someone getting told (w earnest concern/sympathy) “that cold of yours isn’t getting any better, huh?” and irrationally taking it to mean they are getting a bad grade in being sick
habitual stifler being hypnotized into no longer feeling embarrassment about their sneezing and this is how everyone learns why exactly they were so determined not to let their natural sneeze out
Somebody with a positively brimming, staticy, ticklish cold who's been doing their best not to sneeze- because they know that before any amount of air is forced through their nose, a slew of congestion will have to come first
The problem could be avoided if they didnt have the habit of pressing their lips into a thin line as they clamped down on a sneeze- an unvoluntary "Uh'Pshhue!" sound when they were well now blunted into a heady, messy, strangled sneeze hardly transcribable.
Summary: Light has a cold. He knows L will inevitably comment on his health. Knows it, hates it, hopes for the 1% possibility that L won’t make a federal case out of it. Set in the Yotsuba Arc.
Living under the unrelenting scrutiny of the world’s greatest detective grows more taxing for Light Yagami the day. Solitary confinement was easy compared to this; at least then Light hadn’t been relentlessly confronted with L’s analytic eyes searching for even the slightest hairline crack in his character. Every breath he took, every microexpression he made, and every word he said seemed to hold some secret exploitable depth.
***
“You’re left handed.”
The accusation hits him as he idly twirls a pen between his fingers. At some point, he’d started underlining sections of interest in the profile of Kira’s most recent victim with his left hand. He shouldn’t argue. It comes out that way anyway, even though he’s just stating a fact. The chain dangles as he drops his hand.
“I’m ambidextrous.”
“I see. You adapted”
His face is blank, but he sounds smug like he’s uncovered something profound about Light's character. Another bullet to add to his profile. Some shred of evidence that he’ll use later.
Gritting his teeth, he moves the pen properly to his right hand.
***
Watari enters with a cart now decorated to the nines to be an espresso bar. Usually he serves regular coffee, but a part of this man’s mysterious skillset is constantly keeping a steady supply of a variety of sweets and caffeine flowing out for consumption. Light can safely say he wouldn’t have expected such a serious investigation to have nonstop access to an artisan dessert buffet, but then again, he’d also never expect to be the prime suspect of said investigation. He watches Watari make L a cafe latte with no less than four pumps of a yellow syrup and as L stirs in sugar until the granules rise to the surface with the foam. Surprisingly, he hasn’t seen L need an insulin kit.
Watari asks Light what he’d like, and as he’s in the middle of asking for an americano, L cuts him off.
“He’ll have a green tea.”
“What?”
As always, Watari defers to L and fetches the tea. Light’s protest remains ignored until the tea is brought out in front of him.
“Your coffee always goes cold,” L tells him. “Seems like you don’t enjoy it. Too much caffeine?”
Light burns his mouth on the tea. L comments on this too.
“So you’d rather burn your mouth than talk about your preferences?”
***
Light knows L will inevitably comment on his health. Knows it, hates it, hopes for the 1% possibility that L won’t make a federal case out of it. He still hasn’t given up hope on the even smaller chance that he’s just imagining these symptoms and that in a few hours he’ll forget all these worries ever existed; the percentage decreases impossibly low as he sips his tea, noting that the sore spot on the back of his throat has grown significantly in area and intensity. Definitely sore. A fuzzy feeling hangs in his head like a thick fog, his focus on the screen diluted. He tries to recall the exact moment today he felt miserable.
Probably when the first thing he saw upon waking was L’s face staring at him from mere inches away.
“Light,” L beckons him. There’s no telltale inflection to his tone, but he rolls his chair to show him a piece of paper held deftly with as little skin contact as possible, so that’s about as much of a cue as anything. “What do you think of this?”
He leans in and looks on with him, taking in as much information as possible. A death certificate. Another heart attack victim, this time a man in his fifties. Though this time, he’s a CEO and not a criminal. As far as Light’s aware at least.
“This doesn’t fit Kira’s M.O.”
“But remember, we’re operating under the assumption that this is a new Kira entirely. A third Kira, if you will.”
Light narrows his eyes. “Oh, are we, now?”
“Yes. I thought I made that clear.” Sarcasm never reaches L. It’s not that he can’t understand it. He just rejects it, meets the contempt with an underreaction unless it’s his turn to dish. Win acquired, he leans in and continues with his reasoning. “You might see that the victim was a regular blood donor—”
Though he listens to L’s setup for hypothesis and sees where this is heading, Light doesn’t join in this time to finish any sentences or ping off of his ideas. He’s too busy trying to ward off a pesky buzzing in his nose. It’d gotten more frequent over the past six hours. So he nods. A needleprick sensation deep in his nasal cavity scolds him for tacking on a low hum.
“—not a typical candidate for a heart attack. And if you notice the time—”
The sensation won’t die, and it’s getting too severe to ignore. In response, Light pinches the bridge of his nose. Maybe it’ll look like he’s thinking. He should be thinking now, anyway.
“Are you alright?”
Shit. A steadying exhale follows Light’s triumph of starving off the sneeze. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” L bites his thumb then tugs his lower lip down as he does a brief scan over his face. “You only slept about four hours, and you’re looking a shade paler than usual.”
The tight way Light had set his jaw initially had more to do with preventing the imminent sneeze from undermining him than it did with the abrupt callout done so casually as always. Now it’s about an even mix.
“You also requested honey in your cup of tea. Sore throat?”
Kira or not, I’m watching you.
L opens his mouth again, but this time Light beats him to the punch.
“It’s nothing.” Light subconsciously touches his throat and shakes his head. He wasn’t going to trust L to stop there. “And in any case, I agree that it’s worth looking into more information about this guy’s history.”
L stares at him a little longer and pulls back the corner of his lips with his thumb until it looks like he’s smirking. “Hm.”
“What?” Light asks, wanting to smack himself when he feels his nostrils flare widely. Something about L always makes him take the bait.
“It’s interesting,” he says, mouth full of thumb. The skin on its pad comes out wrinkled like a raisin. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you sneeze, Light.”
A shattering pause in Light’s pulse sent him into a hot rush of fight or flight accompanied with a side of something he’d rather not name. Unfortunate with L watching his every move.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Light protests, voice measured to be as casual as it’ll come. His next breath whistles slightly through his nose and he swallows, but the lump doesn’t fully go down and leaves a stinging sensation.
“Come to think of it, you didn’t sneeze even when I had you under twenty-four hour surveillance. Isn’t that odd?”
Was L really profiling him on something like that? Of all things?
He builds his defense. Why would he sneeze? He doesn’t have allergies and is always in perfect health. Almost always, anyway. So therefore, no trigger, no cause, and besides the constant adrenaline one would have to live under while being watched 24/7 would put someone on guard and would suppress the less important bodily urges in favor of survival. It’s plausible.
It’s also a series of sentences no human being would utter ever.
“Ryuzaki,” he says evenly, willpower to finish his protest dwindling with each word, but he gets through it eventually, “Isn’t it more likely that your brain wouldn’t store the memory of something so insignificant?”
L lowered his gaze as he took a dollop of frosting from his afternoon shortcake and licked it off his spoon. “No. I won’t know what information will be significant until it’s visited in retrospect. Therefore, I don’t believe that I’d discard any sort of basic observation of a subject—“ He drops his voice lower into an air of nonchalance. “—no matter how mundane it may be.”
Light’s face burns. He has to be fucking with him. A quick breath dismantles the precarious stalemate and triggers a pressure for release more prominent than before. He bites his inner cheek with a vice grip as his lungs struggle for the air he’s denying them. Not the time.
Calm down.
Even if he weren’t innocent, there’s no way this man could possibly make a case based around his sneezing habits. L is just toying with him. The second hand on his watch ticks loudly alerting him to the seconds he’s let pass in the conversation without offering anything other than a strange, contorted expression. He rolls his eyes, huffs out a note of a laugh that manages to sound exasperated.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to laugh, but I guess I don’t know what you want me to say here, exactly.”
“I suppose I’m curious,” L drawls, his unblinking gaze locked onto Light’s face once more, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to get it over with rather than holding it back?”
Even with nobody else in the room, he can’t help but feel an imaginary audience on them both in the empty chairs left around the room. Surely L can tell it’s having some sort of effect on Light to prod at the matter and he’s just grasping at straws. A few days had passed without incident since he’d last snapped and punched L in the face; it would only make him look worse to lie about something with no stakes like this.
“Absolutely,” Light agrees, smothering what little remains of his pride. He’d relinquished almost all of what he’d been able to scrounge up at the end of his solitary confinement when he agreed to being chained to this man every second of every day—to have every expression, mannerism, and reflex offered up for study under the objective lenses of L’s eyes. “It would. Unfortunately, I lost it.”
“I see.”
Light sniffles exactly once and L hands him a tissue.
“Thank you,” he says with ice lining the tone and holds off on using it until his nose starts running a few minutes later.
Bastard.
***
If Light’s symptoms weren’t worsening by the hour, L probably would drop it entirely. Even Matsuda had pointed out that Light sounded under the weather. In front of everyone else, he tries not to remember.
The outlook wasn’t good in this department. It’s unignorable now; he’s caught a cold. Worse is that he tried to brush it off when L asked him about it a few hours ago, neutrally agreeing that it’s possible he could be showing signs of coming down with something.
The methodical clacks from L’s typing continues incessantly even as Light lies in bed, boxed into his side of the mattress via the fortress of pillows he erects each night when he remembers. Even still, it’s preferable to silence. At least he has some cover for the occasional sniffle behind his sleeve.
This arrangement is not particularly comfortable on most nights and tonight he has the bonus of the throbbing pain of congestion weighing on his sinuses. He turns from the glare of the laptop, chain going taut until L shifts positions to allow him the small freedom of lying marginably more comfortably.
Now that he’s ready for sleep, he’s gone from needing the occasional sniffle to holding his breath and changing the angle he’s holding his head to assist in opening his blocked nose. He sniffles, disgusted with himself and the future he’s in for. He’d gone years without picking up a single bug, but with his current lucky streak, this oncoming cold will drag itself out at least all week.
“You’re still awake. That’s unusual.” As if L’s sleeping habits are anything but. “Something on your mind?”
“I’m just…” The tickle that hasn’t only embedded itself in his nares but has begun to flourish into something flamboyant, requiring his eyes to water, his mouth to wobble open to draw in a wavering breath out of line with his usual cadence of restful breathing. In a last ditch effort, he pinches the cuff of his sleeve over his nose, applying pressure to the angry buzzing until it dies out. The fabric comes away with a damp spot. “Organizing my thoughts.”
Prolonging the inevitable.
The typing stops. L regards him with a more serious expression than usual. “You’re starting to sound unwell. I’m probably keeping you up.” Though he doesn’t outright apologize, it’s implied.
“I’m just fine. I prefer some noise now anyway.”
“I understand.” L dropped his gaze. In its wake, Light realizes now that this had been about as stressful as being held at gunpoint. “Good night, Light. Hopefully some rest will help shorten the duration of the cold you’re trying to pretend you don’t have.”
The typing continues and Light seizes the opportunity. He pinches his nose and though it doesn’t cause the tickle to recede, it helps him stifle a sneeze into a nearly perfect silence. It stings him in vain considering the next three do him in after all that strife.
“ngkt-! hdkt-! ngktch-!”
“Bless you.”
In all of the time he’s worked here, Light’s never heard L say that to anyone else. It’s an English sentiment stemming from superstition. He ignores it, or tries to at least. It takes ten minutes for the blood in his body to return to the areas it belongs and even longer for him to finally go to sleep as he questions his own innocence again, because what else would justify this level of torment directed at him?
***
Of course Light doesn’t sleep it off. Overnight, the congestion had cemented itself into not only his sinuses, but his chest as well. He can feel it in his throat, a hair trigger in his chest set off when he yawns until he’s muffling chest-and-bed-rattling coughs into his sleeve.
“Good morning.” L is sipping coffee next to him. He’s barely convinced the man ever sleeps despite having seen him doze off midday a few times.
Light sits himself up and returns the greeting. The words come out thick and unfamiliar, consonants rounded, vowels cracking. It’s an auditory nightmare that manages to sound like he’s correcting L somehow.
“You were snoring,” L informs him behind his coffee mug. Definitely smirking.
Light bites back a grimace as his apology is hand waved and again as he admits though his teeth, “Guess you were right, Ryuzaki. I seem to have caught a cold.”
Better to get it over with.
“Ah.” L nods. He frowns in a way that’s so pronounced that its sincerity comes into question. “That’s too bad. Let me know if you need anything.”
Anything short of giving him some privacy wouldn’t be helpful, but Light doesn’t say that. Instead he swallows a thick feeling in his throat and thanks him as politely as possible. “I’ll be fine. I won’t let it affect my work performance.”
“Huh. Alright. I suppose I should make arrangements.”
“What?”
“To work from this room. We’re fully able to meet with the others virtually. Have you ever done a video call, Light?”
voyeurism is the best kink to pair with snzfuckery bc you get turned on just by being able to WATCH people think they need to sneeze. seeing all the subtle shifts in their expression as they realize they can’t fight it off before finally finally succumbing to the itch
Begrudging caretaker who positions their closed fist in line with the sick one's forehead as they hitch and sneeze, giving them a small lovetap/noogie while warmly sighing, "You idiot,"
oh no! a little ghost has caught a cold :'(
(cw: mess)
wretched little ghost
a w/ulian sickfic
fandom: m/xtx t/gcf
rating: T
word count: ~3500
contains: cold sneezing (wu m/ing)
sick grossness (mess)
sneezing on another person
mean calamity!l/ian
brusque caretaking
CW: references to canon-typical body horror/suicide/terminal illness themes
(not wu m/ing he has a normal cold)
Wu M/ing is malfunctioning. X/ie L/ian should by all rights leave him behind in his quest for revenge on Y/ong'an, but there's something compelling about the vulnerability being revealed to him.
m/xtx really said "yeah ghosts can get sick. how? don't think too hard about it. don't even worry about it," and all of us went "ok! yay!"
<< read it HERE on ao3 >>
[ PLS DO NOT REBLOG TO NON-SNZ/KINK BLOGS, thank you! ]
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
