"If we're doing another movie night, you should let me pick next," Ryuzaki says. He's chatting into the phone like you aren't even there, ignoring the glare you're giving him. It's Thursday, the 12th of August, and he'd answered Misa before you'd been able to grab the receiver.
"Why should I?" Misa retorts. "I have a perfect movie all picked out anyway!"
"But don't you know sharing is caring?" Ryuzaki says, in a tone of mock-concern. "If no one but you keeps picking the movies, it will start to seem like these aren't real dates."
Misa sighs loudly and pointedly, blowing out the other end of the line. "Ugh. Whatever. Just don't pick something boring, okay?"
"Don't worry, Misa-san," Ryuzaki says seriously, "I have a perfect movie picked out too."
"I can't wait to see you there, Light!" Misa adds with a burst of sudden cheerfulness, and then hangs up.
"Actually," you say, "you really shouldn't get to pick the movie. You're not even part of the date."
"Light-kun makes a good point," Ryuzaki says flippantly, putting the phone back in its hook. "But… it's already been decided."
"Not by me," you say under your breath.
Today, Ryuzaki decides to grab a banana from the fruit basket while he's waiting for the coffee to brew. He yanks the peel open with his teeth, which you watch in disgust. You sigh and drag him over a bit so you can poke into the fridge while Ryuzaki chews noisily by your ear.
Maybe you'll just make some miso soup from a package.
You're putting the soup into a pot on the stove when Ryuzaki finally finishes his banana. He holds the peel dangling between two fingers and looks at it sadly, and then glances over toward the trashcan across the room. You take out a wooden spoon, and let the drawer bang shut with more force than necessary. You aren't feeling accommodating enough to walk over to the trash with him. He can put the banana peel down on the counter and deal with it later, or just keep holding it for all you care.
Of course he does neither of those things.
With a shrug, Ryuzaki turns around, eyeing the distance between where he's standing and the trashcan, and then pulls his arm back and launches the peel spectacularly through the air.
Being a banana peel, and not particularly aeronymanic, it loses its momentum almost immediately and ends up splatting against the ground just outside of the trashcan.
Ryuzaki turns away as though he'd been completely successful, and stares at the coffeemaker.
"Don't just leave it there," you say, aggrieved. "Clean up after yourself."
You put the spoon down beside the stove. Even though you want to do anything but, you'll leave what you're doing so Ryuzaki can walk over and fix his stupid mistake.
"Light-kun must be a neat-freak to worry about such a thing," Ryuzaki says, and doesn't move. He says it like a tangential observation. But it sounds all the more condescending for that.
You walk toward the trashcan. When Ryuzaki doesn't come after you, you grab the chain near your end and pull, and Ryuzaki digs in his heels. Even though the tile is slippery, he's not wearing shoes, so he has some grip; more than your own stockinged feet. You lean back like you're playing tug of war and watch him get dragged along millimeter by millimeter. Eventually, he's forced to grab onto his side of the chain or have his arm yanked out of his socket, and from there you're in a momentary stalemate.
But it doesn't last.
He may be skinny as a rail but the sad fact is Ryuzaki is stronger than you. Not by much but enough that he's able to make you overbalance before you can pull him over.
Still, physics is physics. If you're going down… you pull hard on the chain, and your momentum is enough to make him crash down too. You're next to the trash at least.
Which might've been useful if he'd only grabbed the banana peel and actually thrown it away.
Instead he smashes it into your hair.
Into.
Your.
Hair.
It's a dirty move. Literally. And it isn't just that. It's the casual, purposeful humiliation. The banana peel slides down your hair and falls back onto the floor, leaving gloop behind. You feel tainted. The unconcerned look on Ryuzaki's face doesn't help.
Someone this petty and childish should look like it, damn it. He has no call to act as though he has the high ground!
No premeditation. You're barely even aware that you'd moved until you hear that satisfying crunch and feel your knuckles sting as you punch him square in the face.
He doesn't fight back—not to punch or even to kick. Instead, even as you're feeling a flash of satisfaction at your victory, he's reaching for the damn banana peel.
Oh, no. Not again.
You grab for it, too.
But he's already got a grip, and he's turning it over to hide under his arms so you have to tackle him to get it.
He's curled up, and you can't even get close to his hands, because now he is kicking. Although at such close range it's not as much use. You're flat on top of him, pinning him down while he thrashes wildly, trying to knock you away.
And still hiding the banana peel.
You grab his arm. Try to get your fingers around the end of the peel, which Ryuzaki's holding in a death grip between both hands. You hit his shoulder, trying to get him to drop it, but he's like a clam. Shut tight. No! You won't let him win.
There's a kind of incandescent awareness that comes with a fight. There are no plans, no counterplans. You just feel him, living, breathing—and moving against you in a way that narrows everything down to simplicity… that opens everything up…
To that single fucking banana peel.
A harsh, panting breath. A kick. Grabbing his arm again. Leaning forward; the bony protrusions of his hips. Heartbeat under skin. You're grinning.
You're grinning, and he's so real. Tangible. Breakable and powerful in equal measure. Only a body; easy.
You leverage each finger away from its prize. He bruises your arm in retaliation but you've got it—a mangled, blackened thing; the banana peel! Sitting up then, you turn and toss it—touchdown—it lands in the trash.
You stay there for a second, half-thrown over him and feeling exquisite victory. Then.
"Damn it!" you scramble to your feet, pull Ryuzaki behind you. He follows without a protest.
The soup has boiled over onto the stove.
/
As Ryuzaki scrubs down the stove with a brush, you stick your head under the faucet, trying to get out every remnant of banana.
"You eat more fruit than Kira," you say.
Ryuzaki looks over. You meet his eyes under the spray. "Than Kira kills people," you add, grumpily. Only then realizing that it doesn't exactly make what you said sound any more intelligent.
"That would have to be a lot of fruit," Ryuzaki says, thoughtfully. He scrubs at a particularly burnt patch of soup.
"You eat a lot of fruit," you say.
"Even if I ate 20 pieces of fruit a week," Ryuzaki says, "I still wouldn't eat more fruit than Kira kills in a month. He averages 5 kills a day."
"20 pieces of fruit a week is only 2.9 pieces of fruit a day," you point out. "Anyway, it's no use talking about theoreticals to make yourself look better. Don't you have catering receipts or something?" you say. You reach for a towel and press your hair dry.
"Dividing it by the number of people in the task force… no, first we'd need to figure out how much everyone else tended to eat, I doubt it's an even split."
"Good enough," you say.
"Watari must have it somewhere," Ryuzaki adds.
By mutual agreement, you leave the apartment and press the button for the ground floor of the task force.
Matsuda and Mogi are playing cards. When Ryuzaki slouches into the reference room, Matsuda stiffens guiltily, as though caught out, and he moves his hand as though to cover what he's doing, before laughing embarrasedly. "Uh, hey, Ryuzaki. Mogi and I were just, uh…"
"I have no complaints about Mogi's productivity," Ryuzaki says, making a beeline toward one of the file cabinets.
"Oh, great," Matsuda says, brightening. "Uh… what about mine?"
Ryuzaki pulls the cabinet open and riffles through it. "No, no… definitely not this one…" he mutters.
"Are you actually working?" Matsuda asks, getting up and walking over to stand beside you. He gives you a curious, conspiratorial look. "Is Ryuzaki working?"
"No," you say.
"I'm checking to see how many people Kira killed in March," Ryuzaki says distractedly.
"That sounds like working," Matsuda says.
Mogi gets up and joins the group, so that now three people are gathered around Ryuzaki as he pokes through folders and then emphatically shuts the drawer, opening the one underneath.
"We have to find out whether I eat more bananas," Ryuzaki says.
"I'm sorry?" Mogi asks, sounding baffled.
You smile cordially, and neglect to explain.
"Aha!" Ryuzaki says, pulling out a folder. "March. Kira. Number of kills…" his finger skims across a page as he rests the folder against the open drawer of the file cabinet. "228." He closes the folder and turns around, suddenly seeming to notice Matsuda and Mogi's anticipatory expressions. He shuffles, scratching his leg with one foot. "Light-kun and I needed to know if on average I eat more fruit per month than Kira kills people."
"Oh," Matsuda says. He frowns, confused, and opens his mouth to ask something else.
"We'd probably need to take a look at more than just March to figure that out," Mogi says. "If we're talking about the average."
"You're quite right," Ryuzaki says. He walks over to the table where Matsuda and Mogi have been playing and pulls up a chair next to their cards, careful not to touch the game in progress.
"Mogi-san, might you be good enough to find the rest of those numbers?"
"Sure thing," Mogi says. He glances at you and mouths, 'clever.'
You smile back at him and shrug modestly.
He obviously thinks you set up this scenario in order to get Ryuzaki to look at the Kira case again, and you're perfectly willing to take the credit for that.
A few moments later Mogi comes back with a stack of files, and Matsuda hastily clears away the cards on the table to make room, everyone sitting to watch.
"Let's see…" Ryuzaki says, taking a marker out of his pocket and starting to draw directly on the glass table. "We'll skip November because Kira started part-way through that month, with a five-day killing spree, so it's not indicative either of the average month or of Kira's killing pattern. For the same reason, we'll skip the first three days of December. The remainder of December will be 168. For January: 150. February: 127. March: 225. April: 152, May: 153." he flips through the files as he speaks and then pauses. "Since June was also an outlying month let's skip that as well. In fact, there's no need to do July, or August, since we're only part-way through August anyway…"
"But don't you think it would be more complete if we took those other months into account?" Mogi asks.
"Complete? Of course," Ryuzaki says. "Accurate? Not necessarily. Anyway, six is a nice round number."
"I guess so," Matsuda says, sounding a little lost, but still intrigued.
"So we're working with six months," you say. You know why Ryuzaki doesn't want to look at June or July—because those months might start to bring up suspicion, since the kill numbers vary slightly from Kira's before-the-break average. Though he wants to avoid it for self-protection, you also need to avoid it, since you're still the most likely suspect. "The average for that would be…"
"163," you and Ryuzaki say at the same time.
Mogi nods thoughtfully a second later. "Yeah, that checks out."
"Cool!" Matsuda says cheerfully, then falters. "I don't mean Kira killing people is cool!" he hastens to add. "I meant… you know. Numbers!"
"I understand," Ryuzaki says. "So. The question becomes… do I eat more than 163 pieces of fruit a month?" he picks up his phone. "Watari," he says. "Yes. Were you watching the feed? Mm-hm. The receipts for the same months, thank you."
As everyone waits, Matsuda says, "what do you think, Light-kun?"
"Hm?"
"Do you think Kira kills more people or Ryuzaki eats more fruit?"
"He thinks I eat more fruit," Ryuzaki says. He's been trying to balance his marker on the tip of his finger for the past five minutes, but lets it slip into his hand and scribbles on the table Ryuzaki eats more fruit. Light-kun—for.
"Ohh," Matsuda says, perking up. "I agree with Light-kun. I mean, you eat a lot of fruit, Ryuzaki. Plus, some fruits are really tiny, like blueberries."
"Good point," Ryuzaki says. He makes another note. Blueberries. Avg. in container?
"I think Kira kills more people," Mogi says. "I know Ryuzaki likes to snack, but most of it's desserts and other prepared food, not fruit."
"Yeah, but blueberries!" Matsuda says.
When Watari comes down with a pile full of printouts a few minutes later he takes a quick glance at the scribbled-on table and says, "put me down under for, if you would." He hands the papers to Ryuzaki.
"Hm," Mogi says, scratching his chin. "If Watari's so sure, maybe I should change my prediction."
"You can't change your bet, Ryuzaki already wrote it down," Matsuda says.
The edge of Mogi's usually-stern mouth tilts into a smile. "That's just 'cause you think you're going to win."
"Well… maybe," Matsuda admits.
Ryuzaki divides the pile up into piles and you, Matsuda, and Mogi start pouring through receipts. For a while the only sound is the shuffling of papers and the occasional exclamation.
It's been an hour or two of information-gathering when Aizawa pokes his head in. "So that's where you all went off to," he says. He walks over. "Is Ryuzaki working?"
"Well, actually…" Mogi starts.
"We're trying to figure out if Kira kills more people in a month than Ryuzaki eats pieces of fruit!" Matsuda says.
A nerve in Aizawa's brow twitches. His mouth presses together, his hands clench. "Are you fucking serious," he says.
Mogi looks slightly abashed.
"Yes…?" Matsuda says, tentatively.
"This is the Kira investigation, not a betting pool on Ryuzaki's eating habits!" Aizawa explodes into a tirade. "How can you call yourselves detectives? All you're doing is sitting around gambling! What's this, cards?" he picks them up and throws them back down on the table, where they scatter across the surface.
Ryuzaki, who has been studiously ignoring this turn of events, chewing on the end of his pen, flinches. A second later, he moves the cards that have landed on top of his pieces of paper carefully to the side.
"Uhh, that was something totally different, Aizawa!" Matsuda says.
"I don't even know what you're bothering to sit here looking through receipts," Aizawa says in a tone of deep disgust. "Kira's the biggest damn serial killer we've ever seen, and you have to ask if he's killed more people?"
Ryuzaki reaches over and adds, Aizawa—against.
Aizawa makes a noise of inarticulate rage and storms out.
"Wow, we've got just about everybody," Matsuda says. "I wonder if the Chief would want to join?"
Mogi shakes his head.
"Right… yeah…" Matsuda laughs awkwardly. "I guess that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Oh!" he adds. "But we could ask Misa Misa what she thinks!"
"Go ahead," Ryuzaki says.
Matsuda fishes around for his manager-phone and dials. "Hi Misa Misa! Yeah, I know, I'll be right there," he covers the speaker with his hand and says, "sorry guys, I'm gonna have to go in a minute. I forgot she has a shoot in half an hour!" he puts the phone back to his ear and stands up. "The task force has a betting pool. Do you want to join? —No, not for money. Oh, I guess that isn't as fun. But you'll probably like it once you hear what it's about! 'Does Kira kill more people in a month, or does Ryuzaki eat more fruit?' —What? It's not stupid!" Matsuda frowns. "Okay." He nods. "Got it! I'll be up in just a minute."
He flips his phone shut and says, "Misa Misa says Ryuzaki never stops eating so she's betting for."
Ryuzaki makes a note of it as Matsuda hurries out of the room.
Some time later, Soichiro wanders by the reference room on his way to the main-level kitchenette for coffee. When he sees you all at work, he joins with four full cups and hands them around.
"I thought you might need a pick-me-up," he explains gruffly. "Ryuzaki, I poured about half a cup of sugar in yours, I hope it's not too sweet."
"Thank you, Yagami-san," Ryuzaki takes a sip, despite the fact that you know full well he never actually drinks his coffee with more than five sugars in it. Anything more is just him playing with his food, before quickly abandoning the beverage.
"Thank you, Chief," Mogi says, holding his cup in both hands.
"Thanks, tōsan," you murmur, giving your father a friendly smile.
Soichiro looks over everything, and his eyebrows climb up. "I see. So this is what Aizawa was talking about." He sighs a little, tiredly, and takes a long drink of his coffee.
"You're free to join in if you like," Ryuzaki says.
"I think I'll pass," Soichiro says. Still, instead of leaving, he stands against one of the file cabinets and watches. When Mogi stands to give him a seat, Soichiro waves his hand. "No, I've been sitting all day. I'm trying to remember to walk and stand a bit more. Better for my heart."
The information is a lot to go through, and as one person or another finds something, it gets written down. If there are questions that need researching, Mogi jumps up to take charge, while you and Ryuzaki focus on gathering everything together.
Catering receipts only show what food was bought, but Watari is a professional and will make sure nothing runs out, so you assume a buffer of 5% the total amount of fruit. For strawberries, the amount turns out to be a pound for every two days. That's ten to twenty-five berries; with the average being 17.5 for every two days. For bananas, one bunch a week. Occasionally a melon. You find out these smaller details in additional calls to Watari, since not even Ryuzaki knows off the top of his head how many berries and bananas the weights ought to come to. You add up all the fruit, get rid of the ten percent, and then divide it by the seven people involved with the task force, including Watari, for the months of December through May (though you were added to the task force in April, Ukita died, so the numbers don't change). The blueberries do, in fact, skew the matter, with 192 to 210 blueberries per pound; and with 2,412 blueberries bought per month, that's an average of 345 pieces of fruit for Ryuzaki to eat without even counting anything else. In all… the answer becomes clear, though you don't get the finer points hashed out until late into the night.
In fact, Matsuda and Misa end up there to see the denoument, since she gets in around midnight and Matsuda decides to stop in on the way to see how things are going.
"We have decided," Ryuzaki announces at last, "by unanimous agreement—"
Matsuda bounces on his feet. "Oh my god, I bet I know what he's gonna say—" he says, and Misa rolls her eyes.
"That I do, in fact, eat more pieces of fruit than Kira kills people in a month."
"Yay!" Matsuda says, pumping his arms.
"Hah!" Misa adds, with a sudden grin. "Looks like I'm the winner."
"We're both winners!" Matsuda says, spinning her around, and Misa laughs. "Light, guess what," she calls, "we won!"
"Yeah, that's awesome," you say amiably.
"Sorry Motchi, you're the loser!" Misa says.
Mogi stands up and shrugs. "It was a good game anyway," he says with a smile. He starts out the door, taking the kiss Misa blows him on the way out with good grace and miming tucking it into his pocket.
"I think I'll turn in as well," Soichiro says, following suit. "Goodnight everyone."
"Night!" Misa calls, and giggles. She sways a little on her feet and clutches onto Matsuda for balance. "Oops!"
"Misa, are you drunk?" you ask.
"Only a little," she says dismissively, waving her hand. "It was such a tiresome day, Matsu can tell you all about it! I'm beat anyway…" she spares you a coquettish smile.
"Yeah, speaking of that, you really should go upstairs now," Matsuda says apologetically.
"But I'm having so much fun!" Misa whines.
"Misa-san, you should listen to Matsuda-san," Ryuzaki says. "If you don't, you might be tired for our date tomorrow."
"My date," you clarify, a little irked. "You're not even part of it, Ryuzaki—"
"Ohh!" Misa's eyes go wide, and she grabs Matsuda by the arm and drags him away.
Silence descends as the rest of the task force leaves, and you see a palpable tension disappear from Ryuzaki's shoulders. You notice it because you feel the same way. Today was actually pretty fun, but it was the most social interaction that you've had since you were in confinement, and though you're still refusing to think about the implications, the fact remains that fielding so many people for so long has begun to tire you. Ryuzaki leans back in his chair a little, pressing a finger to his lip, and you stifle a yawn. "Maybe we should go to bed too," you offer.
"You're probably right," Ryuzaki says. He stands up and starts towards the door, towing you after him.
You wait until you've gotten back into your apartment (out of sight and sound of the public security system) before you say, "so, what was the real reason we skipped July?"
"Because six is a nice round number," Ryuzaki says guilelessly. "What? Why did you think we skipped July?"
You press your lips together and sigh. "Yeah, sure. …A nice round number."
.
.
.