In the morning, you say, "I want to go up on the roof again today."
"Is that a good idea?" Ryuzaki asks.
"It's a better idea than shaving with a straight razor," you say. There's always something a little unnerving about seeing it pressed so closely against his throat, but as always, Ryuzaki moves with quick, careless precision. Your resentment is no less sharp, and when you think back to what happened yesterday—the roof, your reaction—your hands itch. You can picture grabbing the razor from him, holding it against his throat until you see that deep flicker of fear in his own eyes, until it's you who holds the upper hand.
But that would definitely be the wrong move.
You curl your fingers into fists.
Ryuzaki glances down at the blade in his hand and shrugs. "Why, are you planning to stab me with it?"
"You can be such a paranoid mess, Ryuzaki," you say, with condescending humor.
"You're right," Ryuzaki concludes. "After all, since I am the one with the knife, it would most likely be you in danger." He turns quickly, the blade flashing, and you freeze as the razor stops an inch from your skin, the sharp edge of it scraping against your Adam's apple as you try not to swallow.
"You're insane," you say.
"I just noticed you missed a spot," Ryuzaki says. He drags it up your throat, around your cheek, barely touching the skin. Any wrong move and you'd feel the warm trickle of blood; you both know it.
He's watching you, and you snarl at him.
"Light-kun," Ryuzaki says. "Is that really a good idea?"
"What do you think, Ryuzaki?" you ask, switching suddenly to a disarming tone. You relax, give him an open expression—you won't get under my skin like this.
"Okay," Ryuzaki says. He pulls the blade away and finishes shaving.
Your hands, you notice, are no longer clenched.
When both you and Ryuzaki have finished getting ready, you go onto the roof.
Your equanimity lasts until just before the elevator without a problem, but as it moves quickly to the last floor, you lean against the rail and close your eyes. Three breaths in, seven breaths out. The elevator judders to a stop and the doors open. You open your eyes. The hallway seems, paradoxically, even bigger in the sunlight than it had been last night. For a moment you're seriously tempted to hit the button to close the doors again. Outside, the blue sky mocks you.
You take another deep breath. Walk steadily into the center of that high corridor, crossing the building's high expanse like a bridge with stairs spanning dizzyingly above and below. Ryuzaki walks close beside you.
By the time you get to the stairs you're almost panicking, and you stop there for a long moment, screwing your eyes shut. Ryuzaki steps even closer and you reach out, grab his arm tightly. Okay, you think. If I don't get to the roof today at all, that's fine. One thing at a time, right?
It's enough to take some of the catch from your throat, and after a long moment you open your eyes, steely with renewed determination.
You make your way up the steps.
Now you're to the exit. Right outside these glass doors…
"We can stay here," Ryuzaki says quietly.
"No," you say. "I'm going to open the door." You're almost surprised, though, when pressing your palm to the scanner makes the door rush open—you've been given access. Somehow, you'd almost thought it would've been reserved for Ryuzaki alone.
You step forward, but find yourself unable to leave that last bulwark. So you sink down in the center of the doorway, facing out.
Ryuzak sits beside you, just inside the doorway.
"Ten minutes," you say, checking your watch. "We'll go in after that."
The announcement makes it real. Gives you purpose. All you have to do is keep sitting here for ten minutes. Looking out. Taking one deep breath after another. Until you find the tightness in your chest loosening. Until you no longer feel that sickness rising in your throat.
You press the handcuff against your left wrist. Steady. Easy.
Everything's fine.
When you finally turn to go, triumph is curling warmly through your body. It has to be triumph, because the only other option, the one that had tormented you last night, is a deep despair. So it doesn't matter how stupid this is, you're taking it as a win.
/
Tonight Matsuda and Misa get back early around eight. Seeing them barge down the glass stairs, you take a fortifying breath—you'd thought you'd had at least two more hours of peace and quiet. They clatter into the main room, Misa striding in front, Matsuda following her laden down with grocery bags.
That's a little weird. Shopping bags you could picture, but what's Misa planning to do with all this food…?
"Hey guys!" Matsuda says, as Misa squeals and runs toward you.
"Light, Matsu and I got the greatest idea, you'll absolutely love it!" she exclaims, dive-bombing into your arms.
"Matsuda, what is the meaning of this?" Soichiro asks, sounding somewhat alarmed. He steps back as Matsuda staggers past the group and slams his pile of bags onto the glass table.
Aizawa growls and tries to collect the papers that had been scattered back into a pile.
"I don't know, I thought maybe we should all have a little party," Matsuda says. "It's September first! One month of chasing Kira from this awesome new headquarters!"
"What are we supposed to celebrate?" Aizawa says caustically. "The fact that he's still killing people?"
"Let's see what's in the bags, anyway," Mogi says.
So Matsuda pulls out boxes of food and sweets and little party favors, piling them all on the glass table, and when it's all there it does make a pretty colorful sight.
"Hmm, good thinking, Matsuda-san," Ryuzaki says, making a beeline toward the food. You know immediately when you need to follow him as the chain goes taut, but Misa's still clinging to you like a limpet. So even as you stand up, it's not quickly enough, and the chain gets caught on the arm of your chair. You end up tripping and staggering after him, the chair dragging behind you while Misa skips along with her arm wound around yours.
"Uh—Misa—" you say awkwardly, "would you mind letting go for a second—"
Ryuzaki stops at the table, lifts up a container and peers at the ingredients label before opening it and popping a sweet into his mouth. After a moment, he pulls out his phone. "Watari," he says, still chewing, "come down, there's an awesome party! …How can you be busy? …Please?" he adds wheedlingly. He hangs up, and speaks seriously—as though any of you wanted to know. "Watari will be down in a half an hour."
"Maybe you guys are ready to party, but—" Aizawa starts.
"The names will still be there in the morning," Soichiro says tiredly. "But it's true. We've been working here for a month, and it's good to commemorate our successes. Even if that's just that we haven't given in to Kira, and that we vow to keep searching for him no matter how long it takes."
"Hear, hear!" Matsuda says, passing canned chuhai around. "What flavor would you like, Chief?"
Soichiro sighs. "I might try the ume. Thank you."
"Right away!"
"Ooh, can I have lemon?" Misa asks. "Thanks!" It's 9% alcohol content, the highest possible for chuhai; and as she pops the tab on her seltzer, the mix fizzing softly, you start to wonder if she's got a drinking problem. The opened bottle of vodka in her apartment was probably a good first clue.
"I'll take the strawberry cream," Ryuzaki says.
"Coming right up!" Matsuda turns to Aizawa and Mogi. "Any preferences?"
"Peach," Mogi says, taking the 3% seltzer with a nod.
Aizawa sags, looking defeated. "I'll have grapefruit," he says, and takes a quick gulp of the 7% flavor.
"Oh, hey, Light," Matsuda says. "I found one without alcohol for you. Nothing fancy, it's just lemon, but that's all I could get."
"Thanks, Matsuda," you say with a smile. "Lemon is great."
Matsuda takes kiwi. Then Aizawa says solemnly, "like the Chief said," he nods at your father. "To catching Kira."
"To catching Kira," you all echo.
/
The party's moved over to the facing couches beyond the stairs, the coffee table in between covered with napkins, soft drinks and desserts. Mogi's sitting across from you, talking quietly with Watari, who's standing and puttering around, and Soichiro, about a recent advance in the automobile industry, while Misa's sitting snuggled against your side. The couch is crowded with Matsuda beside her, and thankfully they've been chatting away for the past hour, so you don't have to pay her any attention.
Ryuzaki is snoring quietly, his bare feet curled up under him, his shoes tucked half-under the couch. You don't know how he managed to fall asleep in a situation like this and part of you envies how careless he is about keeping up any sort of appearance. Aizawa stands up from the couch opposite and goes over to the glass table, coming back with another seltzer and kneeling by the table close to you.
"That metal floor can't be comfortable," you say. "If you want me to push Ryuzaki off the couch for you, just say the word."
Aizawa cracks a smile and takes a deep swallow of his drink. "I just wanted to check in," he says quietly. "It's not easy to get you alone these days."
"The troubles of popularity," you quip.
"It's been all right? With him?" Aizawa says. He casts a slightly perturbed look in Ryuzaki's direction.
"I mean, as well as could be expected, yeah," you say casually.
For a second, his gaze travels down to your left wrist, scarred and yellowed with bruises, and his lips thin.
You feel unaccounably awkward; a spike of unease racing through your blood, and you want to press your wrist against the cuff but now's the worst time to do that. Instead, you pull your sleeve down, making sure to cover your wrist completely, and Aizawa sighs and looks back down at his drink, fiddling contemplatively with the tab, pressing it back and forth until it finally snaps. He throws the tab onto the table.
Finally, Aizawa says, "I could make a fuss about there being no security cameras on your floor."
"Are you going to?"
"It's not a threat, Light-kun," he says, gently. "Just an offer."
"Really," you say, trying to sound reassuring, "I'm fine. But thank you for thinking about it."
"Okay," he says. "As long as you know. It doesn't have to be now, but any time. It'll remain open." He stands up, taking his drink back over to the other couch, and rejoins the rousing conversation that now seems to be on the subject of dream cars.
/
"So of course all my fans want to know where I've been and I was like, what can I tell them? 'Well, I was in a snuff film, but the pacing on it sucks!" Misa says. She laughs, and Matsuda laughs with her.
"I'm not sure if that's appropriate to joke about," Soichiro says, uncomfortable.
"Who's joking?" Misa says loudly. "Come on, you all saw those tapes! Hm? What do you think, does it need a little more editing or is it fine as it is?" her tone has taken a sharp turn, and Matsuda places a careful hand on hers. She stops short, takes another sip of her (fifth? sixth?) drink, and slams it down onto the coffee table, the sugary liquid spilling up over the edges.
"Hey, they could cut it with my part and you'd have a whole movie," you say. Misa laughs and glances over at you, her eyes shining.
"Like Ryuzaki the pervert hasn't already done that," she says.
"I make no statements on the matter," Ryuzaki says drily, nibbling on coffee daifuku, the sweet flavored bean-paste filling visible inside the ball of rice flour.
It's nearing two o'clock, and the quality of the party, such as it is, has declined in equal amount. Mogi is now the one sleeping, his head pillowed against the back of the couch, and Watari has vanished back up to his floor, while your father and Aizawa have turned to the case again, trading quiet theories back and forth.
"Well, if you have, you'd better send me a copy," Misa says. She burps, and then groans. "Fuck! Oh, shit, oh, sorry about my language… I think I need the bathroom." She gets up and makes a run toward the ground-floor bathrooms.
"Matsuda-san, make sure she doesn't get into any trouble," Ryuzaki says.
"Huh? Oh, sure," Matsuda says, standing up and following her.
"I don't know, I think we should probably head upstairs," you say. "What do you think, Ryuzaki?"
"I think the timing is perfect," Ryuzaki says, and you both scoot quickly off the couch and run up the stairs to the elevators in the lobby. When you press the up button he's laughing, and so are you, for no reason at all; and you let the doors close behind you feeling young and ridiculous in the best way possible.
You rest your hand against the rail as the elevator moves, and say, "you didn't actually do that, did you Ryuzaki?"
"Hm?"
"Edit the footage of us together."
"...I might have," Ryuzaki admits with a look of exaggerated guilt.
"No way. Come on, you made a film? What's even in it?"
"Nothing you'd want to see."
"I want to see it anyway."
"Light-kun," Ryuzaki says as he presses his hand to the scanner outside your door, "you'll regret it."
"It's not like I didn't already live through that shit."
"I suppose you're right," Ryuzaki says. You walk through the hallway.
"Phone," Ryuzaki says absently. You're already pulling it from your pocket, and he places it on the side table before going further in. His laptop is sitting on top of the table in your room, and Ryuzaki sits down on the chair in front of it as he boots it up. You sit beside him, and watch as he clicks into a group of folders with numbered sequences instead of names, quickly moving to a file, ten minutes long, and opening it.
You're kneeling on the ground, struggling to eat from the bowl on the tray in front of you. There's something sadly pathetic about the whole thing, and it floods you with secondhand embarrassment, but the shame you'd felt at the time is remarkably absent. You feel almost like you're watching an entirely different person. "I knew that was for a reason," you say.
"Mm."
The shot cuts to Misa. A different cell; somewhere even closer and darker than yours. She's standing strapped to a standing gurney and you startle despite yourself. You'd expected… well, something like your own confinement, to be honest. But… what Misa is wearing, you can hardly even call clothes. She's dressed in some short rags that barely cover her thighs, and there are pretty suspiciously-placed straps keeping her immobilized. The visor, at least, makes sense—if she was the Second Kira, the most important thing to do would be to make sure she couldn't see anyone's name or face.
"What—was she like that the whole time?" you say.
"More or less."
It doesn't turn you on, but then, you hadn't expected it to. You understand distinctly now the pointedness of Misa's words earlier, and if you were a different person, it would probably fill you with dread. But, after the initial startlement, you soon realize that it is, indeed, pretty boring. She's just standing there.
The shot cuts back to you. You're doing your stupid exercises, which look even stupider through the camera's lens, and you groan. "Oh, not this."
There's not even any background music. Just that utter silence, the small huffs of breath caught by the recorder, the scuff of feet against the bare ground.
Back to Misa. Still standing there.
And you. What the fuck are you doing—laughing? You're sitting on the floor with your head thrown back, and the spine-chilling howl of it unnerves even you.
Misa.
You.
Misa.
You.
The cuts begin to blur so fast it is almost as though you are seeing one constantly flickering image; one stable and steady and the other moving, always contorting and changing as though frantic.
You're lying on the ground. Tired. Listless.
Thirty seconds pass.
You don't move.
The screen cuts to black.
For a second, you just stare at the computer, lost for words.
"I told you you'd regret it," Ryuzaki says.
The only thing you regret is that he still has this file. Like he really needs more of Misa in his life… you'd thought for sure that after everything, he would've lost interest in her entirely. You certainly have.
"Seriously," you say, finally wrenching speech together and almost surprised when it comes out sounding disaffected, "I'm just surprised you didn't go further. I mean, if you're into bondage."
Ryuzaki chuckles. "You mean, why didn't I go so far as to do to you what I did to Misa-san?"
There's something especially off-putting about hearing him referring politely to "Misa-san" in this context. He used to call her Amane in private, which seems much more apropos for a thing like this.
…Has his opinion of her changed?
…For the better?
No. This is Ryuzaki. He's always lying and playing games; you can't trust a thing he says.
"Yeah, I guess so," you say.
"The truth is, I would have liked to," Ryuzaki says. "Unfortunately, the task force would've been up in arms if I'd tried. People will let so much more slide if the victim is female, someone the observer doesn't know personally, or a proven killer. You were the opposite on all three counts. Not only a member of the task force, but the Chief's son… and someone who'd volunteered to go into confinement, on top of that. And who would've enforced it? Watari was busy with her. No, Aizawa wouldn't have been useful for a thing like that."
"I guess you put a lot of thought into it," you say.
"I had to," Ryuzaki says. "It wasn't all for my personal pleasure, you know. I had to make sure the two most dangerous suspects I'd ever had were secure, that they wouldn't be able to influence the outside world or to escape."
"And you wanted us to confess."
"That goes without saying," Ryuzaki agrees.
"So why not now?"
"Hm?"
"The task force can't see what you're doing anymore," you say. "Not here. We've played a couple of games, but you've never tied me up."
"I didn't want to push you too far."
You laugh. "You didn't want to push me too far?"
"Perhaps it's more like… the timing didn't seem right. After all, you're no longer in confinement. Anything we do now ought to be with your permission."
"You have my permission," you say.
"Light-kun…" Ryuzaki says warningly.
"What? Didn't you want to talk about it?"
"It's late to be making a decision like that."
"Well, like I said before, it's not something that hasn't already happened to me," you say pointedly. "You want to tie me up like you did with Misa? Blindfold me? Go ahead. You can even get off on it. Isn't that so much better than a mere picture? Having someone right there in front of you, defenseless?"
"I told you I wouldn't have sex," Ryuzaki says.
"Not with me. Just looking at me. Look, Ryuzaki, I guess you know by now I'm not into guys. Or girls for that matter. But just because I don't want to touch you doesn't mean we can't work something out."
"Then name your terms," Ryuzaki says.
"I already did—"
"Details," Ryuzaki says. "If we're doing this, I need details. What's okay, what's not okay."
"My shirt off is fine," you say after a moment. "I'd prefer to keep my pants on."
"There's no need to say 'I prefer,' Light. These are your terms."
"I want my pants to stay on," you say. "I don't mind if you tie me up or blindfold me. Either or both of those things are fine. I don't mind if you jack off looking at me. Or even come on me."
Ryuzaki's finger, which has been pressing this way and that on his lip, pauses. He pulls the skin away from his mouth and pinches it, then laces his fingers together and places them on the table. "Really," he says.
"Yes," you say. "Anywhere but my face. And if I'm hard and you want to get me off…"
"Then…?"
"Through the fabric. Not touching my skin." You swallow, and look away. "Those are my terms."
"Thank you, Light-kun," Ryuzaki says. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Tomorrow?" you say, looking back at him challengingly.
He studies you for a moment; and like always you can see his brain working, searching for your motive, the thread behind all of this. But you're opaque; you're the smoothest marble—a lifelike sculpture devoid of internal workings at all; and at last he's forced to concede. What he sees is all he's gonna get.
"Tomorrow, then."
.
.
.