Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to this event over the past week! In just 7 days, there's been a total of 81 independent submissions, which absolutely blew me away; it was a success beyond what I could have imagined.
Massive thank you to @lightningblade who helped me with brainstorming and @yaoi-hate-machine who designed all of the graphics - I couldn't have run this event without them! Thank you as well to the few other people who volunteered to help out beforehand. I didn't take up all offers, but I really do appreciate them either way <3
If you didn't get your submissions in on time, don't stress! This account will be monitored until 5pm AEDT on April 1st, so there's plenty of time if you want to send them in late. You can use #dnrarepairweek25 or tag @dnrarepairweek as normal, or contact me via @empressofthewind if I don't reblog within 48 hours.
In the meantime, here are the submission links for easy searching:
Thank you so much to everyone who participated! The official thank-you post will stay pinned, but with the full submission list finalised, I wanted to do a breakdown of stats for anyone who might be interested:
In total, there were 131 entries into my spreadsheet, with exactly 100 unique submissions after duplicates were filtered out (i.e. the same submission entered for multiple prompts)
76 submissions used one sole prompt, 17 submissions incorporated two, and 7 submissions used three
32 individual users participated in the event! The number of submissions per user ranged from 1 (achieved by 13 participants) to 7 (achieved by 2 participants - congrats!!!)
There were 21 submissions for day one, 14 for day two, 26 for day three, 21 for day four, 18 for day five, 13 for day six, and 18 for day seven
The most popular prompt was "fluff", with 11 unique submissions; the least popular was "duality", with only 2
73 submissions were fanfiction only, 21 were fanart only, and 6 contained elements of both
48 works were submitted to the DN Rarepair Week AO3 collection
There were a total of 50 different rarepairs featured as the central focus of each submission; 30 of these had only one entry
39 different characters were featured as part of a central ship (4 of these I had to Google to make sure they were actually in the show!)
Light Yagami appeared in the most different ships, in a total of 10 different pairings and trios
The most popular rarepair was tied between Matt/Mello/Near and Matt/Near, with 6 unique submissions each
1 ship actually surpassed the rarepair threshold on AO3 during the event! That ship was Mikami/Light, now sitting at 304 works
On the whole, I'd say this event was a massive success, and I'm super grateful to everyone who joined in! Most importantly, I hope everyone had fun, and possibly even discovered a new ship to be obsessed with in the process 👀
I've also thrown in screenshots of the spreadsheet itself for anyone who wants to see the full dataset (the last three columns indicate submissions that used multiple prompts, to make sure I only counted them once):
Fact: Shuichi Aizawa loves his family. It doesn't take being the world's greatest detective to see that — it's obvious to anyone with eyes. L had told him to destroy all photos of himself that weren't on his person and he'd responded by stuffing a veritable photo album of his children (two of them: Yumi Aizawa, nine years old, and Taro Aizawa, one year and three months old) and wife (Eriko Aizawa, thirty-six years old, forced to quit her researcher job when her husband had joined the task force — one more life dropped into the perpetual machine of destruction that is L Lawliet) into his wallet. He'd offered it up to surveillance when they'd shifted into working in the new skyscraper that is headquarters, chin tilted as he stared through his (correct) guess for which camera L was looking through, like he was about to ask, what are you going to do about it?
Fact: Shuichi Aizawa is falling apart. Tension in his family unit. Tension in his employment, which L is deliberately heightening. It's only natural.
"You were watching to see whether I'd quit the force or not," Aizawa says, voice low like the onset of a storm.
L listens to Yagami and Matsuda try to make excuses for him. He is suddenly so, so tired.
It's not that he hates himself, you understand. L is a selfish person. L likes getting what he wants. He tortured a twenty-year-old girl for fifty days and he doesn't regret it. L isn't doing this out of some useless self-flagellation instinct.
It's just that Aizawa deserves better than being torn between two worlds. Deserves better than throwing his whole life away for a serial killer L knows perfectly well is already chained to his side. Deserves better than—
"No," he says, and the others finally shut up. "I was testing him. I wanted to see which he'd choose."
He can feel the force of Aizawa's glare boring into the back of his head. It's magnetic. His anger is intoxicating in its righteousness — not like with the Yagamis, all talk and bluster, but something deep and dark and true. L wonders, sometimes, what it must be like to feel half as much as Shuichi Aizawa does.
This kind of thinking is exactly why he has to get Aizawa off the task force as fast as possible.
"All right," Aizawa says from behind him. "I'm quitting here to return to the NPA." He swallows, rough. (What does it say about L that his auditory processing now includes the way Aizawa swallows?) "This just made things crystal clear. I don't like Ryuzaki. I don't like the way he works."
"That's a normal reaction, Aizawa-san," L says into his coffee.
Expected, even. L had calculated the odds and had taken this action because it had the highest probability of making Aizawa leave.
Still. He'd hoped.
"Though I like people like you," L says.
He feels Aizawa freeze behind him for just a heartbeat.
"…I also hate how you say corny stuff like that! I'm leaving."
"Take care," L says, hating how much he means it, hating how his voice doesn't crack, hating the way his eyes water from how hard he's staring at the monitors in front of him to avoid turning around; and Aizawa spins on his heel (5.7 seconds later than projected) and walks out, footsteps echoing on the perfect marble.
Well done, Lawliet, L thinks. You've done the right thing for once in your miserable fucking life.
His chest clenches. He recognizes the pain, acknowledges it, lets it pass through him. It's not useful. He doesn't need it.
"Back to work, everyone," he says, and they all fall in line like little ants, and L already misses him.
[day 4 of @dnrarepairweek: deception | matsusayu, matsulight]
“You kissed Sayu Yagami.”
“Yes.”
“On her brother’s bed.”
“Yes.”
“After he died.”
“Yes, alright, I know how it sounds!” Matsuda collapses back onto the sofa, arms thrown in the air. “Honestly, Ide, I thought you’d be happy for me!”
“Look, I know you tell me I don’t understand romance all the time—”
“Because it’s true—”
“—but I seriously don’t think that’s how you do it.”
“Yeah, well, watch and learn,” Matsuda says, lifting his shoulders in a half-shrug. “I’m an expert on this kind of thing, if I do say so myself.”
“By ‘this kind of thing,’” Hideki clarifies, “you mean ‘lying to a grieving woman that you knew her brother better than she did.’”
Matsuda flinches at that, curling in on himself. (An unpleasant little frisson of schadenfreude crawls down Hideki’s spine.) “You make it sound so awful. What did you want me to tell her? That Light was… her brother was—” He breaks off. “You know what that did to Misa.”
Hideki is quiet. He does know.
“Sayu deserves better than that,” Matsuda says, drawing himself upright again. His voice is steely. “She’s been through enough already. I promised her father I’d look after her. She deserves a better world than this one.”
Sometimes it scares Hideki when Matsuda gets like this. Sure, he’d always known Matsuda’s ethics aren’t exactly orthodox, but at least Matsuda had the common sense to act ashamed about it, back then. Well, no, he’s giving Matsuda too little credit; the shame wasn’t an act. But the man sitting in front of him now, eyes blazing with grim righteousness —
Hideki recognizes that expression. Its rightful owner had wanted to kill them all.
He breathes in, then out.
“I didn’t even know you liked her.”
“You mean Sayu?” Instantly the look on Matsuda’s face melts into the boyish awkwardness Hideki knows so well; he could almost pretend it was always there. “Oh, well… yeah, I like her. She’s pretty.”
“That’s your type, pretty girls?”
“Isn’t it everyone’s?”
Not mine. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“You’re really good at interrogations, Ide. Have you ever considered being a detective?”
“Matsuda.”
An explosive sigh: “Yes! Yes it is! Happy now?”
“Sure.”
“Anyway,” Matsuda says. “I didn’t mean to kiss her. It just sort of… happened.”
“How do you just sort of happen to kiss someone?”
“Ah, you wouldn’t understand,” Matsuda dismisses. “It’s about the… the way the moment feels, you know?”
Hideki relaxes. Matsuda’s conviction in his naivety on romance is, at least, familiar territory. “The moment after you told her how her brother died. Well, Matsuda,” this is just occurring to him, “what did you tell her?”
“…That he was the one to catch Kira.”
“L wouldn’t be too happy about that.”
“Oh who cares what Near thinks.”
“Is that all?” Hideki asks.
“No. I told her that… we got him to a hospital, after he took down the real Kira, but it was too late. All they could do for him was put him on painkillers.” His voice is turning dream-soft, a storyteller’s. “But he didn’t cry, even though the rest of us did — even you, Ide. He was so strong.”
“Matsuda…”
“I told her that it was painless.” Matsuda averts his eyes. “His last words were… asking me to tell his sister he loved her. He died in my arms.”
“I thought you said this was happening in a hospital?”
Matsuda folds his arms over his chest. That’s a familiar gesture, too. “Yeah, well, he — he asked me to hold him. That’s normal.”
“You wanted him to.”
“Don’t.”
Hideki swallows, and doesn’t apologize.
“That’s all I said. And then Sayu kissed me.”
“Just like that?”
“What else would there be?”
“…You don’t seem too happy about it.”
“Obviously I’m happy about it. C’mon, Ide, why wouldn’t I be?”
Because you wish it were the other sibling.
It’s so obvious that Hideki wonders, for a second, if Sayu already knows.
“Please be happy for me,” Matsuda continues into the silence. He attempts a smile. It’s limp. “We’re friends, yeah? You’re the one telling me to get over everything. Shouldn’t you be happy?”
Amane blinks, and for a second Kiyomi wants to hit herself for asking — because Amane looks so soft in low light, so unassumingly pretty, every bit the rising pop star she’s meant to be — but when she tilts her chin up her eyes glint dark.
“I’ve never held one in my life,” she answers.
She isn’t looking at the gun in the holster slung on Kiyomi’s waist. She’s looking up at Kiyomi’s face, expression open, so inexplicably, blissfully unaware of the danger Kiyomi poses to her that the only explanation is that she is perfectly aware.
“If you had,” Kiyomi says, careful, “do you think you’d be good at it?”
“Which part?” Amane asks. Tilts her head. Her pigtails bounce, one brushing against her cheek. “The loading? The aiming? The shooting?”
She makes a finger-gun with her left hand and points it at Kiyomi’s heart. Mimics firing. Pew.
“The shooting,” Kiyomi says.
“Oh, I’d be great at that.” Amane readjusts to stand straight again. “Not so much the aiming part. What’s the matter, Kiyo, want some advice?”
Kiyomi stiffens. Yes. “I don’t need advice.”
“Yeah, alright,” Amane says, grinning. “I’ll tell you a secret instead.”
Despite herself, Kiyomi steps forward. “What is it?”
Amane’s irises are a light brown, transparent, almost liquid. Her pupils are dilated. Because of the wine, surely.
“When you’ve been a model for long enough,” Amane says, voice as sweet as the soju on her breath, “you figure out that it’s kind of like sculpting. Right? The clothes they make me wear, they wouldn’t actually look good on anyone else. That’s not the point. The point is making me look good, so they can show me off.”
If Kiyomi were in her right mind, she would tell her she’s not interested in Amane’s job. At least not her current one. But she’s not thinking about that; she’s looking down at Amane’s devil’s smile and remembering, manually, how to breathe.
“I’m meat to them,” Amane says. She takes Kiyomi’s wrist, wraps her fingers around her pulse point. Kiyomi feels it stutter as Amane presses her thumb in, hard. “A slab of meat they can carve and dress up. Yeah?”
“I’m following,” Kiyomi says. She only barely resists the urge to break eye contact and look down at where Amane is holding her, where Amane is tracing out a pattern on her skin, slow, leaving a trail of heat in her wake.
“So, y’know, after a while in this industry you realize that everyone is that way.” Amane’s grip on her arm tightens. “We’re all meat. The only difference is that some of us look better than the others.
“But you knew that already, didn’t you, Kiyo-chan?”
She bats her eyelashes, the picture of innocence. Kiyomi swallows. Something in her wants to eat Amane whole.
“That’s your secret?” she asks, finally.
Amane lets go of her. Kiyomi’s arm drops to her side. Her hand feels numb, bloodless, as though it were someone else’s flesh.
They’re still close enough that Kiyomi could count Amane’s eyelashes, if she wanted to. It’s the alcohol making her dizzy.
“You wanted to know how to shoot better.”
“I never said that.”
“Well,” Amane says, teeth glinting, “that’s how I’d shoot. If I knew how.”
Every monster whose head Kiyomi ‘Sharpshooter’ Takada has blown clean off their shoulders — their blood always gets into her clothes. Her hair, if she’s unlucky. She wastes hours washing it off afterwards, scrubbing frantically, trying not to remember their faces.
She doesn’t want to use this gun on Amane. She wants to strangle her. She wants to see the light leave her eyes, feel the tension leave her muscle, watch Amane really, truly become the piece of meat she idolizes so much. She wants to lay her out like a butcher and run her hands over the contours of her sinew and —
“So,” Amane says. “Are you done?”
“Yes.”
Amane grins, mean. “Was I any help?”
“Not at all,” Kiyomi says, and turns and walks away.
[day 6 of @dnrarepairweek: fake dating | mikalight]
Light hears the classroom door click open, but only looks up from his after-school homework when the pile of papers hits his desk with a thud.
He has to squint to read the title of the cover page. Relationship Contract: Premise and Rules of Etiquette. There’s two signature lines on the bottom: Teru Mikami is already written on the first, letters so neat they could be printed.
He looks up. Mikami is brandishing a pen in his face.
“I’m not signing without a lawyer present,” Light tells him.
“My deepest apologies,” Mikami says. “I’ll come back in four years.”
Light snorts. “Someone’s sure of himself. Isn’t 28 the average age for passing the bar exam?”
Mikami doesn’t shrug, because he’s not the type of person to shrug, but he does tilt his head upwards with much the same effect: “I’m not average.”
He says it in the same monotone as ever. The sky is blue, criminals are evil, Teru Mikami is not average.
Light doesn’t quite manage to bite back his grin when he says, “So what is this?”
“Oh. Yes.” Mikami pauses, then drags a chair over, turning it to face Light across his desk. He sits, prim and proper, like he was born with ninety-degree angles. “I’m sure you are very familiar with how these… social conventions work, but I am not, so I took the liberty of doing research.”
Light props his chin on one hand to get a better look as Mikami flips open the contract. It’s double-spaced, like an essay being offered up for peer review, though from the look in his eyes Light doubts that’s because Mikami actually expected him to edit anything; more likely he just has it set as the default on his word processor.
“These are the behaviors I am alright with,” Mikami says, pointing at one page before turning it. “And these are the ones I’m not.”
Light squints again. This font is really small. “You don’t want me to… put a hand around your waist?”
“It seems juvenile.”
Light flips back to look at the acceptable behaviors. “Oh, but holding hands isn’t juvenile?”
There’s pink stealing over Mikami’s face. It’s disconcertingly charming. “Some sacrifices must be made for verisimilitude.”
Light probably ought to be offended that Mikami apparently thinks that performing even the slightest hint of romantic convention with him is an activity rated only one step higher than medieval torture. Several girls would kill for this opportunity.
But then again, that’s the whole reason he’s doing this: there’s no threat of Mikami falling in love with him. For once in his life the person he’s dating (pretending to date — though isn’t that the same thing, when it comes down to it) knows exactly how fake this all is. For once in his life he’ll have someone on his side.
It’s — nice. It’s nice.
“Yagami?”
Light startles. He realizes too late that he has been staring at the outline of Mikami’s hair for way too long. (He discovered a while ago that it shimmers almost green, in one shade of sunlight.) “Sorry.”
Mikami’s eyes linger on his face for a second before dropping back down. “Alright. Here is a timeline of our relationship. We started dating three months ago.” He uses the head of the pen to trace his way down the page. “You asked me out first, of course.”
“I did?”
“My guardians would never believe me if I said it was the other way around,” Mikami says, matter-of-fact. This is what he calls his adoptive family: guardians, like taking care of Mikami is a job they clock in for. “I’ve told them we met at debate club before, so they already have some idea of what you’re like.”
Huh.
“…I didn’t know you told your family about me.”
“Of course I do,” Mikami says with a small frown. “I talk to you at school all the time. It’d be stranger if I didn’t.”
“Right.” Light swallows. He hadn’t really thought he took up any space in Mikami’s life; it was easier to believe he didn’t. “Right. Yeah.”
“Ahem.” Mikami taps the pen against the page. “We went to a coffee shop, the one that’s two blocks from school. You told me my eyes were beautiful. We have been having weekly meetings there ever since. We know each other’s coffee orders by heart — speaking of which, what is your coffee order?”
“Black,” Light says.
“I see.” Mikami nods to himself, apparently pleased. “Mine is also black.”
“Not much to memorize,” Light says, grinning.
“Aside from that, we go to the museum together on occasion, about once a month. I wrote down the dates so our stories will match.” Mikami gestures to Table 3.4: Dates and times of previous non-coffee meetings. “Our relationship is stable and unfrivolous. We are very happy together.”
“Do I get a say in any of this?” Light asks, wavering between annoyed and amused.
Mikami stops. His gaze lifts to meet Light’s; suddenly he looks almost insecure, an emotion so foreign to Mikami that Light nearly misses it. “Is it… not good?”
“No, it is,” Light admits. It is, actually, exactly what he would have come up with himself, which is a little worrying.
Mikami visibly untenses. “Then I don’t see a problem. Will you sign now?”
Light reaches for the pen, then pauses. “…Was there actually a contractual part in this whole… thing?”
“Oh. No.” Mikami looks faintly embarrassed. “Other than the first page.”
Light flips back to read.
This certifies that Teru Mikami (henceforth “Mikami”) and Light Yagami (henceforth “Yagami”) will both, to the best of their ability, perform a romantic relationship with each other over the course of 12/23 to 12/25 in front of Mikami’s legal guardians, __ and __.
“It’s not legally binding,” Mikami informs him.
“I knew that.”
Light reaches out, brushes his fingertips over perform a romantic relationship.
“Can I keep this,” he says, “to study?”
“Yes,” Mikami says. “That was the intention. I have my own copy in my bag.”
Light nods. “Good.”
The thing is, romance is supposed to be easy. Natural. A feeling that comes to you, a behavior you already know, a dance built into your feet. Light is supposed to feel something other than dread settling into his stomach when a classmate shyly asks him if he’s single. Light is supposed to be good at this the way he’s good at everything else.
He’s not. He never has been. Something is very wrong with him and all he can do is hope no one else has noticed.
But this — Relationship Contract: Premise and Rules of Etiquette — Mikami has presented this to him as though it was a given, as though it was normal to have to study to excel in the subject. As though every social convention Light’s mind screamed to him was life-or-death actually was, but there were ways, known and documented in clinical eleven-point font, that he could survive it anyway.
What Light wants to say is, you understand, don’t you. You’re the first who’s ever understood.
[day 7 of @dnrarepairweek: judgment | audio drama 'verse | l/ryuk]
-
Light walks back to his apartment on his own after the funeral. His face is devoid of tear tracks. He’s staring off into the distance, eyes fixed on absolutely nothing; if L were to float in front of him, he could almost pretend Light was looking at him.
L is not one for self-deception. He stays where he is.
“I didn’t think he’d be so sad,” Ryuk remarks, once Light has returned to his bedroom and fallen face-first onto the bed. Ryuk and L are in the living room now.
“Of course he’s sad,” L almost-snaps. “He’s been honest to two people in his life, and one of them just killed the other.”
Ryuk frowns. “He’s been honest to me.”
“No he hasn’t. He likes you too much for that.”
There’s a silence. L falls back on the couch, not that he can feel the cushions physically anymore, and stares at the ceiling.
This is actually a fairly decent afterlife, all things considered. No pinpricks of sensation can touch him now. He’s going to miss haunting this place, once Light is gone — because he will be gone: L may have no faith in his successors but he knows Light’s time is ticking to an end. L can tell. He doesn’t have the energy to run much longer.
When he closes his eyes he can still hear Misa’s wild laughter in his ears. He stares at the ceiling instead.
“You really hate him, don’t you?”
“Hm?” L lolls his head around. Ryuk is dangling from the ceiling beams like he’s doing a pull-up. “Why do you ask?”
“I told you,” Ryuk says. “Ghosts can only hang around if they’ve got a powerful anger in their hearts, yeah?”
Oh. Right.
L is not very used to lying. He’s good at it, don’t get him wrong — certainly better than most people he knows — but he has never had to sustain one for such a long and continuous span of time. Ryukichi ‘Ryuk’ Nishiyama cannot be allowed to figure out who L’s real target is, because who knows how that would disturb the little play they’re both watching?
The moral thing to do, really, is write Ryuk’s name right now. But then L wouldn’t be able to hang around here anymore, and he is rather invested in seeing how this ends.
(And seeing Light’s misery first-hand, but that’s less relevant.)
“Yes,” he says. “I hate Light Yagami.”
It’s not even that much of a lie. Dying hurt, you know?
“Well,” Ryuk says, “I’m not letting you kill him.”
“I’m not planning to,” L says politely. “But how would you stop me?”
Ryuk shrugs. “I don’t know how ghosts work… Block you from getting to him. Tell him about you. Kill him first.”
“Why haven’t you told him already?” L asks, because apparently he wants to keep up his streak of self-sabotaging curiosity.
“Are you kidding? He’d be all over me, asking me how to talk to you, trying to figure out how he could kill you again… He’s insufferable when it gets to you, L.”
There’s a surge of misdirected fondness in some chamber of his dead heart. L shakes it off and says, “I thought you liked him insufferable.”
“It’d be a nice change of pace from this,” Ryuk agrees. “But… hmm. I dunno, keeping a secret from him is kinda fun. Since he knows everything most of the time.”
Light has never known everything. Light knows around 1% of what L does, and certainly less than what most people do at his age, considering he can’t even act very human around his coworkers anymore.
“And besides,” Ryuk adds, “it’s nice having someone to talk to, you know?” He nods at the bedroom door. “Light-o doesn’t really talk anymore.”
Yes, because Ryuk dropped a murder book into his life and drove him to ruin his relationships with everyone around him while stagnating in forever-seventeen, and Light doesn’t even seem to realize. No fucking wonder he doesn’t talk anymore.
“I guess you’re better entertainment than I’ve had in a while,” Ryuk concludes.
“Careful, Ryuk,” L says, letting a drop of condescension seep into his voice. He’s earned it for putting up with this monster for so long. “I might think you like me.”
Ryuk’s eyes flash wide. “Huh?”
L rolls his eyes. “It was a jo—”
Ryuk lets go of the ceiling beam and only just manages to flap his wings before he crashes into the ground.
…Wait. Is L onto something?
He mentally flips through his psychological profile book. Ryuk likes: entertainment, apples, the secondhand thrill of breaking the rules. Ryuk dislikes: boredom.
Ryuk has been very bored.
L has also been very bored. And he can’t kill Ryuk now, but no one said a little torture wasn’t in the cards.
L tilts his head, deliberately slow, so his hair brushes over his clavicle in a way he’s been told is insanely attractive. Possibly it isn’t now that he’s dead, but Ryuk’s eyes snap over right away, so he’s still got something.
“I was joking. But we could have fun if you wanted,” L says, letting his voice dip lower.
“I — uh — wait a second, L,” Ryuk says, half-stammering. L smirks to himself. “Are you saying…?”
L raises an eyebrow at him. Then he remembers most people can’t see his eyebrows. Then he remembers the Shinigami have preternaturally good vision, and he has nothing to worry about.
“Uh…” Ryuk’s eyes dart around. “Gods of death aren’t allowed to have, uh, intercourse. It’s in the rules.”
“We’re not going to,” L says, hoisting himself up from the sofa and catching the brief flash of disappointment over Ryuk’s face. “Would you enjoy having a knife held to your neck, in a sex way?”
Ryuk’s eyes widen further. “That’s a thing?”
That’s definitely a yes. Also, how has Ryuk lived millions of years peering down at the human realm without witnessing knifeplay?
“Come on,” L says. “We can use the guest room.”
-
It takes more tries than L would like to admit for him to get a grasp on the kitchen knife. He has to focus, to feel the ground under his feet, to remember that if he can obey the physical rules of floors then he can obey the physical rules of wielding violence as well.
It’s vaguely uncomfortable. His body is his, at least in abstraction, but the environment is not; he was never particularly good at existing in everyone else’s reality even back when he was alive. He liked his padded white room and his Macbook and the deafening silence.
Ryuk is looking at him, though, and when he hyuks in response to L’s third failure, the rage that shoots through L is so cold and dark that he snatches the knife perfectly.
So now they’re here. Somehow L has ended up straddling the god of death that he swore his most serious vow to kill. The sheets underneath them are beige. Ryuk is panting in his face — his breath probably stinks, but thankfully L’s olfactory senses aren’t tuned into this world’s channel yet — and L eyes his neck: no arteries, but lots and lots of collarbones that are practically begging to be broken.
Lesser men would start doubting their decision-making skills at this point, but L is not lesser men.
“Ah — hah,” Ryuk says, when L touches the knife to his throat.
“Sensitive much,” L comments.
“Look, buddy, I haven’t been touched in—”
Ryuk shuts up when L presses the knife in deeper, punching out an exhale, a full-body shudder, the illusion of his pupils flickering as he looks down to where L is drawing a line down to his chest.
Does a Shinigami have blood? Would he even be able to tell if he broke the skin?
He imagines, briefly, Light underneath him instead. Light would put up a fight. Light would make L work harder to dig up the sparks so obviously spinning in Ryuk’s eyes. Light would buck into the knife if it meant getting himself free and L would shove him back down, watch the blood welling in the shape of a smile along that pretty neck —
“Scared?” L murmurs.
Ryuk barks out a laugh, high-pitched and careening. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”
L drags the tip of the knife down to the spot right above where a human sternum would be, where Ryuk’s neck and chest meet, held together by jagged arcs of bones that look like staples. They would be so easy to undo. There are an unfathomable number of years thrumming in panic under the edge of L’s blade, desperate to fall apart.
Falling into his interrogator voice is the easiest thing in the world. He makes his voice low, soft. “Answer the question.”
“I’m a little scared,” Ryuk says, sucking a breath in through his teeth when L slides the knife between the bone-rings. “I k-know you can’t hurt me, but — fuck.”
L grins. He twists the knife, listening to it scrape as he applies pressure outward, half-thinking of Beyond and then thinking about nothing at all except how goddamn difficult it is to not just tear the whole bone out and then start stabbing.
He wants, is the thing.
L does not want very much, as a rule. (Said with the carefree air of someone who has everything they believe they want on a silver platter.) He likes winning: he likes clear, beautiful, remote takedowns, cases solved and tied in neat little bows, preferably with as few civilians involved as he can manage, although he often can’t. He likes the way surprise looked on Light’s face. He likes sweets. Liking is not the same thing as wanting.
If he’d wanted Light dead, he could have arranged it. But that wasn’t the game.
Ryuk, though —
L remembers the exact moment he’d realized this was all Ryuk’s fault. He’d gotten the notebook already, his grip on the corner white-knuckled. He usually wasn’t so afraid of dropping things, but this was the only way to make things right for good. And then it had hit him in a tidal wave of nausea: he’d stopped before he could reach Wammy and almost doubled over, pressing his fist to his mouth, because — thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands by now. Real people who made bad jokes and listened to music and probably had loved ones, dead because a Shinigami was bored.
L doesn’t really have much of a moral compass. Times like this are when he remembers why. How does anyone stand it, he’d thought, Light’s face swimming in his vision, the phantom tang of blood trickling into his mouth as he remembered the sting of his punch: how can anyone stand to feel all of this at once?
Is this how Light felt, picking up the Death Note?
L could have stopped this. L could have thrown him into prison as soon as they’d narrowed their suspect pool down to the two families Raye Penber was tracking. L had not, because it was out of his jurisdiction, because he hadn’t gotten solid proof yet, because it would be boring.
“L—” Ryuk wheezes. “L, wait—”
L, the letter, was the unspoken god of the old world. L Lawliet was a person, and not a particularly good one; he acknowledged this and moved on, because there were more important things at hand, such as catching a murderer. L was judge and jury and executor. L Lawliet is dead at twenty-five and blindingly angry.
Maybe it’s not even all the rotting dead. Maybe it’s just Light. Maybe, L thinks as his grip tightens, his mouth drawing back of its own accord, he’s just hopelessly fucking furious because Ryuk had brought Light into L’s life in the same move that killed them both.
No, this isn’t judgment. Not like Light writing names upon names without breaking a sweat. Not like L’s distorted voice ordering Lind L Tailor to be restrained and dressed in newscasters’ clothes. Not like Ryuk leaning back and laughing at the fire consuming it all.
This isn’t judgment. This is just rage.
“Light!”
L lets go out of sheer shock more than anything. He looks down. His hands are bleeding, just a little, from where they were wrapped around Ryuk’s neck. At some point he’d abandoned the knife, he supposes.
Ryuk is staring at him with something like wonder and something like fear.
Okay. Well. That was a rather alarming loss of control. L sucks in a breath, then blows it out, stretching his fingers. This has never happened to him before, but he supposes it just did.
It’s good to know that Ryuk can be choked, though. Good information.
L tries to picture Light doing what he just did. He comes up empty. Light was never much for physical violence unless it was directed towards L. Unless he had done this with Ryuk before —
Oh, wonderful. He can add jealousy to the mixture of everything he’s feeling for the first time right now.
“Jesus, I didn’t know you could be that scary,” Ryuk says, rubbing a claw over his throat.
L shrugs. “You liked it.”
“Am I supposed to take care of…”
L follows Ryuk’s gaze down to himself. Oh. “No thank you,” he says, meaning I would literally rather kill myself than let you get me off, before a thought occurs to him. “Since when do Shinigami believe in Jesus Christ?”
Ryuk laughs. Hoarse, maybe a little hollow. “You sound just like him sometimes.”
@dnrarepairweek (Im really sorry for such a late submission..)
New divorce/insurance lawyer Mikami Teru is questioned by a cop with a false name because of the "family" that he used to associate himself with..
IM SO SO SORRY FOR THIS BEING SO LAST MINUTE, I really don't even know if the thing is still open rn... Im so sorry..
But hey I finished it!
Harvard was hard, but Teru made it through. The LA law system was harder, but he made it through that too. And just when he was so close to mastering the law, aka being the district attorney, Light had to get busted. Leaving him in the dust, and without a career.
His previous boss, who ran the "New World" crime syndicate and went by the name of Kira, was apparently breaking the law while he was buying off judges. And Mikami was one of his lawyers, the main one actually.
So of course his pent house apartment was raided just like the others, and he was pissed. But he did avoid jail time by telling the cops who Light's main judge connections were. And he got a lot of compensation when he informed them that the best detective in the business was just as under Light's thumb as the rest of them.
But he was now a freelance attorney who mainly focused on divorces, and car accidents. And to say it was mind numbing would be an understatement. It was the most unstimulating that he had ever done in his life. School was better than this.
His main clientele were old white men who either cheated on their wives, wrecked their mustangs, or raped someone. Mikami didn't accept those cases, not like he was able to take them anyways. Most of his days were spent sending people to the P.I who worked down the hall, and reading books.
The P.I down the hall was some guy named "Mello". Or at least that was what was on his window. "Mello, Private Investigator." He reeked of cigarettes and booze half the time, and his husband was always making some kind of noise. He worked at the mechanic shop across their building.
Mikami only knew this because his window, the only window in the small office, pointed to the shop. And Mikami had directed many customers down there to go find Mello.
Sometimes a white haired guy would come into the offices, he would pass by Mikami's open door and wave. Teru would wave back, since he basically never had any customers, and this door was always open. The guy had long hair that clung to his back, and a face that made him look like a scrungly teenage boy. But he was seemingly about 21.
Today was one of those days, but instead of it just being the man. There was a blonde woman behind him in a suit, and a blonde man with white going through it. The both obviously had guns on them, and had glasses which covered their eyes in a black shade.
And then there was him. A dark haired man whose blue eyes looked like an ocean. Who was looking around like he was a little lost, before the white haired man pointed to Mikami's office. The man's head went up, and he walked in.
Mikami had to sit up from his slouched over position, and move his glasses up the bridge of his nose to fully see the man. The had seen the eyes from his position, but not fully. They weren't an ocean, they were a lake in a desert of sand, they glistened with a naivety that radiated off the man. His hair was obviously dyed black, and shitty too.
But he cleared his throat and fixed his posture fully, glaring at the man. He wasn't upset that he was getting a (hopefully) paying customer. He was upset that the man had screwed up his praying. He was almost through the part where he begged God to let Light out of jail, so he would get paid again. That was right after he asked for money.
"Hello, how can I help you, Sir?" He asked, leaning on the table. After a few months solid of doing this, he's pretty comfortable around his clients. Even if this one was different, he was young, and didn't seem like the type to cheat on a woman.
"You're Mikami Teru, right?" The man asked, his hands locking together in front of himself. "Yes, that is what it says on the door. If you're here for anything that isn't a divorce, or you rammed someone's bumper, then you're in the wrong place." He mumbled, it was something that he said every time that someone stepped into the office.
"Actually, I'm not here for a lawyer, I have some questions to ask you." Mikami's posture went straight up. He hadn't been asked questions that weren't concerning a case that he could work on in months. What. The. Hell. Does. This. Man. Want. His patience was thinning with the second.
One, he wasn't getting paid, and two he hated answering questions.
"Please, ask away, sir." He said, motioning to the seat in front of him as an invitation to sit down. The man took it, sitting in the used leather of the seat, making a sound in the quiet office.
"Are you familiar with the new world syndicate Mr. Mikami?" That name, and that organization brought him back to a place where he hadn't ventured in years.
He was 23, hanging his college diploma on his apartment wall. A sting of pride went through him every time he saw it. granted he had only had it far about two months, but he still did see it all the time.
It was framed in a wooden carved picture frame, it was one of his greatest accomplishments. And he would look at it all he wanted.
Just as he had looked at the email he had gotten two weeks prior that told him that he would start working at one the best law firms in LA the next week.
It was great, and he had even gotten a great first case. It was against this man, his name was Higuchi, he was in a crime syndicate that ran on the principle of "eradicating the filth of LA." It was silly, but Mikami had listened to the man ramble about it for a decent amount of time.
He got 7 years in prison for gang connections, and conspired murder. The judge was one of the only good ones in the city that wasn't under the Yagami's rule. Mikami was lucky that the boss didn't pay him a visit. That was what normally happened. He would intimidate any lawyer who tried to get in between his "family." But he must not have liked this guy too much.
Hey, and he had even gotten a date with a nice brown haired guy that he had met at work. He was a detective, and he had these eyes that were supposed to be brown, but they looked almost red. It was fun, and he was surprisingly nice too! He had even said that Mikami was "impressive in court," that was good for his first time.
Little did he know that that man would turn out to be Light Yagami, or Kira. The leader and founder of the New world. And little did Mikami know that he would fall for that man faster than he would anything in his life. That this would be his life from now on.
He was under Light Yagami's thumb, and he was comfortable there. He had money, and love, and anything that he wanted. As long has he kept the family out of jail, he would never lose what he had. He would never lose Kira. Hell, he was so under that thumb that Light had him on his knees calling him "Kami."
Mikami hated himself every time that the word came out of his mouth. He was sick, and he was okay with being sick as long as he didn't lose Kira. He wasn't just sick in the head he was sick psychically. He could go a day without drinking, and he could live a weekend without snorting a new drug he bought with blood money.
That is all that it was. Blood money. And it wasn't even his. And he was thrown into perspective that night. The night that Light was caught at a buy, he was shot in the shoulder, and he admitted everything. He told the cops all they wanted. He told them the deal locations, he told them the people in the family, he told them about Teru.
He was pinned down in his apartment just 30 minutes after, and thrown into a cop car. He avoided having to live in a cell the rest of his life because he sold out Light's right-hand man. L. That felt good, better than the sex, better than the drugs. Better than the money. It felt like he was a human again. Like he was real.
"I need to see credentials to even think about answering that question."
The man seemed to be used to being asked that question. As he pulled a badge out of his pocket a few seconds after he was asked. Teru's hand brushed the other man's in the passing of the book-like object.
One look at the thing and you could tell it was fake. He was seemingly an actual FBI agent, but the card wasn't his actual name. "How do you pronounce your last name? I'm not used to the spelling." Mikami said, casting out a line for the blue eye'd fish to take.
"It's the normal spelling of Lou-" The man's face flusters at the obvious mistake that he made. The name on the ID had said "Stephen Gevanni," Teru had never said anything about "Loud."
"So, Agent Loud, what is it that you want with me?" Mikami asked, tossing the badge back to the man. He faltered a bit in catching it, making him have to bend over to the floor to grab it. And while he was down there Mikami may or may not have taken a peak at his ass.
Hey, it was right there, he couldn't help himself!
The man cleared his throat, and sat back in his chair. He was getting uncomfortable, and so was Teru, it would be better for the both of them if they hurried along before Teru ended back up in cuffs.
"So, You're familiar with the family?" Stephen asked, crossing his legs and leaning in. "Well, if by familiar you mean a former member, then of course." Gevanni let out a little laugh at that. Mikami always liked it when people laughed at his jokes.
"I'm sure you knew, or at least had heard of Misa Amane in your time there, correct?" Misa, she was a blonde girl. As small as a tooth pick, and just as sharp. She had been second in command during his stay with the new world. She was always around L, and Light seemed to avoid her.
"That name does ring a bell." Mikami nods. "Do you know anything about her recent escape from Prison?" Gevanni asks. "No, I had no idea Misa got out." He really didn't.
"Near said you would say that." He grunted. "I'm gonna need you to come with me Mr. Mikami, you're back under investigation." Mikami could scream.
"Yessir." Mikami says instead. And allowed himself to be cuffed, he was sure that he would be forced to help the sad team in finding Misa. But maybe that wouldn't be too bad.. If he could spend time with this hunk, then he would stay in prison for as long as he needed to.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Apologies, this is a very last-minute entry using an idea for a single scene for a larger AU that's been playing in my head. I do not have time to flesh out further details or extend the scene because I need to clock into work soon and am dealing with a terrible ear infection. If I'm feeling better later, I may go into further detail but for now this is all I can offer just to make sure it's in before the deadline.
I couldn't participate, but will you host this event again next year ? I'd love to try then !
I might!! It depends on how involved I am in the DN fandom and how busy my life is by then, but if I do decide to run it again, you'll get plenty of notice :-)
(One last question, and an apology for being so late) I find myself caught between two ideas and feel I'll only be able to do one for this challenge due to the work schedule and time zone difference. The ideas utilize separate ships that, at time of writing, are under the 300 story count on AO3 set to make it count as a rarepair, but I have trouble deciding which would be better to use: a non-canon ship that I've been meaning to write for for awhile that technically (just barely) counts as a rare pair or a canon ship that is farther under the limit and could be interesting to explore?
