making a pointed effort to keep it so. Light listens for the break in the tension, the sudden smile, the gotcha! noise, but it doesn't come.
He blinks over at L. "You really didn't know," he says, blankly. Well then, that changes a few things, doesn't it? "So, if it wasn't you're doing, then how'd he manage it?"
"I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to repeat what you said just now. Slower and with more enunciation." L's voice is hard, but wavering. "Aiber - "
"Is alive, yes. Upright and walking around Tokyo and making an ass of himself. Don't ask me how it happened, because I don't know. I assumed you'd manipulated the information in your database before you were taken, but if you're telling me that's not the case, then I really have no earthly idea how he managed it. Maybe I was right all along and he isn't a human but rather a very belligerent lawn chair."
He can feel himself getting aggravated as he speaks, fueled by that familiar spark, the one he'd thought he'd stamped out. Honestly, it might be practical to worry about this more, but Light really can't factor that in at the moment. Aiber and Wedy had ben secondary concerns to begin with, dealt with more for pleasure than anything else. Aiber's survival is inconvenient, but hardly a full kink in the plans. More a small smudge than anything else. He'll deal with it. He'll deal with everything.
L blinks and Light watches him swallow out of the corner of his eye, looking strained and undernourished in the white glare of morning. He absorbs the information in a matter of seconds, jaw clenching for a second, like he can't quite make himself believe it, but he doesn't express his doubt. "And Wedy?" he asks.
"I don't know," Light says, eyes flicking to the road in front of him. "I haven't seen her, but then I assume if she had died Aiber would be after me about it, and he wasn't. Do they keep in contact, do you think? If I didn't know much better I'd say they were dating or something, but, of course, that's not the case, is it?"
L ignores most of what he says. There's a small, unenjoyable smile twitching onto his face. "Aiber's alive," he says, grin growing. He chuckles shortly, then huffs up, eyes flicking out the window.
"Yes, yes, don't break out the party hats just yet. I'll fix things soon enough," Light says. L seems unbothered by the threat and it feels vaguely impotent even to Light himself. He sounds tired, more than anything. He needs better coffee. He needs a better person in his passenger's seat. "He looked wretched, anyway," he throws in.
L is still smiling. "I feel better," he says, taking another large bite of mochi. "I like you better now."
Light rolls his eyes. "It's nothing to do with me," he says. "I'd be happy to see the bastard drop dead in front of me."
"Yes, I know," L says, a sudden distant giddiness is his voice. "I like you anyway. Isn't that strange?"
Light shifts lanes, the slow waves of his mind melding with the hum of the engine. "No," he says. "Not so strange."
The bedroom is starting to smell. Mello wants to go inside, but he doesn't. No, scratch that, there's nothing he'd like less than to go in there, but he wants to be the kind of person who wants to. Who will stare death in the face and say something clever in response. He wants to be L, essentially. Always has. He's not actually sure if L does any of the great, grand things that Mello attributes to him, but the thoughts are comforting nonetheless. Of course, such comfort is dependent on the assurance that L is alive.
Which he has, technically, though the source is not exactly the most… reliable.
Beyond is sitting cross-legged on the freshly-swept floor, jarring human hearts and drawing tally marks on his arms with permanent marker.
Mello is standing, awkwardly and unsure of what to do with his hands, in the doorway. After a few moments he nods at the hearts and says, "What are you going to do with them?"
B hums theatrically and gives a pronounced shrug. "I thought I might mail them to the police."
Mello nods and takes as he's decided to take everything B does and says: with as little personal involvement as possible. He's here for L, he's going to find L, and he's using the tools available to help him do this. That's all this is. So he keeps his voice level when he asks, "Why?"
B takes a long, heavy breath in. "Because," he says, with a roll of his eyes that might be derogatory and might just be a spastic twitch, "I like stamps."
Mello huffs, slumping against the wall. He's dressed, shoes on, completely caffeinated. Beyond had offered him a shower, but he'd declined. He hasn't washed in days and there's still dried blood on his shirt, but it blends with the black, and he doesn't - he's not going to take his clothes off with B on the other side of the door. He's not going to just stand there in Watson's washroom with all of his soap and his dental floss and his meaningless odds and ends. He could have ended up a stain on the white tile - if B hadn't -
He could still end up that way yet.
"We should go," Mello tells him, trying for stony but melting somewhere along the way into unsure territory. "Someone's going to come looking around here at some point." He doesn't want to be caught and he doesn't want more blood, either.
"Not so soon," B says, licking his fingers to peel apart a layer of packaging. "I made a call."
Mello jerks still. "What call? To who?"
"Don't know," he says. "I went through Mr. Bert Mathias's phone and dialed the last missed call. Told the guy who picked up that I'd be busy for a few days and not to worry. He was a doll about it. Easy peasy."
Mello shifts, scrubbing at his elbows. His skin is itchy. "How," he starts, because even when his voice drops from the airy, effeminate pitch, Beyond sounds nothing like Bert.
"I'm quite a good mimic, believe it or not."
Mello blinks. Right, right. Of course. He could almost be L, in some quiet angles. And then from others, he's more foreign than anything Mello's ever seen and the air around him seems to bend in awkward shadows, like he doesn't fit properly into reality. That's probably just Mello's mental embellishment, but then L had told him that Beyond was, in a word, strange. Not a typical sort of strange, either. There is a separateness to him that L had described but that Mello had not really conceptualized until he'd been confronted with it himself. Now it seeps into the air, choking the room with a sense of the unreal.
"We should go, anyway," Mello mumbles, looking at the dirt caked on the toe of his boot. "That's why you found me, right? You want me to help you find L. So let's go to Japan, let's go find him." He says it with an unsettled sort of distance, like he doesn't want to insist to forcefully on anything with B. He's not afraid - well, no, he rather is - but it's more a fear of the unknown. He's not sure what to expect at any given moment.
Insanity, perhaps, but even that's not a sure bet.
B finishes his packaging and sits up, dusting off his hands daintily - which does nothing to scrub away the blood - and looks at Mello with a quaint arch of his brow.
"First thing's first, goldilocks: I'm not here for you to help me. I'm here to help you. Second thing's second: we've got preparations to make before lift off. It won't take more than a few days, but you're going to need all sort of bits and bobs if you want to fly with the big kiddies."
He passes Mello to get to the sink, knocking on the faucet with his wrist and then washing his hands with systematic determination. Half the time he seems to revel in mess and chaos, but the other half he is obsessively cleanly. It's some form of OCD, maybe, but not a particularly consistent one.
How can you possibly help me? Mello would like to be able to say, but even he's not that graceless. Especially after B has already - he's done enough. Proved his usefulness, certainly.
So instead, Mello asks, "Why? What's in it for you?"
B shrugs, shaking off the water. "A brand new pal," he says, voice rising. It should sound more mocking than it truly does.
Mello rolls his eyes, arms crossed, and, after a moment, asks the question that's been churning in the back of his mind for hours now. "How'd you even find me?"
"Didn't have to," B says. "I was dropping by Wammy's for a little bit of reminiscence - and to hack some files - and I saw a pretty little doll of a boy marching his way down Winchester's country roads, all packed and ready for adventure. I remembered you from your photo. Before my arrest, old Pa and I used to keep correspondence. He always liked me. Maybe not as well as his prized invention, but still."
"Watari?" Mello asks, frowning.
B nods. "Dear old Q. As it turns out, I wasn't such a poor copy after all. Not compared to the rest of you." He smiles and his teeth seem jagged in the light, though not half as otherworldly as they had looked in the dark.
"So, it was just coincidence that you ended up following me all that time?" Mello asks, not quite managing to believe it.
B grins, sprawling back against the off-white counters in uneven juts of limb. "I prefer to think of it as destiny." He rests his chin on a loose palm. "You are a means to an end. You've never been anything but. It's just a different end you're headed for now, isn't it? You should feel lucky. Not everyone's allowed into the garden. Not me, certainly, but we're going to break down the walls and flood the fields and I think, at the bottom, at the very bottom, we're going to find him. I don't think I could survive if I thought anything else."
He blinks his eyes slowly, facial muscles skittering in strange patterns, and then his face flattens into a slim grin. "Come now, lovely, we've got places to be," he says, as he hoists his packages up and marches for the door.
Mello wants to tell him not to call him that, but Mello wants to do a lot of things these days. And doesn't. Instead he follows.
It's a large building and it reeks of vague dilapidation, just the way L remembers it. It sits on the edges of Ikebukuro, but unlike the surrounding buildings which are often broken into and trashed, the sign above the door and the smooth sheen of chrome and glass makes it appear more well-protected than it, in fact, is. L had used it once for an elaborate set-up and take-down and had kept the lease since simply out of a keen mix of curiosity and laziness. Who can say when something will become necessary? Better to hold onto the resources available to you than not.
He's not sure yet if he wants to use this to his advantage - at the time when he'd suggested it, his inclination was mostly to find a room and some time to himself. Thinking it over, however, it is probably remiss of him not to have great plots and machinations in store.
"No way," Light says at the first glance. "No imaginable way am I dropping by here for you every week. As if the sleazy apartment wasn't bad enough, this I can't explain away by implicating illicit homosexual trysts."
L shrugs, somewhat amused by the fact that Light has evidently convinced himself that he doesn't visit L at least every other day, and says, "Then don't get caught."
He doesn't have a key on him, but his lock-pick skills are as sharp as ever and he's got all the security codes memorized better than he has birthdays, and they get inside relatively easily. The building is dusty, though he has a cleaner come twice a year - January and July respectively; L does't expect to be here long enough to meet him personally - so it's not as bad as all that. Light wrinkles his nose anyway, as if they're a newly-wed couple shopping for a house and his real estate agent has just led him to an utter disappointment.
"There's not even any furniture," he says, voice wrought with utter deplorability, as he stares down the long, empty halls, into equally empty rooms. It was an office, maybe, at some point. It's not now.
"So buy a mattress," L says, slumping idly against the wall. "What other furniture do you think I require? Though, mind, I wouldn't say no to a good desk chair. A spinning one, with smooth wheels. None of that cheap, impractical stuff." He puts a finger to his lip, tilting his head frivolously. "And maybe a refrigerator, if I'm to spend the rest of my life here."
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.
Light frowns. "Who says you'll be here for that long?"
L smiles thinly back at him. "Who says I'll be alive for that long?"
The momentary look of stanch unease that flashes across Light's face, before he quickly wipes the slate clean, is, more than anything, just rather satisfying.
Light chains L to a solid bit of infrastructure before leaving and, once in the parking lot, checks his phone for the first time since the previous night. One call from Misa, one from Matsuda, and two from Mikami. God, today's going to be big fun.
He drops back at home - or what technically qualifies as his home - to shower and dress, and finds it empty of the shrill excitability of Misa's presence. There's a sticky note on the counter that says she's gone out to film early and that she hopes he enjoyed his trip. The i's are dotted with hearts and there's an achey resentment sketched in every word. She has sloppy penmanship.
In front of the bathroom mirror he conceals the bruises on his face to the best of his ability, but if anyone asks he'll just say that Misa had thrown the minibar at him or something to that effect.
He leaves Mikami an exhausted but apologetic voicemail, sounding as haggard and blameless as he can manage, asking if they can meet later. He gives him the address of the investigation headquarters and tries to feel self-satisfied about it, but is honestly more tired than he'd readily like to admit.
L is tiring. L is magnetism on overdrive, a hellish little creature who is eating Light alive. Light smiles to himself to think of it.
He takes the train into work, like any regular salaryman, briefcase slung over his shoulder and a more potent cup of coffee clutched in one hand. When he arrives at headquarters, there is no one waiting for him on the steps and he's not sure if he should take that as a good sign or not. When Ide dawdles in the front hallway so that they won't have to take the same elevator, he settles rather more firmly on not. But then, that was the whole point of this plan, wasn't it? Sacrifice his spotless reputation in order to protect something more valuable.
When he arrives in the main office, a stilted silence fills everything up in waves of uneasiness. Matsuda's wringing his hands and Mogi's looking at his shoes and Aizawa's sitting straight-backed, watching stolidly over the top of his computer screen.
"Welcome back," he says, but it's with more awkwardness than accusation, and Light can feel everything playing out very nicely from here.
He swallows and makes himself as earnestly self-deprecating as possible. "Mikami called me," he says, softly, but with enough enunciation to be heard through-out the room. He sighs deeply. "I suppose you know, then."
There's a fragile uneasiness that only grows by the moment, and his words do nothing to break it. Aizawa nods. Matsuda's fingers slow to a shuffling twitch.
"It's not a big deal," Ide says, from the doorway behind him. "Right?" He looks around at the rest of them with his usual irritable vagueness.
Matsuda nods furiously. "R - right! All that matters is the Kira case and that really has - nothing to do with your, uh, personal… "
"Inclinations," Ide finishes neatly, expression tight but trying not to be.
Light's eyebrows rise. They're all so uncomfortable it's a little endearing. At the very least, he appreciates the fact that none of them seemed to have decided that he's going to jump them at any moment. Maybe they think he's too polite, or perhaps they've just realized that there isn't a single possible way in which any of them could ever be good enough for him. Mikami isn't even good enough, and he sure is good. L, Light's sure, is the farthest thing from worthy, but then that's stopped nothing from happening how it has, so perhaps he'll find himself groping Mogi in a broom-cupboard one of these days. With the way things have been going lately, it wouldn't be the most unexplainable twist.
He almost wants to smile because it's a bit funny - he is the office gay now, isn't he? He should have a call-boy pick him up just for the reactions, but then he needs all the money he can manage in order to support the whole kidnapping thing. It wouldn't do for him to take the mattress from the old apartment and drop it off in the new building, would it? He'd gotten used to it and it was pleasantly springy, but not only would that draw more attention than he particularly needs, it would be a bit suspicious for him the have a love nest set up for himself and Mikami without a proper bed.
He doesn't mind making L sleep on the floor anyway, and he'll suffer through the tragic difficulties of fucking him against the wall. He really is quite the martyr.
"I really don't want anything to interfere with the case. If you think it would be better if I didn't maintain… that sort of relationship - a secretive one, I mean - while the case is going on, I understand." He lightly shoves his bangs out of his eyes, turning away. "I knew when I started it that it was a bad idea, but I - " He stops, throat roughening, voice nearly breaking. Pitch perfect. "After L, once he was gone, I felt very… alone. I know it was wrong of me to do something like this to Misa, but I was just so lost and I - " He stops again, shaking his head. Holding it in. The poor, poor boy.
Matsuda's frowning. "How old is this Mikami guy, anyway? Where did you meet him and what's he doing with a college first year, anyway?"
"Matsuda," Aizawa says, cutting him off with a heaviness in his tone. Light's glad not to have to go into it, even if he's got answers - and very sympathy-inducing ones - for all of those questions.
"I'm just saying," Matsuda says, shrugging down into himself. "It's not like I don't trust Light's judgement, it's just - after L, well, it would be understandable if he… " He trails off. A random sleazy prosecutor is one thing, but entertaining the notion - even confronted with it as they have evidently been, and by Aiber no less - that their illustrious leader was in the habit of going around deflowering little boys? Well, it's just a bit too much for them to handle, isn't it?
Light nods to Matsuda with understanding, even though he's growing utterly bored underneath. Things are going so utterly according to plan, and although there's still much to play out, he wouldn't be unduly upset by a curveball coming his way and throwing things out of sync. There'd just be more to play with, then.
"Whatever it was," Mogi says, speaking up with unbecoming suddenness, "nothing's changed. We still have work to do." There's a certain quality to his voice, even aside from the rarity of its appearance, that commands attention.
The rest of the investigators express their agreement in one form or another and Light supposes that's as much of acceptance as he's going to be given, and that's utterly fine. It suits, even. He'd rather not have Matsuda pestering him on the mechanics of gay sex and Ide slipping him condoms on the sly. There's just one more thing.
"My father," he says, before they can quite move onto the case, "has anyone brought this up with him? It's alright if you have, I just want to know what to be prepared for."
Aizawa looks around sternly at the group, as if for confirmation, then shakes his head. "We haven't said a thing. We figured we'd leave that up to you."
Ah, well, that makes things easier. Light nods, turning on his heel to step back to his desk, and is confronted immediately with a shiny blonde head and the sharp smell of whiskey.
"Oh, yes," Aiber says, wiggling his fingers in a quaint little mocking wave, "none of them said anything to Daddy, so I figured I'd take the liberty." Light freezes. He can almost feel the confused tension rocket sharply in the room and has to physically restrain himself from picking up the nearest heavy object and bashing Aiber over the head with it. "I went to see him yesterday. Your mom even made me tea. She's a real sweet lady, you know? You should visit home more often."
Aiber gives him a shit-eating grin and shrugs up out of his lean against the wall, taking a sip of something light brown and punchy smelling. And here, Light thinks, is the curveball. He only wishes it had dressed better.
Her parents think they're being very subtle over in the kitchen, whispering to each other in halved, stumbling tones, and even though Sayu can only make out every other word, it doesn't take long for her to suss out the general meaning. Especially since it's, quite honestly, something everyone probably should have seen coming from miles away.
She taps her pencil loosely, resting her cheek against her hand against the table, and forgoing her homework to speak up and say, as loudly and intrusively as she possibly can, "So what if Light's gay?"
Her father freezes first, hands shaking a bit on the briefcase that he's inextricably attached to at every odd moment when he's at home - which is more often these day, but still not often enough. Her mother pauses for a moment, frowning slightly, but then continues with making Sayu's bento as if nothing out of the ordinary had been said. If she had to hazard a guess, Sayu would say that her mom's more upset that she hadn't done her homework last night and is further neglecting it now in favor of listening in on their conversation, than she is particularly bothered by what she's said.
"Sayu," her father starts, tone firm as ever.
"It makes a lot of sense, actually," Sayu continues, cheery and unimpeded. If she quieted down every time she was told to, she'd never get a word in. "No wonder he's not that into Misa. No straight guy could resist a girl like that."
She flashes the most endearing smile she can manage and then fills in one of her equations - probably inaccurately - to appease her mother.
Her dad looks like he's about to start in on another well-meaning and wildly conservative lecture, but her mom continues the conversation - in a louder tone, now that the cat's out of the bag and running around the yard - that they'd evidently been having before
"Honestly Soichiro," she says, "if he is? What do you want me to do about it?"
Her father's stumbling exasperation is partly sad and partly just annoying, but Sayu is used to it and her mother is used to it and if Light were here - if Light ever stopped by - he would be used to it to. No one's family is perfect and although they certainly do alright, the dissatisfied mundanity of their lovely little house in their lovely little neighborhood eats at her in odd moments like this. The smiles and the warm family dinners fade out and it's not enough, not what she wants at all.
But then everything shifts sharply back to the present and she's sitting at the breakfast table chewing on the end of her pencil and it's really not as bad as all that. She misses her brother, though. She thinks she's missed her brother for her entire life.
Her father huffs slightly, obviously uncomfortable, but not wanting to show it. "I'm not saying something needs to be done about it," he says, voice still hushed. "Just - I'm worried that it wasn't a choice he made on his own. There was a man, an older man, one of the investigators, and I think - "
"Light did it with an older man?" Sayu squeals from the table, partly just to let him know she can still hear. "Awesome!" And partly because it is, in fact, awesome.
"Sayu, do your homework," her mother says, though with little force behind it, hands still busy with the rice. She turns back to her husband. "It wasn't Touta, was it?"
"What?" her dad says, a little too loudly. "Matsuda's not gay." A pause. "I don't think he is, anyway."
Sayu laughs loudly, dropping her pencil and slumping back in her chair. "Matsuda's got a crush on me," she says, and mightily appreciates the looks it draws. "He does! Watch how he looks at me next time he comes over here, it's hilarious."
Both of her parents blink rather disbelievingly and it figures that they'd find it more likely that someone was in gay love with Light then even vaguely into her. She's not bitter - not very, anyway - but she was born in her brother's shadow and has waded around in it all her life and she is mostly okay with that, doesn't think she could ever manage to be anywhere else, but it's still nice to be looked at every so often. Really looked at, like a person on her own merit and not just as a vague extension of her older brother.
"Maybe I should ask him out?" she continues. "What, I'm just trying to keep up with my big brother. You're always saying I should be more like Light." She smiles, eyebrows jolting up as she stands from her chair, shoving her unfinished homework in her backpack. If she hurries she can finish it on the train. "Oh, I gotta go!"
"Sayu, your bento!" her mother calls after her.
"I'm gonna be late," she calls over her shoulder, pulling on her coat. "I'll buy something. Love you, Mom! Love you, Dad!"
She's out the door, the cool air sharpening everything around her - and she loves her family, she really does, but out here it's much easier to breathe. Out here is a place where she can be a person. She texts Suoh and they make plans to meet after school and get drunk in the park. She doesn't like him as much as he likes her, but then he likes her a lot and she doesn't mind looking at the way his bangs fall across his eyes or the lean lines of his track team calves. She likes the way he speaks to her. She is just another girl to him, but that's a lot more fun than being Sayu Yagami, second child of the Yagami family.
She'd rather pass out hammered on an empty stomach than take her lunch and sit quietly and follow all the rules. She's pretty sure Light's never broken a rule in his life. She's almost proud of him for the gay thing. She's proud of him, anyway. She loves him, she loves her brother.
There's just nothing that terrifies her more than ending up like him.
As it turns out, it doesn't make much of a difference whether his father knows already or not - and Light honestly doesn't mind that much, it's just the idea of Aiber sleazing around his childhood home that gives him a rash if he thinks too hard about it. But, the way everything lines itself up, his dad would find out today regardless.
When Light goes outside with Aizawa on his smoke break - in memory of Ukita, he says, even though he huffs the thing down like a lifeline - Mikami is waiting on the steps. He's got a briefcase and a scarf and a harried, cornered animal look flickering through his eyes, and he freezes when he spots them. Next to him, Light can feel Aizawa tensing up noticeably. He can see his father approaching from across the street.
This is the moment. If Misa's not in position, he may actually kill her.
"Teru," he says, even though he's certain he's never actually used Mikami's first name before - not even in bed.
"Yagami-kun." Mikami is utterly stiff, legs locked up and brow tensed. Light hopes Aizawa will take the honorific as an attempt at professionalism. "You said we'd have occasion to speak privately?" he asks, pushing up his glasses.
Light takes a few nervous - cautious, but eager - steps forward. "I'm sorry, I know this is isn't the best place, but my schedule - my work, it's complex. But I wanted to see you. I - "
He looks over his shoulder, the implication being that he wants Aizawa to give them some space, even though he'd rather prefer he stayed just to sell this properly. He's no doubt that Matsuda's watching out the window, and of course Aiber will manage to have an eye on him. There's no convincing he and Watari, however, and he's not aiming for that. He just needs the other investigators to have no doubt about how separate this situation is from the Kira investigation and, as a bonus, maybe tie up a few nasty loose ends in the meanwhile.
Aizawa holds up one hand, putting out his cigarette with the other, indicating that he'll be gone in a moment. That's okay, though, since his father is just arriving, and Misa - well, she knows her cue.
Mikami shakes his head before anything can particularly happen, though, and says, "Please don't. I really don't want this to be anything but a formal termination of our - of whatever agreement we had before." He starts speaking even though Aizawa's still there, and once it begins it doesn't seem as if he can stop it. "I'm not clear on the parameters, as you didn't exactly consult me extensively, but I don't want - this nonsense about a girlfriend and the secret apartment? It's a bit too complicated and although I do like you, Yagami-kun, I feel it would be immoral of me to continue with it, knowing what I do now."
Light wants to grin but his face flashes hurt and he takes a step forward, reaching out. "Teru - "
"Please, Yagami, I - "
"Teru, can we at least talk about this first? I understand, I do, but…" He gets as close as he can manage and Mikami, seemingly frozen, doesn't take a step back. Light's fingers brush the edge of his cheek and he can see his father's steps stopping, eyes going wide in the background. And he thinks, now, now, now.
And now is when it happens.
"I knew it! I knew it I knew it I knew it!" Misa's squealing is sharp and uncomfortable on the front steps, her voice breaking on the last word as she comes around the corner. "You said you would sort it out, but this is what you meant, isn't it? You said you stop with him, with all of them!"
Heh, he hopes the implication that there are more men will put Mikami off of him indefinitely, because nice looking as he is, Light really doesn't want to deal with maintaining a relationship with him on top of all the others, with the varying in degrees of realness and falseness and the fault-line in between.
"Misa," Light says, turning sharply to meet her eyes.
She moves quickly, a pretty little blur of pale blue and creme white - dressed in her set costume rather than the usual black on black - and Light reaches for her on instinct. She passes him by, going straight for Mikami, little body moving between them with surprising force.
"Just who the hell do you think you are?" she squeaks, anger merging into something more pathetic than not, as she jams a manicured nail against Mikami's well tailored suit, poking him right in the chest. "Going around, sleeping with other people's boyfriends, like you have any right! Like you - how could you - "
Mikami's looking at her with wide eyes and from the way he stutters around the apology - "I - I'm sorry, I didn't mean," - Light assumes that Misa has started in on the tears. If he's perfectly honest, he'd have to admit that he's rather impressed. She's certainly not selling it short.
Misa huffs and turns sharply before Mikami can even finish his apology, spinning to face Light. "And you! How could you? You promised me, you promised, you - "
"Misa, please, not here. Can we talk about this somewhere else? You're making a scene." He tries to sound kind but firm, but the look Mikami gives him - sharp and wrought with an awkward sort of judgement - tells him he's not being nice enough. "I don't want to hurt you," he tries, putting boyish desperation into his tone, "it's just very complicated and - "
"Fuck you! Fuck you, Light. I did everything for you, I would do anything, but you don't even see and you don't even care and I can't make you and I can't help how I feel and I just wish you would leave, I wish you would disappear, I wish I never had to see you again, I wish I could - I - "
Her voice snaps there, utterly breaking, destroying itself and the she is sobbing, not falling into him, not touching, just wrapping her thin little arms around herself. She looks like a child. A little girl who's lost her favorite toy. As that toy, he can't quite manage to feel sympathy for her, but he understands that this is real resentment, real loathing mixed in with the worship. If anything, he's appreciative of her effort, but he doesn't feel much more than that.
Mikami on the other hand, looks like he would like to say something, to do something to help - and what a moral little man he is - but he just takes a few steps backwards. Moral but impotent, the way so many are, and justice and emotion do not mix well. Misa is all emotion, and so not matter her devotion to Light and his cause, she will never quite be a worthy disciple. She's proving that she has some worth here and now, however.
"Misa, please," he says, feeling Aizawa's eyes on his back, his father's on his front, "can we talk about this?"
She slaps him across the face.
"I don't want to talk to you," she say flatly, tears stalling on her cheeks. He stares at her and for a moment it's completely organic. He maybe should have been, but he wasn't expecting that.
Before he can think of the next thing to say, a way to keep the scene going - it's a little riveting, throwing it all out there, even cloaked in soapy melodrama - Misa's already walking away. Her thick white heels click on the concrete. His father is frozen, looks like he's cycling through the information, trying to sort and catalogue it. Aizawa is quiet and still, letting it all pass.
Mikami, if anything, looks embarrassed. He watches Misa depart with thin, processing eyes, before turning back to Light. "My sympathies," he says.
"You don't - " Light starts, a little amused, but not letting an inch of it show in his voice.
"I apologize for my part in all this," Mikami continues firmly. "Goodbye, Yagami."
Light watches him go and tries not to laugh uproariously.
Beyond takes one of Watson's overcoats - a little short in the sleeves, but about the right size otherwise - and combined with the jeans and t-shirt and wild hair and gut-rot expression that flickers glassy in his eyes, he should look like a homeless person. One of those scary types that yells at you from street corners, bottle of cheap liquor clutched in one hand. When they step out onto the street though, something shifts in B and he blends effortlessly with the crowd, like a deranged little chameleon.
Mello is hardly so successful and he stumbles along, trying to keep up, before B finally huffs amusedly and wraps his large fingers around Mello's wrist, tugging him along firmly. The touch is odd and it prickles through Mello, but Beyond's energy has changed so fully in the calm light of day, and it's not half as terrifying as it would have been an hour ago.
They stop to mail the packages with questionable anonymity - as in, at the post office - but B says not to worry about it, that they won't be found. Mello thinks they're probably more conspicuous than most patrons, him with his leather and B with his… everything, but they don't draw any lasting looks and he's comfortable with letting B handle this part. All these parts. Mello is here for L and L only.
Afterwards they take the underground to an even seedier part of London than the one they'd started in - which is saying quite a bit - and then weave through back alleys and odd bends until they reach one ramshackle door with a bent knocker and chipped green paint.
Syd's Tattoo and Piercing Stud, reads the curly lettering on the window. Maybe it read Studio at one point, but it doesn't now.
"What are we doing here?" Mello grits, shaking his arm out of B's grip.
Beyond grins wide, shifting back into its usual jagged leer, and he taps Mello's chin with a crooked finger as the door jingles open. "I'm thinking something Germanic for you. A cross, maybe. That is your heritage, isn't it?"
Mello frowns, following B into the shop. "You're kidding," he says.
"Naturally," B returns, though Mello can't tell if he's answering or just tittering to himself. He sprawls across the counter, smudged as it is with dark ink, long body moving with unnatural undulation.
If B has brought him here for a tattoo, Mello wouldn't be particularly surprised. Alternately, if he'd just popped into the first shop he'd seen in order to kill the unsuspecting proprietor, Mello wouldn't be particularly surprised by that either.
There's a bell on the counter and Beyond slams his finger into it repeatedly. "Oh, Syd, my dear old pal!" he calls. "I know you're home, lover-boy, no need to play coy!" There's no response, but a bit of clanging from the back of the shop.
B smiles. He flicks his eyes to Mello, eyebrows popping, and politely excuses himself before vaulting over the counter in one smooth jump.
Mello's skin prickles. "You're not gonna kill the guy, are you?" he calls after B, but he's disappearing into the back before Mello can get a proper response. Sighing heavily - he's tired, hasn't showered, can still smell the blood dried on his clothes - Mello follows.
Syd is a scrawny man, maybe in his late thirties, with a shaved head and tattoos of cartoon animals covering most of his visible skin. There's Mickey Mouse on one shoulder and Bugs Bunny on the other and a few ducks that Mello doesn't recognize peeking out of the v-neck collar of his shirt. He is climbing backwards out the window while trying to look like he isn't and when he sees B there is a staunched, familiar terror that brightens his eyes and coils the muscles in his neck all wrong. He looks like someone who has been told in explicit detail exactly when and how he is going to fie.
Beyond hasn't yet said anything.
"B," he says, voice small, unlike what Mello thinks the voice of a man with needles in his eyebrows should sound like. His hand shakes on the windowsill, body fizzing like static. "Hey."
B smiles wide as he glides over, moving with peculiar grace and managing, despite the clutter and disorganization and miscellaneous furnishings, not to brush a single object as he travels across the room.
"I'm charmed that you remember me."
Syd smiles twitchily, looks like he may break into hysterical tears at any moment, and says, "You're not an easy fellow to forget." Then, in the next moment, he's tossing a cabinet at B and scrambling across the room, past Mello and through the door in under a second, a look of wild exertion flying past in the one-blink glance Mello gets of him.
Instinctively, he follows, and maybe he'll end up being an accomplice to murder but maybe he is already, and anyway, there's a keen and uncontrollable spark of pride that lights him up at the moment of contact as he tackles Syd to the dusty tile floor. He feels useful, in a brute muscle sort of way, but useful nonetheless, instead of like a child that B is leading around by the hand. And really, if there's a candidate for worst person in the world to help out, Beyond is definitely nominated - but still. Desperate times and whatnot.
He stands in the doorway, watching Mello grapple with Syd's bucking panic, holding him down with clenched knees and quick hands. Agility over strength, L had always said, and Mello had failed before - the other night, with Watson. He'd failed. He could have been raped and probably killed and he couldn't stop it. He couldn't - he -
He notices a few moments too late that he's possibly shoving Syd down a bit too hard and only gets his grip to loosen as B says, "Careful now, we don't want break him quite yet."
Syd snorts, body going limp with resignation. "That's bloody comforting, isn't it?" he huffs, then blinks up at Mello. "Hello," he says, with a queer, shivering humor, "I'm Syd."
Mello stares back down at him and doesn't know what to say. What do you say? He knows how to hit people and how to run and how to keep his mouth shut and how to yell at the top of his lungs and demand things, but he doesn't know how to introduce himself. Especially not mid-straddle.
"Who's the boy, then?" Syd asks, eyes flicking to B. He still looks like he expects to have his organs ripped out at any moment, but like he now intends to suffer it with good cheer.
B smiles, sitting down cross-legged on the floor next to where they're tangled. He leans his cheek on his open palm and regards them like a vaguely interesting piece of amateur art. "Think of him as my apprentice."
"I'm not your apprentice," Mello snaps, feeling capable enough of arguing, if nothing else. He looks back at Syd. "I'm not his apprentice."
"I'm my experience," Syd says with his bright eyes, "it's safer to just go with whatever he says."
"You just tried to run away," Mello points out.
"Fight or flight instinct," Syd counters, "and there's no fighting Freddie and Jason's illegitimate offspring, is there?" He flicks his cornered grin at B for a moment, then looks back to Mello. "So, is there any chance of you letting me up then, sport?"
Mello tenses up at the mention of the position, preparing to hold his own if he needs to. If only to prove that he can. "Are you going to run?" he asks lowly.
"Of course he's going to run," B says, before Syd can open his mouth to respond. "He's a runner, my dear friend Syd." He's leaning so close he looks like he he could topple onto them at any moment, but Mello supposes the point of Beyond is that he won't. No matter how close he seems to collapse, utter disintegration, his bones and blood and hair and smile all stick together, moving as a curious, jaunty horror of a person.
"Friend?" Syd says skeptically, smooth head rolling on the floor like he's resigned himself to being comfortable there.
"Of course," B says, sounding vaguely insulted by his doubt.
"B, you cut my girlfriend's foot off," he says, sounding more annoyed than horrified and Mello's whole body freezes and shakes with it, because of course, of course, of course he did that. He does that. That's what he does.
B rolls his eyes. "You're still not over that? Come on, she was already dead."
Syd's teeth grit and his smile quivers a little. He looks like he wants to press the point, but he doesn't. Instead, his body goes loose under Mello's, slumping back against the floor in resignation. "Alright, alright, what are you here for, then? What do you want?"
B smiles and rocks in his seat. "Passports!" he says, like an excited child. "One for the boy and a new one for me since the last one burned up. United Kingdom for both, and best not to put him over 18 since that'll make them suspicious. Pick any age you want for me, I'll make it work. Nothing too old though, mind, or I'll cut one of your limbs off while you're fully conscious for it, okay?"
He smiles, tugging Mello off of Syd and pulling him up. "Best get started as soon as possible. Want me to order a Chinese?"
He calls Misa with his first moment alone, fingers moving solidly over his cellphone keypad.
"I'm actually impressed," he says when the line clicks live. He maybe expects uneven breaths and girlish sniffling, but what he gets is silence.
Then: "Well, I am an actress." She's smiling. He can hear her smiling. It sounds real.
But then, she is an actress.
He rolls his eyes. It's raining again outside and the building he'd left L in doesn't have heat and he can't decide whether to care about that or not. Good and evil and the split-line in between and it's all swirling around in him. "I could have sworn it was method," he says, fixing his tie in the reflection of the bakery across the street. "For every way you love me, I'm pretty sure you hate me in two more."
"Don't be silly," she says, sounding perfectly cheery. "I love you better than anyone else around."
He snorts. "Considering the competition, that's not very comforting."
"You've never asked me to comfort you. If you do, I will. I'll do whatever you ask, you know that."
He imagines her tears still dried on her face, make-up runny and wrong. Her heels off and her small legs curled under her on a chair somewhere, maybe at home. She's going to move out. They'd agreed on it beforehand. Get a new place and leave him the apartment so that he doesn't have to move back in with his parents. That sacrifice might have made the whole worth of the "break-up" null. Does it count as a break-up if they were never really dating?
Does it count as not dating if he's going to what he'd promised her he'd do, in exchange? A deal is a deal, after all. Or, at least, it is when the person you've made the deal with has got leverage in the form of a lovelorn death god floating at her side.
"Will you change your mind about this?" he asks, mostly just as a formality. He doesn't expect her to and he doesn't particularly need her to.
She does an airy little giggle into the receiver and he rolls his eyes on instinct. "I knew you'd tried to wiggle out of it. Rem won't like that one bit, you know."
He knows, and nods resignedly, even though she can't see it. "Tonight, then?" he says. "I have to stop in with - my friend." He looks over his shoulder. Aizawa and his father have gone inside but he can feel eyes on him, the camera's probing against the taut line of his spine. Even if they can't pick up what he's saying, he's better off too cautious than not cautious enough. He hopes Misa manages to understand the nuance. "I said I'd bring him some dinner. He's a lonely guy. If you send… one of your friends out to visit with him, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it. Either will do."
Rem and Ryuk have about the same amount of drawbacks when it comes to serving as guards, so he won't insist on one over the other. Rem is somewhat in league with L and her loathing for Light can be nothing but detrimental, but on the other hand, her feelings for Misa make her manipulatable. Ryuk has no emotional stake in this at all - boredom aside, he may not even have emotions - and a firm resolve to not join sides, but he's also unable to be seen by L and very unlikely to make a deal with him.
"I'll send Ryuk," she says, after a thoughtful pause. "Rem would rather stay with me. Do you have an address?"
"He'll find it," Light says. He almost flips the phone closed with that but, with a sudden spark of deprecating humor, adds, "See you tonight. Make sure to wear something pretty."
If Misa hears the vague disgust in his voice, she ignores it. Her voice tinkles squeakily over the line. "You, too."
Light slips his phone into his pocket. Tonight he has to bring L a bed and a decent supply of water. Tonight he has to rewrite all his notes, redraw all his plans, and make sure that everything adds up to a tee. Tonight he has to, for the first time in his life, have sex with a girl.
He'd never been so grateful for a long day with the investigation team.
tbc.
end notes: i decided to save my WAH WHY IS THIS CHAPTER NOT AS GOOD AS I WANT IT TO BE whining until the end notes, but (seeing as this is a constant) i'll limit it to this: we're in a bit of a transition period right now, so - ideally - it will pick up soon and there will be less scattered povs and more focused action. fingers crossed and all that.
once again, thank you ecstatically if you've managed to stick with this story this far in. my hat off to you. and to the new readers (some of whom messaged me on tumblr quite recently) thank you for giving this story a chance. i appreciate all of it so so much i can't really verbalize it. see you in the next few weeks, hopefully!