In the morning, your body is aroused, and although you have no inclination to do anything about it, you consider embarrassment. If you felt more like yourself you're sure this would have made you feel awkward; isn't it ordinary to feel awkward about such a thing? However, all you feel is a kind of disconnect between your body, which has apparently decided that it is healed, as far as these things go, and the mechanics of your mind, which—
You don't want to follow that thought. There's nothing wrong. If you're disturbed, it's only natural to feel so; after all, here you are in a hotel bed chained to another man—isn't that enough to feel disturbed by?
Ryuzaki is still asleep. In the semi-dark you can see him curled up and awkward, letting out whiffling breaths. If you close your eyes and try not to think, the whole situation will dissipate, and nothing will remain to feel awkward about, except the fact that you are lying here beside him with the pillows piled in between like some kind of childish fortress. He hasn't mentioned it, but he must have drawn conclusions from the fact, that sudden impulse you hadn't thought to fight—this ineffectual wall that only serves to broadcast how weak you are, how much you see him as an enemy. No: you're going to be stuck with him for the rest of your life, aren't you? And just like with every other barrier you ever tried to put up, L will crawl his way over it so inexorably that you won't be able to do a thing. You don't think he's sexually attracted to you, but you also don't think he's incapable of playing it that way. At the very least, he's set up a basis for your relationship that's left that possibility open. And considering how he's been on you about trying to get close to Misa in order to wrangle a confession from her… well. Isn't that exactly what he's been trying to do with you?
It is. Of course it is. You suddenly feel ill with the possibility that he might wake up and open his eyes. Hasn't he seen worse? In confinement, when he had been nothing but a lidless eye, and you nothing but a body—this, then, is nothing. This is nothing you can't control, as long as you make the first move. You can't let him know that anything disturbs you; he will claw his nails into any weakness. You know this.
Your mind made up, you take a deep, steeling breath, and then start to palm yourself.
You're pretty quiet without thinking… after all, when you've always lived in a shared house with your family, you have to be… but you don't try to bite back all of your ragged gasps. And, of course, the chain makes a constant soft jingle as you move your hand. If L wakes up, that's fine.
If he doesn't wake up, that's also fine.
He wakes up.
You notice it at first as a change in breathing… he goes very thoughtfully quiet, and then a moment later his side of the chain is also clinking, and he pokes his head above the pillow barrier between you. He blinks, and presses his thumb against his teeth.
Your stomach, which has been tight with nausea, even the way you had been lagging a half-step behind your body like a film with the sound mistimed, all seems to right. There's nothing to fear in this scenario anymore: it's only Ryuzaki. And haven't you known how to play Ryuzaki from the very first moment you met him?
He's not looking away, or backing down, but he's not really looking at what you're doing either. If you had to describe it, you'd say he's studying you in your entirety, as though trying to figure out the motives for your actions… like someone considering a complicated puzzle.
He doesn't speak, so neither do you. In fact, you act like he's not even there.
When you're finally done, you sit up and unceremoniously yank Ryuzaki until he falls forward with a flop onto the bed. He gives you a lazy glare, and the two of you proceed into the bathroom, where the rest of your morning ritual happens just the same as usual.
/
Ryuzaki is obviously getting over whatever has been bugging him so much, for he sleeps less and less; and by Saturday you're not surprised to wake to the click of him typing away at his keyboard. When you glance over to see if he's working on the case, you notice he's playing Tetris.
It's been a while since you've gotten to play a video game yourself, and you feel a flash of resentment and tired annoyance, mixed with something else—a thought that slips through your mind too quickly for you to grasp it, and leaves only the vague impression that it's been a while since you played video games with one of your friends. Well, it's definitely been a while… Yamamoto would come over every so often, but he wasn't that much of a game person. Like odd pieces of thoughts do, it's gone the next moment, leaving behind only a strange sense that you're missing something, and more annoyance at the fact that Ryuzaki is the only one here having fun.
You crawl over the pillow barrier to sit yourself next to him, and he acknowledges your presence without turning his gaze from where it's glued to the screen.
"Good morning, Light-kun," he says.
"Good morning, Ryuzaki," you say. You lean forward with your elbows on your knees and watch the game without speaking for a while. But soon enough you've gotten so interested in the moves you've forgotten you were trying to be accommodating.
"No, look, put it here," you say, pointing at the screen.
Ryuzaki makes a split-second decision and changes where he'd been about to drop the piece. "Good one," he murmurs.
And somehow after that you're playing it together, though his hands are the ones making the moves. You get so into the game, actually, that when the task force arrives around two, neither of you have gotten presentable.
This doesn't worry Ryuzaki, but you feel pretty embarrassed.
"Oh, the task force is here," Ryuzaki says, when he hears them come in. He stares at the closed door between the bedroom and the main room with a dazed expression. "Hm," he says, pausing the game for a second, and his toes brush over each other as he thinks. "It would be polite to go out and meet them," he decides after a second.
"But we haven't even—" It's one thing for Ryuzaki, who sleeps in his shirt and boxers anyway, but you're obviously wearing your sleepwear.
It's no use; Ryuzaki is folding up his laptop and jumping out of bed, tugging on the jeans he'd left in a pile on the floor the night before, and you hurry to catch up so you don't fall as he strides into the main room.
"Hey guys," he says casually. "Good to see you." Then he sits himself down on one of the couches and opens up his game again, proceeding to ignore them.
You sit next to him, picking up some newspaper hard copies that were lying around, along with your copy of the Kira case file. You mostly focus on paging through the case file, but every so often you glance up to offer your thoughts on the game.
There still, of course, remains the distinct possibility that L has been Kira this whole time.
It doesn't change your basic tactics. All it means is that it's even more important to foster dependency between you and L. If L is Kira… which you don't believe, but if he is…
He's obviously decided to frame someone else, since the killings started up again two weeks into your confinement, when you and Misa wouldn't break as easily as he'd hoped.
It would still be to your advantage to be the one to find "Kira." In fact, it would be even more important. With L feeling like he's in the clear, he wouldn't need to fall back on you as a scapegoat. Of course, he still could… but that's why you need to make sure that's the last thing he wants to do.
/
The holding pattern of hotels is broken on Sunday, August 1st, when you move into the new headquarters. The night before, you'd barely been able to sleep, even by your current standards of acceptability, jittery, unfocused. It's like the night before a test where for once, you haven't studied the material—you keep going over the building's blueprints as the night drags on, like if you focus enough on this one thing you can avoid the deadfalls in your thoughts.
Twenty-three floors aboveground, two below, two helicopters within the enclosed section of the roof. The 5th to 20th floors are set up with four private rooms per floor; with the entire twenty-first floor for Misa; the twenty-second belonging to L, and, by extension, you; and the twenty-third for Watari. Everything from the first to fifth floor is working areas, though the ground floor is the only one opened for use.
Despite being fully capable of accommodating sixty people, at the moment, the skyscraper only needs to hold seven, so everything from the second floor on up to the nineteenth is locked from entrance either through the escalators or the stairs. The twentieth floor has four fully stocked private rooms, one each, for Soichiro, Matsuda, Mogi, and Aizawa.
(There is an actual pool too, in the first basement, along with a shared gym and a shooting range; the second basement needs a special passcode to enter and is reserved for "utilities.")
You follow Ryuzaki out of the hotel, down the elevator into another car park, with that familiar hollow chill of places that don't see the sun. Watari is already in the skyscraper, he's the one to have done all the last minute checks, so instead, your father slides into the driver's seat. You know it has to have been something Ryuzaki planned for a purpose: why not Aizawa, or Mogi? You think you can feel the weight of L's silent observation; you smile tightly at your father in the rearview mirror and Soichiro says, quietly, "it's not far, Light. Do you want some music?" while his hand hovers over the radio.
"I—yeah, maybe," you say, although when he turns the dial the noise seems to assault you, too loud, too close. At least it serves to differentiate this trip from the one that had led to that underpass, to the gun; and it gives you a reason to stay silent. You look down at your hands instead of out the window, afraid to give yourself away by some hint of your reaction; the silver chain falls heavily from your left wrist, coiling in a pile at your feet.
Soichiro drives through the city, and then into the garage under the new building; the car stops so he can type in a key code between one set of steel doors and the next. He parks and holds the door open for you, glances at you as you move into the lower lobby of a building, your shoes squeaking on a marble checkerboard floor. The elevators have bins built into the walls, conveyor belts that take away the pile of items Soichiro empties from his pockets and lines up neatly: his phone, his wallet; and Ryuzaki follows suit. You don't have anything in your own pockets but a coin you'd found on the floor of the hotel.
The last thing Ryuzaki takes out is a small keyring, and he turns it in the lock of his handcuff, opening his side before gesturing to your own wrist. "The elevators won't open if we have too much metal on us," he says drily. The cuff clicks, and Ryuzaki takes the chain, places it in a shining pile with the rest of your things; the elevator opens with a mechanical hiss.
Soichiro steps inside, you follow him, Ryuzaki follows you. And up you go.
In the inside lobby, Ryuzaki gestures for your hand once again, and you place your wrist inside the cuff, feeling Soichiro's disapproval, perhaps at Ryuzaki, perhaps at the indignity of it all, or perhaps at the way you don't bother to complain as the cuff clicks shut. Something in your father's eyes feels heavy. You're not sure what else you could have done, so you don't know why you feel as though you've made a choice: but then Ryuzaki is tucking his keyring back into his pocket, and Soichiro is gathering his things, too.
The skyscraper doesn't immediately strike you as anything particular, blatantly normal except for all the ways it's not. It's vast. Twenty-three floors, and yes, only five of them open, excluding the basement: but the sheer size of the ground-floor work area could include your whole house. It's a cavernous hall plated in metal panels, lit blue and eerie; when you step into the main room you stop for a moment, long enough that the chain tugs against your wrist and Ryuzaki turns back to watch you.
"Something wrong, Light-kun?"
"No," you say, covering your hesitation with pointed words. "It's a little surprising, that's all. Did you hire an interior decorator for these metal panels? If so, you might've overpaid."
"The metal panelling serves as a faraday cage," Ryuzaki explains. "It's useful for this room, since it has all the sensitive equipment. It's tidy, too."
Tidy isn't exactly how you'd think to explain it.
L gives the team the run-down of all the features in the main work area, which features state-of-the-art computers that you're dying to get your hands on as soon as possible. "And… oh right, what else," Ryuzaki says. "There's security cameras everywhere, but the private rooms aren't monitored, so don't worry. Well, except for Amane's… since we need to keep an eye on her, there are cameras throughout the entire floor. You can access them here," he shows where on the computer the security feed can be accessed from. Mogi and Soichiro watch politely, but Matsuda doesn't try to hide his excitement.
"Wow, this is so cool, Ryuzaki!" he says. "I can't believe we've each got so much space!"
"Yes," Ryuzaki says, "it's all yours."
Once you get in the building, you can go wherever is open-access. Each private room can be locked easily from the inside, and can be opened from the outside with retinal scans of whoever's allowed in, which for the rest of the task force, including you, is the person it belongs to. Except for Misa's floor, which locks automatically and can only be opened from the outside; the scanner is keyed to Watari, L, and Matsuda—since he's Misa's manager and needs to be able to let her out. It's high-end house arrest for the pop star, a classy hotel for the rest of the task force. You believe that there's no security system connecting the private rooms to the main computer system, but knowing L, there are hidden cameras even in the private rooms—especially your own. Watari probably has access to a second security system that monitors the stuff it would be inappropriate to have publically available.
Of course, you don't say this out loud. You just try to figure out whether Ryuzaki thinks you believe him about the lack of monitoring on the private floor.
He has to assume you've at least considered the possibility; but as long as you act clueless about the matter, he might assume the extra lengths didn't occur to you, especially considering the fact that you're already handcuffed together. There's also the distinct possibility that he knows you'll consider it, but also knows that the more comfortable you feel, the more you're going to stop thinking about the fact that there might be cameras… which would be just when you'd be likely to slip up, if you were Kira.
In fact, there has to be hidden cameras or bugs, because otherwise, if he managed to get a confession out of you when you were in your private rooms, but didn't tape it—well, he would feel pretty stupid, wouldn't he. (Of course it wouldn't hold up in court, but like L really needs the court's approval.)
So there's security in the whole building. Considering how you've been living for the past two months, it can hardly be considered a breach of privacy.
The decor is a weird combination of bluntly utilitarian, in the work areas, and what you can only describe as "hotel room chic" everywhere else, complete with nondescript, functional decor. There are even some of those calming abstract art prints on the walls that were obviously created just to match. As though in a pathetic attempt to add some sense of humanity to this monstrosity of a building, potted palms in wicker baskets sit blandly around the corners. The "private tour," which is really Ryuzaki's way of leaving everyone else as quickly as possible to hole himself away in his new apartment, reveals an entire floor that looks like it came out of a magazine, and had probably looked just fine within the glossy pages: but something about it in reality seems flat. Maybe it's the fumes from the new furnishings, or the harsh glare of the sun striking through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"So, what do you think?" Ryuzaki asks.
You stare at him blankly for a minute, not sure why L of all people wants your opinion on something like this. Maybe he needs to prove that his interior decorator was worth the yen after all.
"This is way better than a hotel," you say with a smile. "Thanks, Ryuzaki."
Ryuzaki gives you an odd look.
Yeah, sure, you're still under suspicion of murder and you've kind of been kidnapped, but… what is he waiting for you to do? Cry about it?
The Geneva convention's definition of torture includes "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person."
It's not an "accident." It wasn't L just being unsure if you were Kira, and unwilling to make a decision. The task force knew that Kira had started killing again from day fifteen onward. But L decided to keep up the lie that Kira had not killed for thirty-eight more days before he decided to release you, because he believed that the pressure of that lie and your confinement would bring you close enough to hopelessness to force a confession.
Fortunately, it had been your own choice to go into confinement. It was for a good cause. And you don't regret a single day of it.
So what do you have to be resentful about?
Nothing, that's what.
"I'm glad Light-kun is excited," Ryuzaki says, in a tone of voice that implies only an idiot like Matsuda would be excited about such a thing.
"Of course I'm excited," you say breezily. And nothing sways you until you poke into the bedroom, when you are hit with a sudden sense of disorientation. It's just an ordinary bedroom, with a queen-sized bed, floor to ceiling windows, rugs and wardrobes and even a small round table with two chairs next to it, and it really does look like something out of a hotel, so it's not weird, it's not like peeking into someone's private area… except…
That empty bookshelf, by the wall. Doesn't it look kind of familiar? And that desk… you'd recognize that desk anywhere. It's your desk.
Not a copy. It's actually your desk.
You walk toward it, yanking on the chain distractedly to make Ryuzaki hurry up, and you circle in front of it warily, as though it were a trap.
"What's this?" you ask. If you say, 'a desk,' I swear—
"I thought Light-kun might enjoy something familiar," Ryuzaki says innocently.
He went into my house. No. In all likelihood, he got some movers to do it, or had Soichiro arrange it… L didn't literally walk up the stairs to your bedroom, grab your desk, and hoist it over his arm like Superman. But it still feels like that's exactly what he did. Just go into your room, pick and choose the parts of you he liked and wanted to keep, and set them here like trophies.
Should you complain about it?
No. That's idiotic. Why would you complain about your own desk? Anyway, he'll probably just say something about how it's your own stuff anyway… he'll make a big deal about it and you'll look like you're making a fuss over nothing…
You open your desk drawers. They're empty.
Even the top one, with its secret compartment where you'd kept the diary in which you'd started chronicling your efforts to solve the Kira case… although the secret compartment has been pulled out leaving nothing but a few evenly-spaced nail holes behind. Oh yes, no doubt L's already paged through the whole book; and the missing compartment—it's as good as him saying I know. It doesn't matter. There was never anything incriminating in that notebook.
You'll probably find your clothes in the wardrobe, too. But it's actually something that's sitting on the right-hand bedside table that you notice next.
It's your watch.
Your hand hovers over it, and you feel weirdly like you're about to cry, or laugh, or… something… something's caught in your throat and you hate it, and you hate the fact that Ryuzaki's here, watching you try not to have a breakdown over a stupid watch. You take a couple of deep breaths, turned away from him, and then put it on. You don't really want to, but how much worse will it look if you just… stare at it, and refuse to touch it? He knows you'd really liked that watch. He'd recognized it. He probably knows your father had bought it for you. It's here because it's something meaningful, and if you don't put it on it's like you're telling Ryuzaki he's completely won…
Whether L is Kira or not, he has the power and the motive to kill you the moment he feels he's won.
You take a deep breath; force yourself still, count up from one but stop before it's reached the end. Ten seconds is not enough. It's all you're going to get.
You turn around, and smile at him in slight, abject gratefulness. "You remembered."
"I wouldn't forget something like that," Ryuzaki says. His void-like eyes are searching yours for something, searching like he's going to find Kira if he just keeps pressing, but all you can think is that when the watch and the chain clack against each other, it feels like you've just put another cuff around your wrist.
.
.
.