A Piece Of The Sky, Chapter One
Jan. 13th, 2009 01:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunmoonandspoonA Piece Of The Sky
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
speaky_bean
For:jessieheart
Beta'd by:hervictory
Characters/Pairings: Matsuda/Light, Matsuda/L, L/Light.
Total Wordcount: 12,204
Rating: R
Part 1 of 2
Notes: This is a labor of several months. Ages ago,jessieheart commissioned me to write a story that dealt with the above-mentioned pairings. Now, I had never actually written any of these pairings before. Hell, I'd never even written about Matsuda. I had also never written a sex scene that didn't involve a lady, at least not in the last five years. This story was very difficult for me to write for those reasons, but I think that in the end, it came out well. I certainly tried my hardest!
Summary: Matsuda is torn between two lovers, and two very different sets of ideals.
~`~`~
Light does not attend Ryuzaki’s funeral. He claims to be ill, tells his father that the horror of what’s happened recently, combined with the accumulated stress of the investigation in general, have been enough to shoot his poor immune system dead. He says that he’s in desperate need of rest, and besides, he’d be a distraction, he’d cough all through the service. According to the chief, the coughs that came in place of punctuation were proof enough. The need for proof makes Touta Matsuda think that he ought to be second guessing Light. Ryuzaki lying cold and dead in the ground makes him think so, too.
There are three options.
One is that he’s telling the truth, that he really isn’t feeling well, and that he would be there if he could. After all, what kind of inconsiderate jerk spreads germs to those in mourning? (Not that there are really any mourners here besides Touta and perhaps the chief.) In any case, if he’s telling the truth, then it’s kind of him to stay home.
The second option is a kind one, too—he must know how much his presence unnerves the others here. Especially those who might want to cry at Ryuzaki’s funeral. The chief is unlikely to show much emotion in front of his subordinates, but he shuts down completely when it comes to his son. “I don’t want him to think I’m weak,” he says. Maybe Light thinks that without him there to stop him up, his father will cry for Ryuzaki. Maybe he knows that Touta has been battling tears since it happened, and that he, too, doesn’t want to cry in front of Light. Not that he hasn’t, and not that he can’t, but how he wants Light to think that he’s strong.
The third option is a little more ominous. The third option is that Ryuzaki was right all along, that Light really is Kira, and he doesn’t trust himself to be appropriately miserable at what must be a glorious celebration for Kira. The possibility seems less remote when they’re standing by Ryuzaki’s sunsoaked grave.
It’s a bright day, not the right sort of day to honor such a dark and confusing young man. The bright day makes it easier to trust in Light, easier to ignore the grave. Touta is torn between the two of them, and he wishes this wasn’t such a hard decision. Wishes that no one had ever asked him to choose in the first place. Ryuzaki is dead now, it shouldn’t matter what he thinks. And Light is at home, coughing considerately. Alive.
Frayed and tenuous bonds are best kept when both parties are alive. Touta watches as the priest drones on about a person who none of them know, who never even existed. Touta watches as people who never spoke to him outside of work get everything wrong as they attempt to honor him. And he wonders if he himself could do any better. Light could. Light could, and that kills him.
~`~`~
The sun scalds his eyes when he struggles to open them. It’s been raining for weeks and he doesn’t sleep, not really, so when he does it isn’t easy to go from bright to dark. He blinks several times, scrunches up his eyelids and tries to work his way through the slight pain that brightness brings him. His head hurts, and his eyes hurt, and he wishes that the pain were crippling so that he’d have some excuse not to deal with the day. It is negligible, though, perhaps nonexistent. L’s mood has plummeted upon waking, and he doesn’t know why.
He rubs a sore spot on his wrist and wonders if it’s his fault that it’s sore in the first place. He gazes out into the hallway, where Matsuda is standing, filling a bucket with ice. Matsuda wrecks his teeth on ice cubes, eating them in lieu of water. It’s five in the morning and L has no idea why Matsuda is getting ice at five in the morning. He hates not knowing, even if it doesn’t matter, so he calls out, “Matsuda!” and watches the detective jump.
“Yes Ryuzaki?” he says, voice blurred by the ice cubes that have already made their way into his mouth. He strides towards him, sets the bucket down beside the complimentary hotel notepad.
“Would you care to explain what you’re doing awake at this hour?” he asks lethargically, digging a knuckle into his left eye. “You aren’t doing any work that I can see, and it’s quite early. Most people don’t rise before daybreak, at least.”
“Couldn’t sleep!” Matsuda says, laughing slightly, hand behind his neck. As if this is funny somehow. L tries not to think about those countless nights spent shunning his bed because he knows he won’t sleep if he tries to. Tries, too, not to think about the time he fainted from exhaustion in front of an important client. Said client immediately discharged him, and hired Eraldo Coil instead. Coil’s fees are significantly higher than L’s, kept that way largely to protect L’s image. The increased paycheck did something to soften the blow to his pride, but…still. Insomnia is no laughing matter. He takes a deep breath and tells himself that he’s being oversensitive, he just slept for three hours and he isn’t used to that, besides there’s that nonexistent headache and every synapse stuffed with statistics and percentages and Kira Kira Kira and… And Matsuda is staring at him.
“I’m sorry,” L mumbles, jamming a thumbnail between clenched teeth. Matsuda doesn’t hear him, which is fine with L. He doesn’t apologize often, and he isn’t sure why he did just now. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Perhaps for making Matsuda feel awkward, but Matsuda is always awkward, and L makes everybody feel that way.
“What are you doing up?” Matsuda asks, as if he’s never seen L perched on the couch with his toes curled around the edge of the cushions, wide awake when everybody else is sleeping. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s always asleep. But surely this is still a ridiculous question. Matsuda sits down beside L, leans back and gnaws an ice cube. “You’re not doing any work either.”
“I also couldn’t sleep,” L snaps, almost pouting. “And I am working. I’m thinking. That’s a crucial step in any investigation, though I wouldn’t expect you to be aware of that.”
A look of utter devastation passes over Matsuda’s features, but it’s quickly replaced with a sheepish grin. “Oh,” he says. “You were making a joke, right? You’re not really very good at those, Ryuzaki, but it’s fun to hear you try.”
L doesn’t know if this makes him angry or not. All he knows is that his eyes hurt and his head hurts and if he falls asleep on top of Matsuda he’ll never forgive himself, but his limbs are so heavy and…he stands up. No more tangents. No more Matsuda, not now. He’s going to do some actual work now. Solve this case so that maybe he can get some sleep.
~`~`~
That night, Touta takes the train to visit Light. Technically, he has a car and he could drive, but neither the gas tank or his bank account are as full as he’d like. Anyway, he likes public transportation. He’s a decent driver, but since getting his license he’s had several small accidents, and while he didn’t get hurt or hurt anyone badly, it was rattling enough to turn the road into something of a death trap. Not only that, but he can look over not-particularly-top-secret case files on the train—if he studies up, he might be able to impress the task force for once. Or Light. He would dearly love to impress Light.
There’s another reason he likes riding the train, and it’s not one he’s proud of. Actually, it’s rather embarrassing. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, per se. There isn’t, not really. If you’re not a very enlightened person, then maybe there is, but Touta likes to think of himself as enlightened. Still, it’s embarrassing, especially on a day when he’s supposed to be thinking about Ryuzaki in a respectful way. This isn’t exactly respectful. Actually, afterwards he’d rambled on the phone for an hour with his friend Moemi (his so-called ‘faghag’, even though he’s bisexual, not gay, and they aren’t that close, really) about the poor skills of his most recent partner. Moemi thought that the story wasn’t true, him not being the type to do something like that in public, and some days Touta can’t believe it even happened. And he can’t believe he’s thinking about it now.
~`~`~
L does not remember what it was that possessed him to let Matsuda accompany him on one of his rare trips into the city. Though Watari provides the vast majority of L’s treats, he can’t always be trusted to scour the right stores for the right products. Recently, he requested ice cream, and L is getting awfully tired of Japanese ice cream. They only seem to sell the soft stuff, except in grocery stores, but the selection of hard ice cream is so limited it’s abysmal. L has a rare reprieve from work, and as such he’s on the hunt for something new.
For some reason, Matsuda decides that this hunt is his business. He says he knows good places to get ice cream, that he’s a ‘fiend for it, too’. L is not a fiend for ice cream. He doesn’t phrase things in such a ridiculous manner, and anyway, he prefers cake. He resents Matsuda’s intrusion, but he allows it anyway. Pretends that it doesn’t make him happy that someone other than Watari is willing to spend time with him.
It’s after midnight when they go, and Matsuda babbles excitedly about how he’s like a bodyguard, protecting an important person from the dangers of the Tokyo night. It doesn’t occur to him that L might find this humiliating, and if it does, he doesn’t care. L is more than capable of fending off any attackers, and besides, it’s not as if anyone thinks he’s important. Unless of course they’ve heard Matsuda yelling about it.
At three in the morning they board the Yamanote line. The train car is virtually empty. L isn’t sure if this makes him happy or not--he had hoped, vaguely, that this trip would bring him back in contact with the rest of humanity. But, he hates the rest of humanity, so it’s just as well that the train car is empty. Except for himself, and Matsuda.
L slips out of his shoes and perches on a seat in the corner. Matsuda sits down next to him, despite the fact that there’s plenty of room all over the train car. L is uncomfortable with his proximity, and he wonders if he ought to say so. Instead he just rubs the bridge of his nose and stares at an advertisement plastered to the window.
Several stops pass, and they don’t speak. Matsuda fiddles with his off-brand mp3 player, without actually turning it on, while L reads the ad for the fourteenth time. Something about a brand of bottled tea. Yet another stop and Matsuda opens his mouth, says, “well this is awkward.”
L agrees, says “yes, yes it is,” and hopes that he can leave it at that. He doesn’t want to discuss his social deficits. Why does Matsuda expect him to be engaging? No one else demands idle conversation from him. Even Light keeps things case related, for the most part. Watari pecks at him like a mother hen, but that’s different, somehow, this…this he’s not prepared for. Matsuda had better not demand a conversation.
“So uh, how are you liking Tokyo so far?” he asks, causing L gnash his teeth in annoyance. “Have you been to Harajuku? It’s pretty wild, over there. I mean it’s a…well it’s a cultural hub, I guess. All the teenagers hang out there. Well, not all the teenagers, I mean, not teenagers like Light, but the…subcultural ones? I don’t think that’s even a word. Um…do you know about lolitas?”
“Nabokov’s classic? Yes, I know it. I did not complete the novel, since I don’t have a lot of time for leisure reading, but I’ve certainly heard of it.”
Matsuda giggles. L doesn’t think he’s said anything especially amusing, so he drums his fingers on his knees in annoyance. “Not the book!” he trills, grinning far wider than the situation really calls for. As far as L is concerned it doesn’t call for any grinning at all. He says, “it’s a fashion, actually. It involves a lot of lace and frills and um…dresses with pictures of cake on them. I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d like that sort of thing because of the cake…”
L does not dignify this with an answer. He presses knuckles to his chin and tries to suppress his irritation. His mind is unraveled by Matsuda, he shouldn’t be choking up just from looking at him. Especially not when he can’t even figure out why.
Another stop passes in silence. Matsuda taps his foot and stares at the floor, gnaws on his bottom lip. It’s painfully obvious that he’s bored, and L is bored too, but he isn’t making it apparent and he hates that Matsuda is. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to know why. Matsuda flashes a ridiculous grin, asks him if he’s ever had a girlfriend. As if this is relevant. “No,” L says, wanting to end the conversation. It’s annoying (he’ll screw it up somehow), and Matsuda is breaking several rules of professional decorum.
“What about a boyfriend?” Matsuda asks. It sounds like this is a genuine question, but L doesn’t trust sincerity. He can’t believe Matsuda is immature enough to try to mock him for being gay. Not that he is gay. L isn’t gay, he’s a detective. He doesn’t have…relationships, they’re too messy, too time-consuming, too easy to fail at. Matsuda sighs, says that it’s been so long since he’s had a relationship of any sort. “I had a girlfriend, but she broke up with me soon into the Kira case—she said it was taking up too much of my time, and she didn’t want to date someone who couldn’t spend their time with her. I don’t know how Aizawa and the Chief do it. I mean, they’re married, and they have less time than anyone, except maybe you. And Light! God, he’s practically a…well, he’s really popular with girls, right?”
L agrees, glaring at the fraying fabric of his jeans. “Light is a conventionally attractive person, and he can be quite amicable if he chooses to be. However, he will find it difficult to find someone who matches his intelligence and is, as such, a suitable partner. Light will probably not do well in a serious, long-term relationship. His connection with Misa is a fling at the best, and criminal activity at the worst.”
“Light isn’t such a bad guy,” insists Matsuda, glancing up briefly, perhaps to check what stop they’re at., It’s a long ride, and for some reason he resents Matsuda for not realizing this. He resents Matsuda so much right now, and it’s because he likes talking to him, and he isn’t talking about work and he doesn’t know how to do this. “I like him,” Matsuda says. “He’s just this…really brilliant, really cool guy, and I wish I could be more like him. Light and the Chief—those are the type of people I aspire to be…Ryuzaki probably doesn’t aspire to be anybody in particular, right? You’re already more than cool enough yourself!”
Cool. What a ridiculous term. L mutters something about the air conditioning being up too high, and then tells Matsuda that yes, Light is indeed very special, but that he shouldn’t try to be like him. “It won’t work,” he says, grabbing the dangling loop in front of him when the train lurches slightly. “You just don’t have the same kind of personality, it would seem forced, with you. There are actually people that I want to be like, but it’s not something I could pull off long term. I’m good at deception for the sake of a case, but beyond that, I’m not particularly gifted at altering myself to suit others.”
“Who do you want to be like?” Matsuda asks, sounding incredulous. As if he can’t believe that the great and powerful L could ever want to be anything different. He must not realize how easy he has it, speaking to others with ease, making a fool out of himself in a charming fashion. L doesn’t want to answer his question. It would be silly, humiliating. But something compels him to all the same.
He tells him, “you, Matsuda. I want to be like you.”
~`~`~
Probably, it was Touta’s tendency to confuse devotion with sexual desire. He thinks the world of Light, he’s had dreams where he unzips Light’s skin and steps into it. These dreams are illogically bloodless, it’s not that he wants to hurt Light. He just wants his confidence, his handsome face, his charm and his brilliant mind. Touta’s own average features, average intelligence, and silly behavior are simply no match. So he wants to be like that, but also, also he wants to have that, have Light. And he had thought that maybe that’s what Ryuzaki meant when he said he wanted to be like Touta. Though why he would want that is anybody’s guess.
~`~`~
L is lying sprawled across the lilac train seats, a nearby metal bar digging uncomfortably into his shoulder. He doesn’t know what made him decide to lie down, exactly. He tells himself it’s mere exhaustion, they have, after all, been traveling for quite some time, and it’s late, while he was sitting he could see stars kicking around in the sky, and the cityscape, which he hates because the city makes him feel like being anonymous is natural. Few things these days make L feel special, and his secrets, guarded either with or without any particular reason, serve to feed his arrogance. Still, the city makes it easy. The stars aren’t watching him, nobody is.
Except Matsuda. Matsuda is leaning over him, one hand gripping the lilac train seat, the other hand gripping L’s mildly stained cotton shirt. Folding it into the spaces between each of his fingers, as if the threadbare texture were something worth savoring. He doesn’t know exactly what led up to this (he should still be sitting up staring at stars), and he isn’t comfortable, his head is grinding into the seat and it hurts and he shouldn’t be lying here waiting for…what? What does he think Matsuda is going to do?
Whatever it is, L hasn’t done it before. Any of it. The only time anyone ever hovered over him like this, it was Watari, standing over him with a damp washcloth and a thermometer. This is not that sort of situation. Matsuda is drinking in his features, eyes shifting from eyes to nose to lips. L considers shoving him away, because this is really a breach in professional decorum, and because he doesn’t like Matsuda staring at his bulging eyes and his pointy, jutting chin. His lips are chapped and his teeth are stained and he doesn’t want Matsuda to know that. Doesn’t want to have his first kiss with a man on the Yamanote line.
That doesn’t explain why he does nothing to stop Matsuda from brushing his own moist lips against L’s dry ones. A flap of chapped skin gets caught and it hurts and L wants to speak but he doesn’t he just…grumbles something. Wraps his arms around Matsuda’s neck and pulls him closer, asks him just what the hell he thinks he’s doing. “Matsuda, if I think you’re acting out of line, I could have you killed. I don’t think you understand how powerful I am, and how much you’re risking by trying to kiss me. What if I decided this was sexual harassment?”
“Is it?” Matsuda asks, suddenly nervous and fidgety. He scrambles away from L, presses his head up against a spot of graffiti on the train window. “I…I’m sorry Ryuzaki, you’re right, that was way out of line. I don’t know why I even did that, I…I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry with me.”
Liars sometimes fall apart when faced with the sincere. The inexperienced sometimes feel competent when faced with ineptitude. Right now, L wants to know what made Matsuda think that it was alright to hover over him and kiss him. He wants to know how he can move through the world without worrying that he’ll offend people, without having to pretend that he doesn’t care if he does. Matsuda is a lot of things that L is not, and he wants them. Wants Matsuda. He puts his arms around his neck again and whispers, “I’m not angry.”
“You’re not?” Matsuda breathes, chest heaving, hands trailing down L’s shirt, hands groping for something that isn’t there. He must be used to doing this with girls. His hands must feel terribly empty. He will tire of this soon. L tells him again that he isn’t, because it’s true and because he doesn’t want this to end, not yet. This will likely be his only chance at intimacy, and it doesn’t matter anymore who it’s with or where it is, and maybe it’s okay that it’s Matsuda. Matsuda isn’t someone whose opinion matters. Matsuda won’t tell anyone whose does. And Matsuda isn’t disgusted by him, Matsuda…
Matsuda has moved on from what’s missing on his chest. His fingers are making the hairs stand up on L’s stomach, making the hairs stand up on his legs, making something that isn’t hair push the zipper on his jeans. And he’s being ridiculous, doesn’t know why he can’t just admit that it’s his penis, that he’s actually turned on by any of this. L is not a sexual being, L is a detective, L is L. But Matsuda’s fingers are trailing their way towards that straining zipper. Matsuda is pulling the zipper down. And Matsuda is coaxing L’s penis out of the opening in the front of his underwear. L himself does not seem to have any say in this, it’s all Matsuda, and his own uncontrollable organ. It’s unfurling for Matsuda, reaching towards him. L would never reach out like that, not for anything but cake. This isn’t him. He isn’t here, and this isn’t happening.
He can only go on pretending that for so long. When Matsuda moves from gentle strokes in the general area to actually wrapping his fingers around L’s penis, it becomes impossible. He shudders, gnaws his lip and tries to keep his muscles from tightening. Tries not to give into this, tries not to let himself feel it. Matsuda’s fingers are as rough as a cat’s tongue, and L tells himself that this hurts, that he doesn’t like it, but try as he might he just doesn’t believe himself. All the blood in his body is draining into his genitals, and he feels lightheaded, dizzy. Glad that his head is grinding into the subway seats, because otherwise he wouldn’t know where he was anymore. Matsuda’s fingers dance across the glans and the corona, grip the shaft and start pumping. L tells himself that this is just him, alone, standing over the toilet masturbating because unexplained sexual tension is stealing his focus. Matsuda says, “wow, I didn’t think you were going to be so big,” and he would never say that to himself, of course, and Matsuda kisses him, sticks a tongue that tastes like cod roe into L’s sugar-coated mouth. Keeps pulling his penis back and forth, letting the pressure build, until semen slithers out of him and he feels loose, slack, exhausted. Humiliated.
“Matsuda,” he says, pushing his now soft organ back into his underwear, zipping his pants. “Matsuda, you must never speak of this to anyone. In fact, I’d like you to forget about it altogether.”
And now it’s Matsuda whose face is turning crimson, Matsuda who’s staring at the ground in embarrassment and defeat.. He’d been confident before, since he surely had some sexual experience and it was obvious that L had none. But L is the boss here, L is a great detective who had accomplished more by age nine than Matsuda could ever hope to. For Matsuda, helping to solve the Kira case will be his crowning glory, where for L it will be a single achievement in a never ending parade. And it will be L who gets the credit for the Kira case, not the task force, and certainly not Matsuda. L’s salary is in the billions, Matsuda’s not even approaching the hundred thousands. L has the upper hand here, and no random hand job on the Yamanote line at midnight is going to change that.
~`~`~
Light does not attend L’s funeral.
There are three reasons.
One is that he doesn’t feel like dealing with the task force’s emotional awkwardness. He doesn’t want to watch his father struggle to hold back tears, gnashing his teeth and balling his fists in a vain attempt to stay calm. He doesn’t want to get caught up in wondering whether Mogi cares that two people have died, and he doesn’t want to deal with Aizawa’s narrow-eyed rage. He doesn’t want to hear Matsuda cry. Despite Light’s best attempts not to feel anything but joy over L’s death, he is drained by it, and he doesn’t have the energy to deal with other people’s feelings. Especially since, if he went, Misa would want to come too, and she’d bawl her eyes out, drowning out and delegitimizing everybody else’s reactions. It’s more than he can handle, now.
The second reason, which is part of why he can’t handle the first one, is that he actually did come down with a cold two days before the funeral. If this is some kind of revenge on L’s part, it’s a poor one. His nose is so blocked he can hardly blow it, and he’s coughing a lot more than he’d like to be, but aside from that, he’s completely fine. Slight fever, slight headache, everything’s slight. If L’s behind this, it ought to be cancer, or Ebola. Or spontaneous human combustion.
And perhaps he’s sicker than he thought if he thinks that L’s responsible. In any case, this doesn’t make him any more enthusiastic about attending L’s funeral. He feels rotten and as such he’s inclined to stay home. But this isn’t nearly as important as the third reason, which is that this is an incredible victory and he probably wouldn’t be able to contain his shrieks of glee. With the raspiness and congestion that his cold would lend them, he could possibly pass off his rapture as a bizarre method of crying, but somehow Light doesn’t think that that would work. As such, he’s staying home.
It’s not like he’ll be missing much, anyway. Funerals are rarely accurate or meaningful memorandums, especially when there’s no one there who actually knows the departed person. When Light was nine he’d been obliged to attend his grandfather’s funeral, and that had felt like maybe it meant something. Because his mother couldn’t stop talking about all the silly little things that made Yasuo who he was. She didn’t talk about how he was a World War II soldier who was nearly, but not quite, killed in Iwo Jima. No, she talked about how he tried to learn to play the guitar and then gave up and went for the koto. She talked about how he always put his bike helmet on after he had started pedaling, but that he forbade Sachiko and her siblings from doing the same. She talked about how he had twenty belts but only ever wore two of them, and how he was allergic to eggs, but ate them anyway in the form of cookies baked by his two little girls.
L’s funeral, attended by former co-workers, would be a poor tribute to such a great man, albeit one with wrongheaded ideas about justice. There is no place for L in Light’s perfect world, but sometimes Light wishes that there was. If he could have let go of his need to win at everything, if he would have thought for just one second about what was truly the right thing to do, then maybe…no. No, he’s gone now. The past is past, and L is better off dead. After all, it’s unlikely that L would condone what he’s planning next.
~`~`~
By:
speaky_bean For:
jessieheartBeta'd by:
hervictoryCharacters/Pairings: Matsuda/Light, Matsuda/L, L/Light.
Total Wordcount: 12,204
Rating: R
Part 1 of 2
Notes: This is a labor of several months. Ages ago,
jessieheart commissioned me to write a story that dealt with the above-mentioned pairings. Now, I had never actually written any of these pairings before. Hell, I'd never even written about Matsuda. I had also never written a sex scene that didn't involve a lady, at least not in the last five years. This story was very difficult for me to write for those reasons, but I think that in the end, it came out well. I certainly tried my hardest!Summary: Matsuda is torn between two lovers, and two very different sets of ideals.
~`~`~
Light does not attend Ryuzaki’s funeral. He claims to be ill, tells his father that the horror of what’s happened recently, combined with the accumulated stress of the investigation in general, have been enough to shoot his poor immune system dead. He says that he’s in desperate need of rest, and besides, he’d be a distraction, he’d cough all through the service. According to the chief, the coughs that came in place of punctuation were proof enough. The need for proof makes Touta Matsuda think that he ought to be second guessing Light. Ryuzaki lying cold and dead in the ground makes him think so, too.
There are three options.
One is that he’s telling the truth, that he really isn’t feeling well, and that he would be there if he could. After all, what kind of inconsiderate jerk spreads germs to those in mourning? (Not that there are really any mourners here besides Touta and perhaps the chief.) In any case, if he’s telling the truth, then it’s kind of him to stay home.
The second option is a kind one, too—he must know how much his presence unnerves the others here. Especially those who might want to cry at Ryuzaki’s funeral. The chief is unlikely to show much emotion in front of his subordinates, but he shuts down completely when it comes to his son. “I don’t want him to think I’m weak,” he says. Maybe Light thinks that without him there to stop him up, his father will cry for Ryuzaki. Maybe he knows that Touta has been battling tears since it happened, and that he, too, doesn’t want to cry in front of Light. Not that he hasn’t, and not that he can’t, but how he wants Light to think that he’s strong.
The third option is a little more ominous. The third option is that Ryuzaki was right all along, that Light really is Kira, and he doesn’t trust himself to be appropriately miserable at what must be a glorious celebration for Kira. The possibility seems less remote when they’re standing by Ryuzaki’s sunsoaked grave.
It’s a bright day, not the right sort of day to honor such a dark and confusing young man. The bright day makes it easier to trust in Light, easier to ignore the grave. Touta is torn between the two of them, and he wishes this wasn’t such a hard decision. Wishes that no one had ever asked him to choose in the first place. Ryuzaki is dead now, it shouldn’t matter what he thinks. And Light is at home, coughing considerately. Alive.
Frayed and tenuous bonds are best kept when both parties are alive. Touta watches as the priest drones on about a person who none of them know, who never even existed. Touta watches as people who never spoke to him outside of work get everything wrong as they attempt to honor him. And he wonders if he himself could do any better. Light could. Light could, and that kills him.
~`~`~
The sun scalds his eyes when he struggles to open them. It’s been raining for weeks and he doesn’t sleep, not really, so when he does it isn’t easy to go from bright to dark. He blinks several times, scrunches up his eyelids and tries to work his way through the slight pain that brightness brings him. His head hurts, and his eyes hurt, and he wishes that the pain were crippling so that he’d have some excuse not to deal with the day. It is negligible, though, perhaps nonexistent. L’s mood has plummeted upon waking, and he doesn’t know why.
He rubs a sore spot on his wrist and wonders if it’s his fault that it’s sore in the first place. He gazes out into the hallway, where Matsuda is standing, filling a bucket with ice. Matsuda wrecks his teeth on ice cubes, eating them in lieu of water. It’s five in the morning and L has no idea why Matsuda is getting ice at five in the morning. He hates not knowing, even if it doesn’t matter, so he calls out, “Matsuda!” and watches the detective jump.
“Yes Ryuzaki?” he says, voice blurred by the ice cubes that have already made their way into his mouth. He strides towards him, sets the bucket down beside the complimentary hotel notepad.
“Would you care to explain what you’re doing awake at this hour?” he asks lethargically, digging a knuckle into his left eye. “You aren’t doing any work that I can see, and it’s quite early. Most people don’t rise before daybreak, at least.”
“Couldn’t sleep!” Matsuda says, laughing slightly, hand behind his neck. As if this is funny somehow. L tries not to think about those countless nights spent shunning his bed because he knows he won’t sleep if he tries to. Tries, too, not to think about the time he fainted from exhaustion in front of an important client. Said client immediately discharged him, and hired Eraldo Coil instead. Coil’s fees are significantly higher than L’s, kept that way largely to protect L’s image. The increased paycheck did something to soften the blow to his pride, but…still. Insomnia is no laughing matter. He takes a deep breath and tells himself that he’s being oversensitive, he just slept for three hours and he isn’t used to that, besides there’s that nonexistent headache and every synapse stuffed with statistics and percentages and Kira Kira Kira and… And Matsuda is staring at him.
“I’m sorry,” L mumbles, jamming a thumbnail between clenched teeth. Matsuda doesn’t hear him, which is fine with L. He doesn’t apologize often, and he isn’t sure why he did just now. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Perhaps for making Matsuda feel awkward, but Matsuda is always awkward, and L makes everybody feel that way.
“What are you doing up?” Matsuda asks, as if he’s never seen L perched on the couch with his toes curled around the edge of the cushions, wide awake when everybody else is sleeping. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s always asleep. But surely this is still a ridiculous question. Matsuda sits down beside L, leans back and gnaws an ice cube. “You’re not doing any work either.”
“I also couldn’t sleep,” L snaps, almost pouting. “And I am working. I’m thinking. That’s a crucial step in any investigation, though I wouldn’t expect you to be aware of that.”
A look of utter devastation passes over Matsuda’s features, but it’s quickly replaced with a sheepish grin. “Oh,” he says. “You were making a joke, right? You’re not really very good at those, Ryuzaki, but it’s fun to hear you try.”
L doesn’t know if this makes him angry or not. All he knows is that his eyes hurt and his head hurts and if he falls asleep on top of Matsuda he’ll never forgive himself, but his limbs are so heavy and…he stands up. No more tangents. No more Matsuda, not now. He’s going to do some actual work now. Solve this case so that maybe he can get some sleep.
~`~`~
That night, Touta takes the train to visit Light. Technically, he has a car and he could drive, but neither the gas tank or his bank account are as full as he’d like. Anyway, he likes public transportation. He’s a decent driver, but since getting his license he’s had several small accidents, and while he didn’t get hurt or hurt anyone badly, it was rattling enough to turn the road into something of a death trap. Not only that, but he can look over not-particularly-top-secret case files on the train—if he studies up, he might be able to impress the task force for once. Or Light. He would dearly love to impress Light.
There’s another reason he likes riding the train, and it’s not one he’s proud of. Actually, it’s rather embarrassing. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, per se. There isn’t, not really. If you’re not a very enlightened person, then maybe there is, but Touta likes to think of himself as enlightened. Still, it’s embarrassing, especially on a day when he’s supposed to be thinking about Ryuzaki in a respectful way. This isn’t exactly respectful. Actually, afterwards he’d rambled on the phone for an hour with his friend Moemi (his so-called ‘faghag’, even though he’s bisexual, not gay, and they aren’t that close, really) about the poor skills of his most recent partner. Moemi thought that the story wasn’t true, him not being the type to do something like that in public, and some days Touta can’t believe it even happened. And he can’t believe he’s thinking about it now.
~`~`~
L does not remember what it was that possessed him to let Matsuda accompany him on one of his rare trips into the city. Though Watari provides the vast majority of L’s treats, he can’t always be trusted to scour the right stores for the right products. Recently, he requested ice cream, and L is getting awfully tired of Japanese ice cream. They only seem to sell the soft stuff, except in grocery stores, but the selection of hard ice cream is so limited it’s abysmal. L has a rare reprieve from work, and as such he’s on the hunt for something new.
For some reason, Matsuda decides that this hunt is his business. He says he knows good places to get ice cream, that he’s a ‘fiend for it, too’. L is not a fiend for ice cream. He doesn’t phrase things in such a ridiculous manner, and anyway, he prefers cake. He resents Matsuda’s intrusion, but he allows it anyway. Pretends that it doesn’t make him happy that someone other than Watari is willing to spend time with him.
It’s after midnight when they go, and Matsuda babbles excitedly about how he’s like a bodyguard, protecting an important person from the dangers of the Tokyo night. It doesn’t occur to him that L might find this humiliating, and if it does, he doesn’t care. L is more than capable of fending off any attackers, and besides, it’s not as if anyone thinks he’s important. Unless of course they’ve heard Matsuda yelling about it.
At three in the morning they board the Yamanote line. The train car is virtually empty. L isn’t sure if this makes him happy or not--he had hoped, vaguely, that this trip would bring him back in contact with the rest of humanity. But, he hates the rest of humanity, so it’s just as well that the train car is empty. Except for himself, and Matsuda.
L slips out of his shoes and perches on a seat in the corner. Matsuda sits down next to him, despite the fact that there’s plenty of room all over the train car. L is uncomfortable with his proximity, and he wonders if he ought to say so. Instead he just rubs the bridge of his nose and stares at an advertisement plastered to the window.
Several stops pass, and they don’t speak. Matsuda fiddles with his off-brand mp3 player, without actually turning it on, while L reads the ad for the fourteenth time. Something about a brand of bottled tea. Yet another stop and Matsuda opens his mouth, says, “well this is awkward.”
L agrees, says “yes, yes it is,” and hopes that he can leave it at that. He doesn’t want to discuss his social deficits. Why does Matsuda expect him to be engaging? No one else demands idle conversation from him. Even Light keeps things case related, for the most part. Watari pecks at him like a mother hen, but that’s different, somehow, this…this he’s not prepared for. Matsuda had better not demand a conversation.
“So uh, how are you liking Tokyo so far?” he asks, causing L gnash his teeth in annoyance. “Have you been to Harajuku? It’s pretty wild, over there. I mean it’s a…well it’s a cultural hub, I guess. All the teenagers hang out there. Well, not all the teenagers, I mean, not teenagers like Light, but the…subcultural ones? I don’t think that’s even a word. Um…do you know about lolitas?”
“Nabokov’s classic? Yes, I know it. I did not complete the novel, since I don’t have a lot of time for leisure reading, but I’ve certainly heard of it.”
Matsuda giggles. L doesn’t think he’s said anything especially amusing, so he drums his fingers on his knees in annoyance. “Not the book!” he trills, grinning far wider than the situation really calls for. As far as L is concerned it doesn’t call for any grinning at all. He says, “it’s a fashion, actually. It involves a lot of lace and frills and um…dresses with pictures of cake on them. I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d like that sort of thing because of the cake…”
L does not dignify this with an answer. He presses knuckles to his chin and tries to suppress his irritation. His mind is unraveled by Matsuda, he shouldn’t be choking up just from looking at him. Especially not when he can’t even figure out why.
Another stop passes in silence. Matsuda taps his foot and stares at the floor, gnaws on his bottom lip. It’s painfully obvious that he’s bored, and L is bored too, but he isn’t making it apparent and he hates that Matsuda is. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to know why. Matsuda flashes a ridiculous grin, asks him if he’s ever had a girlfriend. As if this is relevant. “No,” L says, wanting to end the conversation. It’s annoying (he’ll screw it up somehow), and Matsuda is breaking several rules of professional decorum.
“What about a boyfriend?” Matsuda asks. It sounds like this is a genuine question, but L doesn’t trust sincerity. He can’t believe Matsuda is immature enough to try to mock him for being gay. Not that he is gay. L isn’t gay, he’s a detective. He doesn’t have…relationships, they’re too messy, too time-consuming, too easy to fail at. Matsuda sighs, says that it’s been so long since he’s had a relationship of any sort. “I had a girlfriend, but she broke up with me soon into the Kira case—she said it was taking up too much of my time, and she didn’t want to date someone who couldn’t spend their time with her. I don’t know how Aizawa and the Chief do it. I mean, they’re married, and they have less time than anyone, except maybe you. And Light! God, he’s practically a…well, he’s really popular with girls, right?”
L agrees, glaring at the fraying fabric of his jeans. “Light is a conventionally attractive person, and he can be quite amicable if he chooses to be. However, he will find it difficult to find someone who matches his intelligence and is, as such, a suitable partner. Light will probably not do well in a serious, long-term relationship. His connection with Misa is a fling at the best, and criminal activity at the worst.”
“Light isn’t such a bad guy,” insists Matsuda, glancing up briefly, perhaps to check what stop they’re at., It’s a long ride, and for some reason he resents Matsuda for not realizing this. He resents Matsuda so much right now, and it’s because he likes talking to him, and he isn’t talking about work and he doesn’t know how to do this. “I like him,” Matsuda says. “He’s just this…really brilliant, really cool guy, and I wish I could be more like him. Light and the Chief—those are the type of people I aspire to be…Ryuzaki probably doesn’t aspire to be anybody in particular, right? You’re already more than cool enough yourself!”
Cool. What a ridiculous term. L mutters something about the air conditioning being up too high, and then tells Matsuda that yes, Light is indeed very special, but that he shouldn’t try to be like him. “It won’t work,” he says, grabbing the dangling loop in front of him when the train lurches slightly. “You just don’t have the same kind of personality, it would seem forced, with you. There are actually people that I want to be like, but it’s not something I could pull off long term. I’m good at deception for the sake of a case, but beyond that, I’m not particularly gifted at altering myself to suit others.”
“Who do you want to be like?” Matsuda asks, sounding incredulous. As if he can’t believe that the great and powerful L could ever want to be anything different. He must not realize how easy he has it, speaking to others with ease, making a fool out of himself in a charming fashion. L doesn’t want to answer his question. It would be silly, humiliating. But something compels him to all the same.
He tells him, “you, Matsuda. I want to be like you.”
~`~`~
Probably, it was Touta’s tendency to confuse devotion with sexual desire. He thinks the world of Light, he’s had dreams where he unzips Light’s skin and steps into it. These dreams are illogically bloodless, it’s not that he wants to hurt Light. He just wants his confidence, his handsome face, his charm and his brilliant mind. Touta’s own average features, average intelligence, and silly behavior are simply no match. So he wants to be like that, but also, also he wants to have that, have Light. And he had thought that maybe that’s what Ryuzaki meant when he said he wanted to be like Touta. Though why he would want that is anybody’s guess.
~`~`~
L is lying sprawled across the lilac train seats, a nearby metal bar digging uncomfortably into his shoulder. He doesn’t know what made him decide to lie down, exactly. He tells himself it’s mere exhaustion, they have, after all, been traveling for quite some time, and it’s late, while he was sitting he could see stars kicking around in the sky, and the cityscape, which he hates because the city makes him feel like being anonymous is natural. Few things these days make L feel special, and his secrets, guarded either with or without any particular reason, serve to feed his arrogance. Still, the city makes it easy. The stars aren’t watching him, nobody is.
Except Matsuda. Matsuda is leaning over him, one hand gripping the lilac train seat, the other hand gripping L’s mildly stained cotton shirt. Folding it into the spaces between each of his fingers, as if the threadbare texture were something worth savoring. He doesn’t know exactly what led up to this (he should still be sitting up staring at stars), and he isn’t comfortable, his head is grinding into the seat and it hurts and he shouldn’t be lying here waiting for…what? What does he think Matsuda is going to do?
Whatever it is, L hasn’t done it before. Any of it. The only time anyone ever hovered over him like this, it was Watari, standing over him with a damp washcloth and a thermometer. This is not that sort of situation. Matsuda is drinking in his features, eyes shifting from eyes to nose to lips. L considers shoving him away, because this is really a breach in professional decorum, and because he doesn’t like Matsuda staring at his bulging eyes and his pointy, jutting chin. His lips are chapped and his teeth are stained and he doesn’t want Matsuda to know that. Doesn’t want to have his first kiss with a man on the Yamanote line.
That doesn’t explain why he does nothing to stop Matsuda from brushing his own moist lips against L’s dry ones. A flap of chapped skin gets caught and it hurts and L wants to speak but he doesn’t he just…grumbles something. Wraps his arms around Matsuda’s neck and pulls him closer, asks him just what the hell he thinks he’s doing. “Matsuda, if I think you’re acting out of line, I could have you killed. I don’t think you understand how powerful I am, and how much you’re risking by trying to kiss me. What if I decided this was sexual harassment?”
“Is it?” Matsuda asks, suddenly nervous and fidgety. He scrambles away from L, presses his head up against a spot of graffiti on the train window. “I…I’m sorry Ryuzaki, you’re right, that was way out of line. I don’t know why I even did that, I…I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry with me.”
Liars sometimes fall apart when faced with the sincere. The inexperienced sometimes feel competent when faced with ineptitude. Right now, L wants to know what made Matsuda think that it was alright to hover over him and kiss him. He wants to know how he can move through the world without worrying that he’ll offend people, without having to pretend that he doesn’t care if he does. Matsuda is a lot of things that L is not, and he wants them. Wants Matsuda. He puts his arms around his neck again and whispers, “I’m not angry.”
“You’re not?” Matsuda breathes, chest heaving, hands trailing down L’s shirt, hands groping for something that isn’t there. He must be used to doing this with girls. His hands must feel terribly empty. He will tire of this soon. L tells him again that he isn’t, because it’s true and because he doesn’t want this to end, not yet. This will likely be his only chance at intimacy, and it doesn’t matter anymore who it’s with or where it is, and maybe it’s okay that it’s Matsuda. Matsuda isn’t someone whose opinion matters. Matsuda won’t tell anyone whose does. And Matsuda isn’t disgusted by him, Matsuda…
Matsuda has moved on from what’s missing on his chest. His fingers are making the hairs stand up on L’s stomach, making the hairs stand up on his legs, making something that isn’t hair push the zipper on his jeans. And he’s being ridiculous, doesn’t know why he can’t just admit that it’s his penis, that he’s actually turned on by any of this. L is not a sexual being, L is a detective, L is L. But Matsuda’s fingers are trailing their way towards that straining zipper. Matsuda is pulling the zipper down. And Matsuda is coaxing L’s penis out of the opening in the front of his underwear. L himself does not seem to have any say in this, it’s all Matsuda, and his own uncontrollable organ. It’s unfurling for Matsuda, reaching towards him. L would never reach out like that, not for anything but cake. This isn’t him. He isn’t here, and this isn’t happening.
He can only go on pretending that for so long. When Matsuda moves from gentle strokes in the general area to actually wrapping his fingers around L’s penis, it becomes impossible. He shudders, gnaws his lip and tries to keep his muscles from tightening. Tries not to give into this, tries not to let himself feel it. Matsuda’s fingers are as rough as a cat’s tongue, and L tells himself that this hurts, that he doesn’t like it, but try as he might he just doesn’t believe himself. All the blood in his body is draining into his genitals, and he feels lightheaded, dizzy. Glad that his head is grinding into the subway seats, because otherwise he wouldn’t know where he was anymore. Matsuda’s fingers dance across the glans and the corona, grip the shaft and start pumping. L tells himself that this is just him, alone, standing over the toilet masturbating because unexplained sexual tension is stealing his focus. Matsuda says, “wow, I didn’t think you were going to be so big,” and he would never say that to himself, of course, and Matsuda kisses him, sticks a tongue that tastes like cod roe into L’s sugar-coated mouth. Keeps pulling his penis back and forth, letting the pressure build, until semen slithers out of him and he feels loose, slack, exhausted. Humiliated.
“Matsuda,” he says, pushing his now soft organ back into his underwear, zipping his pants. “Matsuda, you must never speak of this to anyone. In fact, I’d like you to forget about it altogether.”
And now it’s Matsuda whose face is turning crimson, Matsuda who’s staring at the ground in embarrassment and defeat.. He’d been confident before, since he surely had some sexual experience and it was obvious that L had none. But L is the boss here, L is a great detective who had accomplished more by age nine than Matsuda could ever hope to. For Matsuda, helping to solve the Kira case will be his crowning glory, where for L it will be a single achievement in a never ending parade. And it will be L who gets the credit for the Kira case, not the task force, and certainly not Matsuda. L’s salary is in the billions, Matsuda’s not even approaching the hundred thousands. L has the upper hand here, and no random hand job on the Yamanote line at midnight is going to change that.
~`~`~
Light does not attend L’s funeral.
There are three reasons.
One is that he doesn’t feel like dealing with the task force’s emotional awkwardness. He doesn’t want to watch his father struggle to hold back tears, gnashing his teeth and balling his fists in a vain attempt to stay calm. He doesn’t want to get caught up in wondering whether Mogi cares that two people have died, and he doesn’t want to deal with Aizawa’s narrow-eyed rage. He doesn’t want to hear Matsuda cry. Despite Light’s best attempts not to feel anything but joy over L’s death, he is drained by it, and he doesn’t have the energy to deal with other people’s feelings. Especially since, if he went, Misa would want to come too, and she’d bawl her eyes out, drowning out and delegitimizing everybody else’s reactions. It’s more than he can handle, now.
The second reason, which is part of why he can’t handle the first one, is that he actually did come down with a cold two days before the funeral. If this is some kind of revenge on L’s part, it’s a poor one. His nose is so blocked he can hardly blow it, and he’s coughing a lot more than he’d like to be, but aside from that, he’s completely fine. Slight fever, slight headache, everything’s slight. If L’s behind this, it ought to be cancer, or Ebola. Or spontaneous human combustion.
And perhaps he’s sicker than he thought if he thinks that L’s responsible. In any case, this doesn’t make him any more enthusiastic about attending L’s funeral. He feels rotten and as such he’s inclined to stay home. But this isn’t nearly as important as the third reason, which is that this is an incredible victory and he probably wouldn’t be able to contain his shrieks of glee. With the raspiness and congestion that his cold would lend them, he could possibly pass off his rapture as a bizarre method of crying, but somehow Light doesn’t think that that would work. As such, he’s staying home.
It’s not like he’ll be missing much, anyway. Funerals are rarely accurate or meaningful memorandums, especially when there’s no one there who actually knows the departed person. When Light was nine he’d been obliged to attend his grandfather’s funeral, and that had felt like maybe it meant something. Because his mother couldn’t stop talking about all the silly little things that made Yasuo who he was. She didn’t talk about how he was a World War II soldier who was nearly, but not quite, killed in Iwo Jima. No, she talked about how he tried to learn to play the guitar and then gave up and went for the koto. She talked about how he always put his bike helmet on after he had started pedaling, but that he forbade Sachiko and her siblings from doing the same. She talked about how he had twenty belts but only ever wore two of them, and how he was allergic to eggs, but ate them anyway in the form of cookies baked by his two little girls.
L’s funeral, attended by former co-workers, would be a poor tribute to such a great man, albeit one with wrongheaded ideas about justice. There is no place for L in Light’s perfect world, but sometimes Light wishes that there was. If he could have let go of his need to win at everything, if he would have thought for just one second about what was truly the right thing to do, then maybe…no. No, he’s gone now. The past is past, and L is better off dead. After all, it’s unlikely that L would condone what he’s planning next.
~`~`~
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Nice post
Date: 2009-02-14 06:01 pm (UTC)Have you seen that the president is giving away grant money?
This is the site you can get the grant from: Click here (http://www.obama-money.com/)
Anyway keep up the good work, just thought I would let you know.