DN -- Decisions
Title: Decisions
Collection: The Margins
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: Light, L
Rating: G
Word Count: 430
Warnings: this smells a bit like crack
Summary: L and Light encounter difficulties in trying to determine who gets to choose.
Author's Note: Happy slightly-late birthday to my favorite mass-murdering sociopath. ♥
DECISIONS
Light flattened one of the curling ends of masking tape with his toe.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
Solemnly, L nodded. “It is the only way to decide, Yagami-kun.”
Light wasn’t convinced. “How about ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’?”
L’s hair fluttered as he shook his head. “That method invariably results in the loser demanding the ‘best out of three,’” he responded, “and thence the best out of five, seven, nine, and every odd number until someone intervenes with a distraction.”
Frowning, Light noted, “You sound like you speak from personal experience.”
L shrugged in a ripple of worn cotton and sharp bones. “We have to do it, Yagami-kun.”
Light looked dubiously at the three equidistant strips of tape on the carpet. “Can’t we flip a coin?”
L blinked at him disapprovingly. “And leave something so important to chance?”
At this point, Light honestly couldn’t tell whether L was extremely invested in the outcome or extremely invested in mocking him.
“Fine,” he muttered grudgingly.
At this concession, he and L wrapped their respective ends of the chain around their respective hands, and then they positioned Matsuda’s tie-stolen when he’d passed out on the couch in the other room, to be knotted around the center of the chain-over the middle line of masking tape. Following a synchronized countdown from three, the tug-of-war commenced.
After five full minutes of hauling, heaving, yanking, straining, and sweating-and one notable scream of frustration, which Light was more than prepared to deny for the rest of his life-both combatants collapsed on the floor, panting heavily.
Light wished he had the energy to berate himself. Given that L was made of toothpicks, skin, sugar, and an improbable quantity of hair, it shouldn’t have been a contest in the first place, but the detective fought like an animal at times like these. His simple stubbornness had evened out Light’s advantage yet again, and neither of them had made any headway: the battle had proved tragically indecisive.
Once L regained his breath, he used it to sigh feelingly.
“I suppose,” he murmured, raising his thumb to his mouth, inky hair spilling over the carpet, “that neither of us will get to choose which wallpaper should go in the bedroom.”
Light’s hopes for the tactful gray-on-off-white fleur-de-lis pattern had been cruelly dashed.
The chain links jingled as he wiped sweat off of his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“I guess I can live with that,” he resolved. “As long as Matsuda doesn’t get to pick.”
Collection: The Margins
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: Light, L
Rating: G
Word Count: 430
Warnings: this smells a bit like crack
Summary: L and Light encounter difficulties in trying to determine who gets to choose.
Author's Note: Happy slightly-late birthday to my favorite mass-murdering sociopath. ♥
DECISIONS
Light flattened one of the curling ends of masking tape with his toe.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
Solemnly, L nodded. “It is the only way to decide, Yagami-kun.”
Light wasn’t convinced. “How about ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’?”
L’s hair fluttered as he shook his head. “That method invariably results in the loser demanding the ‘best out of three,’” he responded, “and thence the best out of five, seven, nine, and every odd number until someone intervenes with a distraction.”
Frowning, Light noted, “You sound like you speak from personal experience.”
L shrugged in a ripple of worn cotton and sharp bones. “We have to do it, Yagami-kun.”
Light looked dubiously at the three equidistant strips of tape on the carpet. “Can’t we flip a coin?”
L blinked at him disapprovingly. “And leave something so important to chance?”
At this point, Light honestly couldn’t tell whether L was extremely invested in the outcome or extremely invested in mocking him.
“Fine,” he muttered grudgingly.
At this concession, he and L wrapped their respective ends of the chain around their respective hands, and then they positioned Matsuda’s tie-stolen when he’d passed out on the couch in the other room, to be knotted around the center of the chain-over the middle line of masking tape. Following a synchronized countdown from three, the tug-of-war commenced.
After five full minutes of hauling, heaving, yanking, straining, and sweating-and one notable scream of frustration, which Light was more than prepared to deny for the rest of his life-both combatants collapsed on the floor, panting heavily.
Light wished he had the energy to berate himself. Given that L was made of toothpicks, skin, sugar, and an improbable quantity of hair, it shouldn’t have been a contest in the first place, but the detective fought like an animal at times like these. His simple stubbornness had evened out Light’s advantage yet again, and neither of them had made any headway: the battle had proved tragically indecisive.
Once L regained his breath, he used it to sigh feelingly.
“I suppose,” he murmured, raising his thumb to his mouth, inky hair spilling over the carpet, “that neither of us will get to choose which wallpaper should go in the bedroom.”
Light’s hopes for the tactful gray-on-off-white fleur-de-lis pattern had been cruelly dashed.
The chain links jingled as he wiped sweat off of his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“I guess I can live with that,” he resolved. “As long as Matsuda doesn’t get to pick.”