You've always known the right thing to say. Always been able to figure out what people wanted to hear. It's harder, with Ryuzaki, but not impossible.
People in arousing situations, Ryuzaki had said. Do they have to be beautiful for you to feel something?
No one would call Ryuzaki beautiful. He's not hideous, nor particularly deformed, except for the constant hunch of his shoulders. There's nothing repellant about him, except for his disgusting habits, and he isn't unpleasant, except for his personality. You wonder what it would be like to grow up knowing you were ugly. Terrible, you think—but not as terrible as being plain. You weren't lying when you said there was something about monsters, something about the uncanny, that has always drawn you in. And a monster will always be noticed, never forgotten. In comparison to Misa's perfect photogenic looks and fake expressions, the weird vitality of Ryuzaki's sallow skin and sleepless eyes are like stepping out of an air-conditioned unit and seeing the red new dirt under a rotting log.
It's Monday, and you wrap two fingers of your hand around his wrist; there's barely a fingernail's-width in the gap between, and for a moment you wonder what it would take to make a manacle out of your very palm and hold him with it. Ryuzaki glances up at you and you close the laptop on the round table between you with your other hand. You're still in the bedroom, and he smells like coffee and unscented shampoo. "Ever since I saw you, I thought I wanted to break them," you say, pressing your thumb against the pulse-point of his wrist.
"Is that so?"
"I hated you," you say, as though that explains it. Maybe it does. "I hated the way you moved and how you touched your lips and I hated your unbrushed hair and most of all I hated your eyes. Because," you say, "they didn't fit. None of you fit, but that fit the least. They reminded me of black holes, and they should have belonged to something that everyone stepped away from in terror. I hated you because you were a monster playing a fool, and nobody but me had any clue."
"Light-kun," he says quietly.
"Yes?"
"How did you know?"
The side of your lip curls. "I've told you how much I disliked you and that's what you want to know?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Because you're right," you say. "I'm also a monster. And no one ever noticed me either."
Ryuzaki nods. "Do you still want to break them?"
"Yes," you admit, and it feels so sweet to say that. Yes, you still imagine the crack of bone and bruises against his pale skin, you still imagine the deft, captivating arc of those hands lying weak and broken under yours.
"Well," Ryuzaki says wryly, "I'm afraid I can't allow you to do that, but there's something else you can do to hurt me." He pulls his hairbrush out of his pocket; the boar's bristles standing as black and wiry as the hair on his head, and hands it to you while he opens his arms, palm up, rolling his sleeves to the elbow. "Bristles only, not the handle," he says. You nod, and take a grip on the brush. The wood handle is soft and smooth, and then you swing your arm down in a harsh arc until the bristles of the brush impact his milky skin. You lift the brush and there's no mark left behind. He doesn't flinch. No, even as you rain blows across his exposed arms, down to his fragile, narrow wrists, he merely leans his head back, his mouth parted, and looks strangely like he's floating, like the rare moments you see him in a sleep untouched by some unhappy dream.
Eventually, it's the repetition that creates marks, thin-pricked things like rugburn, a blush of bright peach color against his skin, and you could keep doing this forever, because he seems so uncannily vulnerable before you, like a river that has opened its banks, like something you could step into up to the shins without realizing the swirl of silt around your feet wasn't your own movement but the undertow. You stop, not all at once but with a soft, ever-softer pattern like rain, and Ryuzaki sighs, long and slow as though he is coming out of sleep, tension unwound. His gaze, meeting yours, is liquid, and when you set down the brush at last he takes both your hands in his and you sink to your knees, bending your head before him.
"Light-kun," he says, softly.
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
/
The strangest thing about being Ryuzaki's is that it's easier than being your own. He is a constant challenge, and though you want to say it's some kind of revelation, it steals in like sunlight, not the flash of lightning in the dark. Before him, you would never have admitted these things about yourself, but with Ryuzaki there is no wrong answer. He understands that you will never want him in the way that movies are made from, that he'll never haunt your sleep. He understands that you are selfish and self-motivated and that you will always look out for yourself before anyone else. He understands that everything between the two of you is an act, and because he understands, there is truth in it. Because he understands, you can say I am a monster too (and it is what he wants to hear because that is the kind of monster you are). It is like a miracle, to have someone to openly not trust, in the maze of society and the expectations of friendship and care. It is incredible to be a chameleon admired for your talents without ever fooling him.
It is playing the most rewarding game of all to know that your life and freedom will always be his, as easily as though it meant nothing.
/
You're on the damn roof again, staring down at the grating in front of your feet. After all this time, you still haven't been able to get over it, and somehow the more you try, the more terrible it becomes. You step up to it as though preparing for battle, and it wears you down like a war of attrition.
It's just a damn piece of metal grating.
You should be able to step onto it. Over it.
You can't.
The more you stand here, the more you can hear your heart-rate ratcheting in your chest; everything else loses focus but the dreaded line in front of you, separating within from without. You've run out of tactics; just going a step further each time may have worked for the rest of the roof but it doesn't help if you can't even move.
Even sounds are different; heightened and yet at a remove, as if the whole world and you are somehow out of sync. If you could just step over the line, somehow it would solve every other problem in your life, and it would prove something. You want to move. You hate the metal grating for being there in the first place, like a stop; like the limits of your cage. You feel like one of Pavlov's damn dogs, cowering in front of an innocuous open door. Everything is becoming hateful to you, and you're so tired, and you want to destroy it but it seems immutable. This line, this boundary of meaning. When you slide the very tip of one foot over it you feel a spike through your insides as though someone had punched straight through your gut up to your head. The palpability of it startles you, and everything around you is greying at the edges. No, it's being eaten away. You don't sit so much as collapse as darkness corrodes your vision and standing becomes impossible; you are moving through a tunnel, blinded, and the tunnel is constricting. You're on the ground. Half on the ground, because your head is on Ryuzaki's lap and he's tugging his hands through your hair like it's more to serve his ever-present need for movement than any show at comfort. Slowly, the veil is pulled from your eyes, and you see the hateful sky above you, so that's not much help. You close them again and grab at his arm, stopping him before he does something stupid like pull your hair out. You feel shaky and worse than before, because all of a sudden you realize you have no clue how to fix this. Patience can get you anywhere, but you need a tactic, and you have nothing.
"Did I faint?" you say dully.
"Yes, Light-kun."
You want to say something scathing to the effect that he put this idea into your head. This didn't happen the first few times you tried to cross the damn grating. Sure you were afraid, but you weren't incapable. Now it's like there's a kill-switch built into your very body.
Your mouth tastes like bile.
"Will I ever cross this?" you say.
"Of course you will," Ryuzaki says.
You scoff. Your eyes are still shut so that you can pretend you aren't in the middle of space, and Ryuzaki's presence helps you to pretend, tugging you in. "Don't lie to me, Ryuzaki. It's getting worse."
"Well…" Ryuzaki says awkwardly.
"You love this, don't you," you snarl. "Having me at your mercy. I can't even go to the edge of the fucking roof. You want me away from the real world… in your fucked-up little room forever, so you don't feel like such a freak."
"I would remind you that it isn't I who can't make it across the roof, Light-kun. Maybe you're keeping me trapped with you, just so you don't feel like such a coward."
"Fuck you."
"The ten minutes are up, you know."
You open your eyes and stare at the face of your watch, baffled. The minute hands have done their rounds like it's not the end of the world.
Because it isn't.
You get up and offer Ryuzaki a hand, which he takes wordlessly, and you walk hand in hand back into the tower.
When you get inside and the doors seal shut behind you, you say, "you know I don't really believe that, right?"
"Is that so?" Ryuzaki asks. There's no hint to what he's thinking in his body or his eyes, which means he's hiding it. Which means he doesn't believe you.
You can't believe you slipped up and said something so vicious. You can't believe it happened now, when you've finally managed to convince him you want to be here.
But maybe that's why.
Because you've managed to convince yourself, too. And there is still a part of you that hates yourself for knowing that you'll happily be his.
He's distant. Not as though cutting you out, but just abstracted. It's the wrong thing. You want to rewind the clock ten more minutes and hit yourself on the head before you tried to step over the grating again, before you said something like that to him.
"Ryuzaki—"
"It's all right, Light-kun. You don't have to apologize."
"I'm not apologizing. I'm explaining. I was just angry and throwing shit at you. It doesn't mean anything. And before you go on about unconscious thoughts or whatever, I don't believe you think I'm a coward either, okay?"
He lets out a breath, and finally looks over at you. One arm has wrapped around the other, and he's playing with the edge of his sleeve. "Okay, Light-kun," he says. "I believe you."
You step toward him and suddenly you're in some kind of desperate hug that you're not sure which of you started; it feels more like you'd crashed together and are trying to hold on against the expanding distance of a time-bound universe. His arms are vice-tight around your back and you can feel the pounding of his heart in his chest, and you try to convey through the clinging force of your body alone that there's nowhere else you would rather be, and you believe it.
You believe it, but you're not sure he does.
/
You're downstairs and the first day of the week seems to have lasted an eternity. You want it over. You want next week to wipe out the blot of whatever it is that had gone wrong. You want the Kira case solved and behind you, and you want Ryuzaki to drag you into one of his dark-tinted limos and drive into the congested streets until you're nothing but a man known and feared by reputation, faceless and nameless, like him. You hate the task force and you hate the Kira program and you hate your own list and the businessman that has just been killed by Kira after being indicted by corruption, which brings the Yotsuba-related deaths up to twelve. Yotsuba. It's Yotsuba all right, but you can't show it to Ryuzaki, not now. He doesn't want to kill you but he might if he thinks he has to, if he thinks you wouldn't come with him willingly, if you'd be too much trouble.
You hate the fact that eight out of twelve of the deaths on the list are from something other than heart attacks.
You stare at the computer, toggling the Kira program open and closed. Every prison in the world, or at least every prison on the world stage, has been hit by now, and for a second you think dully at least he's helping overpopulation and you're disgusted by yourself. Wars do the same damn thing and you disagree with them on principle. Because they're too messy, because they overturn people's lives, ordinary people who never broke the law, never willingly set themselves up for possible death. Even soldiers can be conscripted. It's not like you don't know that there are societal reasons for crime, that everyone has their explanations, their mental illnesses, their past abuse or their psychotic breaks or whatever. But if you had to kill anyone at all you might as well kill someone who had committed a terrible crime, someone who has never shown remorse. The difference between the First and Third Kira are so obvious to you that you want to scream, because it's the difference between greed and… a service. The First Kira chose the least egotistical way to reform society because it's not like L's setting himself up as a god. He's not assassinating people or wiping out governments or choosing political sides, he's not driving up a company's stock in order to reap the benefits, he's not prioritizing one country over any other, he's not trying to be judge and jury, only executioner for those who have already been judged. You don't know how he's killing people but if the Kira power really is some kind of terrible gift (curse) what else, what better thing could he be expected to do with it?
What else would you do with it?
That's not a good question. There are too many people you'd like to kill if you had that power. Lazy people, greedy people, people who make everyone else's lives worse, you'd happily be judge and jury of them all.
It's terrible.
He's terrible.
You're terrible.
You want to reach over and touch his shoulder and show him that you've solved the case, that you're good enough to work out the challenge he'd set for you, and you can't; you close the files and the program and the list and feel your teeth scraping together and your hands clenched and you don't know what you're feeling except that it's overwhelming you and you can't sit still.
You take a deep breath and say in a pleasant, cheerful voice, "hey Ryuzaki, can we go to the reference room? I want to check something."
He's been scraping the dirt from under his toenails. He's not exactly busy.
He looks up at you vaguely. "Of course, Light-kun."
He stands up, grabs three manju from the plate next to him and pops one in his mouth, following you into the reference room. "What is it you wanted to check?" he asks, when you stop in one of the rows of file cabinets.
"Just some Kira stuff," you say vaguely. You open a drawer and stare down at it, and Ryuzaki offers you one of his sweets. "No thanks," you say.
"Mm, okay, more for me," he says, and sticks both remaining ones into his mouth at once. Red bean filling and crumbs scatter their way across the edge of his lips.
You're trying to come up with something reasonable, but there's nothing in this file cabinet except files on more dead people. It smells like paper and metal and a little bit of dust, and you're annoyed by the way the flecks of red bean paste are stuck onto his skin. He's such a mess, and it's not fair for him to be so unruffled by anything.
You reach your thumb to his cheek and try to brush the food away, but he sticks out his tongue, licks onto your fingers like it's another sweet, and you feel your cheeks heat in anger. You want to force that innocent expression off his face, you want to be sure. You don't know of what.
"You're disgusting, Ryuzaki," you say, in amusement, like he's pathetic and you're not.
Like he's the one who had fainted on the roof.
Like he, like he, like he can be every terrible thing.
He takes that as a challenge; pulling your fingers deeper into his mouth until they are wet and gross and sticky, playing at something obscene. His lens-like eyes are sparkling the way anything might when the light strikes it the right way. There's a smile stuck in the curve of his lips and it's in his eyes too, like he knows what you're doing.
You grin at him, baring your teeth. You don't know what you're feeling but you like it; you like the way he seems so pathetic, even if it's only an illusion. You're glad by the gross sexuality of it all, the pretend, like he's reminding you of an inside joke. That you know him.
You're not looking at anyone else but him, and he's not looking at anyone else but you. And you'd been sure you were alone in the reference room but beyond one of the aisles, behind a huge pile of books stacked on a round table, there's a sudden thump, and you draw your hand away from Ryuzaki as though burned, staring over at the source of the noise.
Aizawa's eyes are bleary, he's sitting behind the stacked books with his arms folded on the table and he's blinking like he'd just woken up, staring through the gap in the aisles like he's not sure if this is real or the remnant of a dream. But there's something like dawning comprehension, like dawning comprehension and disgust, and he's realizing quickly that it's happening, it's true. You wipe your sticky hand on your pants, and his eyes follow the motion as though they are on fishhooks. Ryuzaki grabs your arm and tugs you out of sight, and you go back to the main room and the computer tables and you open up a chess board and play against the computer, which takes the next four hours before you win a decisive victory.
You don't say anything.
Neither does Ryuzaki.
Aizawa doesn't come back into the room.
.
.
.