DN -- Chocolate Always Loves You Back III: Pacific Heights
Title: Chocolate Always Loves You Back
Chapter: 3. Pacific Heights
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light/L
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,274
Warnings: AU, L is sadistic
Summary: Light Yagami is not having a good Valentine's Day. Between the new guy with the candy fetish, his partner, Matsuda, and the unsettling new case... the chocolate may be the only thing that loves him at all.
Author's Note: William Golding was going to put him in Lord of the Flies, but he realized that “Quill” would have destroyed Jack with his mind within the first fifty pages. In the interest of sustaining the plot, he changed his mind.
III - PACIFIC HEIGHTS
“Really?”
Mello’s eyes were saucer-sized, and they sparked with an awe that verged on ridiculous in the early-evening sun that infiltrated the window on the far wall.
Lawliet nodded. “I’ve always enjoyed problem-solving, and there were more than enough problems-the police generally didn’t mind sharing with a college student going into law enforcement.”
“I imagine you had to prove yourself before they accepted your assistance,” Near murmured, and a loitering Light wondered despite himself how the boy found so many dictionaries to eat out there on the streets.
Lawliet smiled, slightly wryly. “Three times,” he confirmed. “They felt terribly usurped until they realized how much easier their work was becoming.”
“Wow,” Mello breathed.
“Of course,” Lawliet noted, “I needed them more than they needed me. I had no resources or manpower to speak of, and Quillish hated for me to put my safety at risk. Vigilantism is more difficult than it sounds: one man can make a difference, but only when other men stand behind him.”
Light cleared his throat, knowing full well that his presence was known-and that he was simply being pointedly ignored in favor of freak-worship.
The quartet, witnesses and weirdo alike, looked up at him and commenced a rigorous program of innocent blinking.
Light tapped the case file meaningfully against his palm and spoke to Lawliet, inclining his head towards the Terrible Threesome. “You’re all set to take care of my witnesses, then?” he prompted.
“Of course he is,” Mello retorted immediately, eyes narrowed now and blazing bright. “Did you ever help the local police department when you were in college?”
Light frowned, severely he hoped. “Only in high school, actually,” he responded crisply. “The university I attended was very quiet, but I worked with the NPA-that’s the National Police Agency-when I still lived in Japan.”
It was, in fact, one of the reasons he had put an ocean between his home and the site of his higher education. Justice, whatever the price, was what he wanted for the world and what he wanted to impart to it, and he knew that he would pursue it wherever he could-but he wasn’t going to grow up in his father’s shadow, and, whether or not he’d earned his place, the whispers of nepotism would have hounded him until he snapped.
And that would have been a little bit embarrassing.
“Yeah,” Mello muttered, the epitome of unconvinced skepticism, “sure. Well, what do you want?”
Light dropped the subject; he had nothing to prove. The only person he stood to impress was Lawliet, who could verify the matter with Matsuda if he and his idiosyncrasies felt so inclined.
He glanced briefly at the clock, having learned by now that all three of the boys were quick enough to catch the subtlety of the gesture.
“I just wanted to ensure that everything was prepared for you to go home with Lawliet,” he explained. He addressed the next question to his colleague. “How do you usually get home, by the way?”
Lawliet hadn’t quit it with the innocent blinking thing yet. “Generally,” he responded, “I take the train-” Half-subway, half-train, wholly a nuisance; Light hated the whole system. “-and Quillish picks me up at the station.”
Mello’s face transitioned abruptly into Puppy Eye Mode. “But we’ve got stuff!” he protested. “Back at-the place we live! We’ve got to stop there first-c’mon, please?”
Lawliet smiled indulgently; these children already had him wrapped around their respective dirty little fingers. “I’m sure Quillish will be willing to stop there,” he noted.
Light struggled with his conscience for a moment, but, regrettably, it overpowered him.
“I’ll drive you,” he sighed.
He had a vague idea of the hellish punishment that he’d just incurred, but life experience indicated that things were only about to get incalculably worse. He wondered what he’d done to deserve all of this.
Maybe he’d been a mass-murderer in a past life.
Matt, Mello, and Near eyed him mistrustfully for a moment before turning to Lawliet.
Light’s last futile hope died when the man smiled and nodded, cheerily with just a smidgeon of sadistic glee.
Light didn’t think it was possible for him to hate this guy any more.
He was, of course, very, very wrong.
-
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Unperturbed by the interruption, Lawliet continued fiddling with the tuner dials. “I am browsing the radio, Yagami-kun,” he answered placidly. “It is traditionally the duty of the individual sitting shotgun, in order to free the driver to concentrate.”
Light clenched his fingers tightly around the rim of the wheel, wishing it was Lawliet’s scrawny neck. “The driver prefers to listen to KDFC-”
“The driver is boring,” Mello put in.
“Concentrate, Yagami-kun,” Lawliet ordered as Light, gritting his teeth, brought his Honda Accord to a slightly screechy halt at the next stoplight. “That is, as I mentioned, the entire point of-ah.”
Light’s knuckles were bone-white, and his dentist was going to have something to say about his sudden acquisition of a teeth-grinding habit.
Lawliet would-he would listen to techno.
Probably not in his spare time-only when he was trying to push innocent people to the brink of violent suicide.
That effort was working so far.
Matt and Mello cheered and started dancing as enthusiastically as their secured seatbelts would allow, which involved a great deal of bouncing and arm-waving right in the range of the rearview mirror.
That decided it: Light was going to kill everyone.
Or he was going to drive his forest-green ’98 Accord off of a cliff; there were a few good ones to choose from-scenic, serene, and high enough to fracture Lawliet’s spinal cord at the first big bump.
He drew the car into the empty lot next to the place Mello specified-an abandoned warehouse, by the looks of it, a wreck of broken windows and sagging drywall scattered with crumbling cinderblocks, half-shredded plastic drifting spectrally in the salt-scented breeze.
Light felt as though someone had dropped one of those cinderblocks into his stomach.
“Charming,” he commented weakly.
“Home sweet home,” Near returned quietly as Matt and Mello burst out of either car door and scampered towards a gaping empty doorway, plastic bags for tumbleweeds skittering at their heels.
Lawliet, neck craned at an extremely awkward angle to watch them go, looked downright heartbroken.
Light supposed he might be persuaded to let the man live.
The throbbing bass of the latest techno song faded into the drone of an uninspiring advertisement, and Lawliet’s hand darted out to touch the power button, silencing it properly.
Near held one knee to his chest, a grimy sandal balancing on Light’s clean backseat.
“It’s not your fault,” he remarked.
“That doesn’t make it any easier to look on,” Lawliet replied softly.
Near gave a small, almost secretive smile, and Lawliet reached out to touch a gentle hand to the boy’s tangled white curls.
“I’m going to save you,” Lawliet told him.
Light saw the searing quicksilver conviction in the pale eyes and believed it.
There wasn’t time to muster adequate speech before the boys were flinging the doors open, hurtling inside, and slamming them shut again. Mello slung a black backpack and a duffel bag to the floor, their brand logos long since worn off, and Matt tossed his own bag down by his feet, passing Near another still. Mello pawed through his belongings, retrieved a chocolate bar with a gleaming gold label, pushed the scuffed foil out of the way, and took a tremendous bite.
“Well?” he prompted through it.
“You’re going to spoil your dinner,” Light said dumbly.
Matt perked up at the very word, and Light cringed inwardly, reaching hastily for the parking brake.
Change the subject. Changing the subject solved everything.
-
“Past here,” Lawliet noted. “Take a left.”
Light glanced at him bewilderedly, resisting the urge to slam his foot on the brake. “You live in Pacific Heights?”
Predictably, Lawliet just blinked huge gray eyes as if Light had inquired about the weather-which was cool but clear at the moment.
“Is that a problem, Yagami-kun?” he asked. “I texted Quillish telling him not to come, but I could rescind the message with a second-”
“No,” Light interjected before the man could bombard him with any more utterly unnecessary details. “Just-it’s… ritzy.”
Lawliet blinked again. How did his tear ducts keep up?
Pondering the subject, Light’s brain then saw fit to subject him to the supremely unsettling mental image of Lawliet pursing his lips and batting his eyelashes.
Some things in life didn’t even bear contemplation.
“Quillish is a very successful inventor,” Lawliet explained. “He says the view inspires him.”
“I’m sure it does,” Light acceded, thinking of the bleak brick walls that hedged his apartment, thinking of the claustrophobic inescapability of the similar buildings on either side.
A few demure directions later, Light was guiding his Accord through a wrought-iron gate and up the smooth slope of a sweeping drive, at the pinnacle of which a beautiful Victorian house stood tall, regal, and angular in the swelling shadow of the night.
Light was not jealous. Not at all. He wasn’t picturing growing up in a house that crowned the undulating hills; wasn’t dreaming of gazing out over the Bay before bedtime; wasn’t fantasizing about reckless skateboard rides down the driveway and the ensuing narrow avoidances of traffic that would have splattered the adventurer on the street.
Of course not. Really.
It wasn’t the size of your home; it was what you produced inside it.
…yes, he was going to Special Hell.
Lawliet clambered out of the vehicle and looked appreciatively up at the façade. The porch light glowed orange, and in its aura Light saw that there was even a swing.
He caught himself wondering if it was possible to put oneself up for retroactive adoption.
The backseat trio crept cautiously out of their haven, dragging their sparing luggage with them, and assembled on the pavement, staring at the house. For the first time since Light had become acquainted with the prepubescent psychopath, Mello looked distinctly intimidated.
“It doesn’t bite,” Lawliet assured them of the house, faintly amused now, as Light locked the car and pocketed his keys-Pacific Heights or not, this was still the city of San Francisco. “You’ll like it. And yes, Yagami-kun; please come in at least long enough for tea.”
So much for the polite hesitation he’d been perfecting.
Well, he wasn’t one to refuse hospitality, regardless of the source.
Lawliet ushered the lot of them up the steps and into the foyer, where the boys set down their bags, and thence to the kitchen, which was clean, modern, modest, and warm. Light decided that he liked this place, everything else aside.
He liked it even better when a kind-eyed elderly gentleman with white hair, glasses, and a moustache turned to them, having just lifted an old-fashioned tea kettle off the stove, steam shimmering upwards from its spout.
Matt, Mello, and Near, however, immediately became extremely shy.
“Hello,” the man greeted them, voice colored by a smart British accent. “Quillish Wammy, at your service. Mello, Matt, Near-and Light Yagami, I presume?”
“Yes, si-” Light began.
“That’s right,” Mello confirmed before he could finish, putting on a brave face for the purpose. “Nice to meet you.”
Quillish shook hands all around, smiling still. “Welcome,” he bid them. “Might I interest you in dinner and tea?”
Lawliet was already crossing the room to search the cabinets. “Cookies to go with the tea,” he murmured-it sounded more like an excuse than an explanation.
“Chocolate ones?” Mello pressed interestedly, clutching the crumpled wrapper of his latest edible victim in his fist.
Quillish gave Lawliet a Look. “After the real food,” he reproached fondly, with the air of one who had uttered the words too many times to count.
Reluctantly, Lawliet returned a bag of cookies to the shelf and closed the cabinet door, sharing a mournful expression with Mello.
“They’ll be waiting when we’re finished,” he pledged.
Mello appeared to be relatively content with that arrangement.
-
Two and a half hours later, stuffed full of phenomenal spaghetti, fantastic garlic bread, and excellent tea, warmed straight through by the cuisine and the company in equal measure, Light had little choice but to take one last cookie for the road, bid everyone adieu, and make for his car. Quillish Wammy was too charismatic by half, and he had more stories to tell than the History Channel.
Light would know; Ms. History and Mr. Discovery Channel were his most familiar weekend guests.
In any case, Light now knew that, at the tender age of six, Quillish had been pushed onto a train and shipped out to the countryside in preparation for the Battle of Britain, to the effect that he and his nine-year-old brother had been taken in by a farmer with five children and twice as many acres of land. Quillish had spent an inordinate amount of time loitering around the man’s tool shed-workshop, where he had first begun to tinker with metal and machinery.
A tactfully-unspecified quantity of years later, Quillish’s love of experiment and exploration hadn’t aged a day.
One thing was for sure-Light would be back for more stories, whether Lawliet liked it or not.
He was venturing to imagine that Lawliet wouldn’t like it at all, which actually made it more fun.
Light smirked to himself as he backed carefully down the driveway. His colleague could chalk it up as revenge for the fact that Light’s radio was still set to the techno station.
[Chapter II] [Chapter IV]
Chapter: 3. Pacific Heights
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light/L
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,274
Warnings: AU, L is sadistic
Summary: Light Yagami is not having a good Valentine's Day. Between the new guy with the candy fetish, his partner, Matsuda, and the unsettling new case... the chocolate may be the only thing that loves him at all.
Author's Note: William Golding was going to put him in Lord of the Flies, but he realized that “Quill” would have destroyed Jack with his mind within the first fifty pages. In the interest of sustaining the plot, he changed his mind.
III - PACIFIC HEIGHTS
“Really?”
Mello’s eyes were saucer-sized, and they sparked with an awe that verged on ridiculous in the early-evening sun that infiltrated the window on the far wall.
Lawliet nodded. “I’ve always enjoyed problem-solving, and there were more than enough problems-the police generally didn’t mind sharing with a college student going into law enforcement.”
“I imagine you had to prove yourself before they accepted your assistance,” Near murmured, and a loitering Light wondered despite himself how the boy found so many dictionaries to eat out there on the streets.
Lawliet smiled, slightly wryly. “Three times,” he confirmed. “They felt terribly usurped until they realized how much easier their work was becoming.”
“Wow,” Mello breathed.
“Of course,” Lawliet noted, “I needed them more than they needed me. I had no resources or manpower to speak of, and Quillish hated for me to put my safety at risk. Vigilantism is more difficult than it sounds: one man can make a difference, but only when other men stand behind him.”
Light cleared his throat, knowing full well that his presence was known-and that he was simply being pointedly ignored in favor of freak-worship.
The quartet, witnesses and weirdo alike, looked up at him and commenced a rigorous program of innocent blinking.
Light tapped the case file meaningfully against his palm and spoke to Lawliet, inclining his head towards the Terrible Threesome. “You’re all set to take care of my witnesses, then?” he prompted.
“Of course he is,” Mello retorted immediately, eyes narrowed now and blazing bright. “Did you ever help the local police department when you were in college?”
Light frowned, severely he hoped. “Only in high school, actually,” he responded crisply. “The university I attended was very quiet, but I worked with the NPA-that’s the National Police Agency-when I still lived in Japan.”
It was, in fact, one of the reasons he had put an ocean between his home and the site of his higher education. Justice, whatever the price, was what he wanted for the world and what he wanted to impart to it, and he knew that he would pursue it wherever he could-but he wasn’t going to grow up in his father’s shadow, and, whether or not he’d earned his place, the whispers of nepotism would have hounded him until he snapped.
And that would have been a little bit embarrassing.
“Yeah,” Mello muttered, the epitome of unconvinced skepticism, “sure. Well, what do you want?”
Light dropped the subject; he had nothing to prove. The only person he stood to impress was Lawliet, who could verify the matter with Matsuda if he and his idiosyncrasies felt so inclined.
He glanced briefly at the clock, having learned by now that all three of the boys were quick enough to catch the subtlety of the gesture.
“I just wanted to ensure that everything was prepared for you to go home with Lawliet,” he explained. He addressed the next question to his colleague. “How do you usually get home, by the way?”
Lawliet hadn’t quit it with the innocent blinking thing yet. “Generally,” he responded, “I take the train-” Half-subway, half-train, wholly a nuisance; Light hated the whole system. “-and Quillish picks me up at the station.”
Mello’s face transitioned abruptly into Puppy Eye Mode. “But we’ve got stuff!” he protested. “Back at-the place we live! We’ve got to stop there first-c’mon, please?”
Lawliet smiled indulgently; these children already had him wrapped around their respective dirty little fingers. “I’m sure Quillish will be willing to stop there,” he noted.
Light struggled with his conscience for a moment, but, regrettably, it overpowered him.
“I’ll drive you,” he sighed.
He had a vague idea of the hellish punishment that he’d just incurred, but life experience indicated that things were only about to get incalculably worse. He wondered what he’d done to deserve all of this.
Maybe he’d been a mass-murderer in a past life.
Matt, Mello, and Near eyed him mistrustfully for a moment before turning to Lawliet.
Light’s last futile hope died when the man smiled and nodded, cheerily with just a smidgeon of sadistic glee.
Light didn’t think it was possible for him to hate this guy any more.
He was, of course, very, very wrong.
-
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Unperturbed by the interruption, Lawliet continued fiddling with the tuner dials. “I am browsing the radio, Yagami-kun,” he answered placidly. “It is traditionally the duty of the individual sitting shotgun, in order to free the driver to concentrate.”
Light clenched his fingers tightly around the rim of the wheel, wishing it was Lawliet’s scrawny neck. “The driver prefers to listen to KDFC-”
“The driver is boring,” Mello put in.
“Concentrate, Yagami-kun,” Lawliet ordered as Light, gritting his teeth, brought his Honda Accord to a slightly screechy halt at the next stoplight. “That is, as I mentioned, the entire point of-ah.”
Light’s knuckles were bone-white, and his dentist was going to have something to say about his sudden acquisition of a teeth-grinding habit.
Lawliet would-he would listen to techno.
Probably not in his spare time-only when he was trying to push innocent people to the brink of violent suicide.
That effort was working so far.
Matt and Mello cheered and started dancing as enthusiastically as their secured seatbelts would allow, which involved a great deal of bouncing and arm-waving right in the range of the rearview mirror.
That decided it: Light was going to kill everyone.
Or he was going to drive his forest-green ’98 Accord off of a cliff; there were a few good ones to choose from-scenic, serene, and high enough to fracture Lawliet’s spinal cord at the first big bump.
He drew the car into the empty lot next to the place Mello specified-an abandoned warehouse, by the looks of it, a wreck of broken windows and sagging drywall scattered with crumbling cinderblocks, half-shredded plastic drifting spectrally in the salt-scented breeze.
Light felt as though someone had dropped one of those cinderblocks into his stomach.
“Charming,” he commented weakly.
“Home sweet home,” Near returned quietly as Matt and Mello burst out of either car door and scampered towards a gaping empty doorway, plastic bags for tumbleweeds skittering at their heels.
Lawliet, neck craned at an extremely awkward angle to watch them go, looked downright heartbroken.
Light supposed he might be persuaded to let the man live.
The throbbing bass of the latest techno song faded into the drone of an uninspiring advertisement, and Lawliet’s hand darted out to touch the power button, silencing it properly.
Near held one knee to his chest, a grimy sandal balancing on Light’s clean backseat.
“It’s not your fault,” he remarked.
“That doesn’t make it any easier to look on,” Lawliet replied softly.
Near gave a small, almost secretive smile, and Lawliet reached out to touch a gentle hand to the boy’s tangled white curls.
“I’m going to save you,” Lawliet told him.
Light saw the searing quicksilver conviction in the pale eyes and believed it.
There wasn’t time to muster adequate speech before the boys were flinging the doors open, hurtling inside, and slamming them shut again. Mello slung a black backpack and a duffel bag to the floor, their brand logos long since worn off, and Matt tossed his own bag down by his feet, passing Near another still. Mello pawed through his belongings, retrieved a chocolate bar with a gleaming gold label, pushed the scuffed foil out of the way, and took a tremendous bite.
“Well?” he prompted through it.
“You’re going to spoil your dinner,” Light said dumbly.
Matt perked up at the very word, and Light cringed inwardly, reaching hastily for the parking brake.
Change the subject. Changing the subject solved everything.
-
“Past here,” Lawliet noted. “Take a left.”
Light glanced at him bewilderedly, resisting the urge to slam his foot on the brake. “You live in Pacific Heights?”
Predictably, Lawliet just blinked huge gray eyes as if Light had inquired about the weather-which was cool but clear at the moment.
“Is that a problem, Yagami-kun?” he asked. “I texted Quillish telling him not to come, but I could rescind the message with a second-”
“No,” Light interjected before the man could bombard him with any more utterly unnecessary details. “Just-it’s… ritzy.”
Lawliet blinked again. How did his tear ducts keep up?
Pondering the subject, Light’s brain then saw fit to subject him to the supremely unsettling mental image of Lawliet pursing his lips and batting his eyelashes.
Some things in life didn’t even bear contemplation.
“Quillish is a very successful inventor,” Lawliet explained. “He says the view inspires him.”
“I’m sure it does,” Light acceded, thinking of the bleak brick walls that hedged his apartment, thinking of the claustrophobic inescapability of the similar buildings on either side.
A few demure directions later, Light was guiding his Accord through a wrought-iron gate and up the smooth slope of a sweeping drive, at the pinnacle of which a beautiful Victorian house stood tall, regal, and angular in the swelling shadow of the night.
Light was not jealous. Not at all. He wasn’t picturing growing up in a house that crowned the undulating hills; wasn’t dreaming of gazing out over the Bay before bedtime; wasn’t fantasizing about reckless skateboard rides down the driveway and the ensuing narrow avoidances of traffic that would have splattered the adventurer on the street.
Of course not. Really.
It wasn’t the size of your home; it was what you produced inside it.
…yes, he was going to Special Hell.
Lawliet clambered out of the vehicle and looked appreciatively up at the façade. The porch light glowed orange, and in its aura Light saw that there was even a swing.
He caught himself wondering if it was possible to put oneself up for retroactive adoption.
The backseat trio crept cautiously out of their haven, dragging their sparing luggage with them, and assembled on the pavement, staring at the house. For the first time since Light had become acquainted with the prepubescent psychopath, Mello looked distinctly intimidated.
“It doesn’t bite,” Lawliet assured them of the house, faintly amused now, as Light locked the car and pocketed his keys-Pacific Heights or not, this was still the city of San Francisco. “You’ll like it. And yes, Yagami-kun; please come in at least long enough for tea.”
So much for the polite hesitation he’d been perfecting.
Well, he wasn’t one to refuse hospitality, regardless of the source.
Lawliet ushered the lot of them up the steps and into the foyer, where the boys set down their bags, and thence to the kitchen, which was clean, modern, modest, and warm. Light decided that he liked this place, everything else aside.
He liked it even better when a kind-eyed elderly gentleman with white hair, glasses, and a moustache turned to them, having just lifted an old-fashioned tea kettle off the stove, steam shimmering upwards from its spout.
Matt, Mello, and Near, however, immediately became extremely shy.
“Hello,” the man greeted them, voice colored by a smart British accent. “Quillish Wammy, at your service. Mello, Matt, Near-and Light Yagami, I presume?”
“Yes, si-” Light began.
“That’s right,” Mello confirmed before he could finish, putting on a brave face for the purpose. “Nice to meet you.”
Quillish shook hands all around, smiling still. “Welcome,” he bid them. “Might I interest you in dinner and tea?”
Lawliet was already crossing the room to search the cabinets. “Cookies to go with the tea,” he murmured-it sounded more like an excuse than an explanation.
“Chocolate ones?” Mello pressed interestedly, clutching the crumpled wrapper of his latest edible victim in his fist.
Quillish gave Lawliet a Look. “After the real food,” he reproached fondly, with the air of one who had uttered the words too many times to count.
Reluctantly, Lawliet returned a bag of cookies to the shelf and closed the cabinet door, sharing a mournful expression with Mello.
“They’ll be waiting when we’re finished,” he pledged.
Mello appeared to be relatively content with that arrangement.
-
Two and a half hours later, stuffed full of phenomenal spaghetti, fantastic garlic bread, and excellent tea, warmed straight through by the cuisine and the company in equal measure, Light had little choice but to take one last cookie for the road, bid everyone adieu, and make for his car. Quillish Wammy was too charismatic by half, and he had more stories to tell than the History Channel.
Light would know; Ms. History and Mr. Discovery Channel were his most familiar weekend guests.
In any case, Light now knew that, at the tender age of six, Quillish had been pushed onto a train and shipped out to the countryside in preparation for the Battle of Britain, to the effect that he and his nine-year-old brother had been taken in by a farmer with five children and twice as many acres of land. Quillish had spent an inordinate amount of time loitering around the man’s tool shed-workshop, where he had first begun to tinker with metal and machinery.
A tactfully-unspecified quantity of years later, Quillish’s love of experiment and exploration hadn’t aged a day.
One thing was for sure-Light would be back for more stories, whether Lawliet liked it or not.
He was venturing to imagine that Lawliet wouldn’t like it at all, which actually made it more fun.
Light smirked to himself as he backed carefully down the driveway. His colleague could chalk it up as revenge for the fact that Light’s radio was still set to the techno station.
[Chapter II] [Chapter IV]