Chapter Text
L shrugs, licking sugar off his fingers as if he isn't a suspect for a serial killer case. "I mean, I don't know what to tell you Light-kun. I'm sure Watari can attest to the fact that I was simply going out with my friend that day on the bus. What happened was a coincidence. Awful, yes, but also a coincidence. You will have better luck investigating someone else." Light narrows his eyes, at the irritating honorific and the sugar that coats L’s fingers. It's exhausting keeping up with L's sugar cravings, constantly asking for things like lollipops in the middle of an interrogation, refusing to answer otherwise. Somehow his colleagues admire him despite all of his strange habits, which doesn't help the idea that he might be Kira. And yet... L cares not for the social game, and sometimes Light feels he couldn't fake his personality if he tried. So how the hell did he manage to get away with being Kira? It's almost like L is taunting him, acting exactly like Kira but spitting out facts and smoothening everyone's doubts down with his words... the mocking sweet tone is the only thing that gives it away. Even the fact that L isn't giving him his real name is suspicious, although as L was a used-to-be detective (he was pulled off of his most recent case to work with Light) it makes sense that he'd be smart enough to do not give away that information for free. Hell, L knows his real name, so what is he anxious of? It's not like Light will kill L, why does he need to keep his real name to himself?
Light doesn't know why this fustrates him, but wouldn't they be trusting each other by giving each other their names? L is making it seem like a game, his answers insanely boring with no edge or cut to them that he can pick at. No flaws. It's increasingly suspicious, like he's saying: I am Kira but you have no evidence, do you? It's like he's dangling his power in front of his face, and it agitates Light to no end. At the same time, Light feels sick, cornered. L knows his name and his face, which Light's colleagues say is practically proof he isn't Kira, but Light suspects he's more into playing the long game. As impatient as Kira is, he does seem to appreciate a good game of cat and mouse. Nevertheless, L doesn't resort to logic when they fight; logic would be saying that he couldn't be Kira as he knows Light's name.
Light has crafted his personality meticulously, although cracks of impatience slip through sometimes, "much like Kira", L points out. "He kills consistently until he doesn't... Like a child." Light rolls his eyes and reminds him that he knows how Kira works, he's the head of the bloody case--- and isn't Light supposed to be the one investigating L? But every so often L insists on pointing things out about Light, and when Light asks why, L says that it’s because he's exactly as likely to be Kira as L is. That will predictably ensue with Light clenching his fists and trying not to storm out. He’s never had a suspect like L before, so at the brink of morality, as if the right nudge would tip him over any minute. How can he prove that that's already happened? Just a bomb waiting to explode... Light shudders at the thought of how that could exist in any human being, and he will lie to the ends of the Earth rather than admit that he recognises that same drive in himself. But in response to L's taunts, Light would pettily bite back with everything that would make L Kira, and L would just roll his eyes, distracted and bored. They're predictable like that.
Other days L seems solemn, not saying a word, which is strangely out of character for him, and despite L being his suspect, he will do anything to try and get him to cheer up. He can't have such a raccoon-looking person pouting all the time--- with his bushy hair and dark eyes, that would...
not help with the case. Yeah. That's all this is about. He needs to keep a good psychological profile on Kira, figure out what makes him tick. Either way, Light still tries to cheer L up by reading a good Agatha Christie book out loud, and L will cock his head but not tell Light to go away (as he usually does). He has a psychological profile anyway, but he still can't find a way into getting into L's mind. Light just doesn't think saying, " Did your parents being killed in a car crash make you want to become Kira?" is particularly sensitive, or helpful.
Kira still kills at least five times a day, as if Kira were not a person, but a fate, a force. Some kind of clockwork, right on the hour. That's when Light becomes particularly frustrated at the snags and creases he keeps hitting in the case... how could a human ever pull something like that off? But L's profile is ever so wonderful, ever so deceiving. The top grades in the country (he doesn't think about how his profile looks so startlingly like Light's own), former tennis player, and yet an odd resistance to what is deemed acceptable by society, which you wouldn't know from his profile. The only unique thing in his profile is his family history. Raised at Wammy's, his parents died when he was only nine years old (it feels way too intrusive to see that in a file, but okay...the case). And then there is L himself. Now, Light is not going to criticise L's posture, serial killers can have whatever posture they like, but...
Light is going to criticise L's posture. Does he really have to stand like that? Is he an invertebrate? What is up with L? Why is he allowed all these quirks and still able to keep up a perfect facade that will stop him from getting convicted? Why is he allowed to be himself?
Light puts his head in his hands, berating his own train of thought. He doesn't know why he's thinking like that.
Light is perfectly fine.
He's happy.
It's fine. He just needs to find a way to break Kira.
Then he will for sure be fine.
But how can you break fate?