Title: Vanity, Thy Name Is…
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: hints of Light/Sayu; Light, Sayu, Misa; mentions of Ryuuga Hideki, Ryuk, L, Kiyomi, Yuri and Sachiko.
Warnings: Incestual themes.
Word Count: 1,667
Author's Note: A birthday!fic for Sari.

Light had told himself that the reason he wasn't able to focus was because Sayu kept crinkling the potato chip bag, but by now he knew better.

She was squealing over some teen idol—some Ryuuga Hideki—and he felt like throwing his book at the television just to get her to shut up. It wasn't like this was the first time Sayu was fixated over an actor—she was an average teenage girl and her crushes were as impulsive as the weather. It shouldn't have been anything new to him, and it shouldn't have incensed him as much as it already had. But it did, and his chest was tight and it felt like there was something in his throat when in reality there was nothing.

He could have gotten up and went to his room, but that would have meant taking Ryuk with him and hearing his mindless chatter as he (unsuccessfully) tried to read. (Incidentally, Ryuk was hovering over him in complete silence, mindlessly engrossed by the melodramatic plot of the film.)

Light managed to get the gist of the paragraph (it had taken him four tries just to grasp what the nondescript text had meant; he was too preoccupied), and moved on to the next page (mostly to forget that pencil-neck of an idol his sister was enamored with—it was getting ridiculous).

"He's so perfect," Sayu said abruptly, her mouth full of chips. "Why can't every guy be like him?—he has the most gorgeous eyes."

Light felt his jaw tense reflexively, suddenly he felt like his self-restraint (what was left to it) was close to breaking in half. Perfect? he wanted to ask, What do you mean by perfect? He looked up at the television (glared at it, more like) and tried to see how an actor with disheveled blond hair and a plastic smile (with teeth far too straight and white to seem real, in his opinion) could be perfect. (Light could barely see his eyes; how could Ryuuga stand having so much hair plastered onto his face?)

Light cleared his throat, masked his annoyance with one of his winning smirks. "He's an actor, Sayu," he told her matter-of-factly. "It's not perfection, it's the make-up, lighting, and camera angles doing all the right things."

Sayu shot him a that's-what-you-want-me-to-think glance. "Come off it, onii-chan. You're just jealous."

He looked at her vacantly, futilely trying to find the right words to deflect her remark but to no avail. He didn't want to admit to himself that she may have been right—that no, he hadn't been annoyed by her incessant squealing, but more so the fact she had been squealing over him. He hated this insecure feeling of jealousy; he was the one with the immaculate grades, the charismatic personality, and the clean-cut good looks, so why was some (synthetic) actor having this sort of belittling affect on him?

(Ryuk was cackling and Light made a mental note to keep him away from all apples.)

"No, you're just misinformed." He said it lightly, trying not to snap at her, trying not to give Sayu the satisfaction that her words had cut him more deeply than he had expected. Then, briskly: "I'm going to read in my room."

Sayu bristled, muttered something like Just because you're smart doesn't mean you know everything, jerk, and turned up the volume on the television set. (If she was trying to annoy him, then it was working.)

Light reached the staircase and looked askance at the film, then at Sayu. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure why he felt so (annoyed? insecure? jealous?)—was it because of Ryuuga Hideki, or what his sister thought of him?

His throat suddenly felt dry, and Ryuk began chuckling behind him.

He dressed quickly, holding a towel to his sodden hair while simultaneously trying to button his shirt with the other hand. Misa had gotten out of her photo shoot earlier than expected and had called him fifteen minutes ago, telling him that she was on her way and would be there soon and that she missed him and that she was wondering if three dates in a row meant that she had won over Kiyomi and Yuri (when in actuality he was just keeping her happy so she could get L's real name for him).

It aggravated him beyond reason that L was using Ryuuga Hideki as an alias. Light understood the reasoning behind it, that if he had been foolish enough to write Ryuuga's name down in the Death Note, chances were he would've killed the real actor, which would be proof enough that he was Kira; but he felt like he was being taunted—toyed with. Light had seen Ryuuga Hideki's damn face on television so many times that, had L not taken his name as an (inconvenient) alias, he would've already written his name down in the Death Note.

(Ryuuga's unkempt blond hair accidentally catching on fire and just happening to give him life-threatening burns that would eventually lead to his untimely yet excruciatingly painful death—just a freak accident, right? He would have to ask Ryuk if this was feasible.)

Light quickly dried what hair he could with his towel. (Much good that would do him, since the towel was already drenched anyway.) There was a knock at the door, and when he called out, "What is it?" a muffled reply served as his response. He gritted his teeth together—it was probably his mother asking him if he needed his shirt ironed—and felt uncommonly irritable as he opened the bathroom door.

He'd been wrong—it wasn't his mother, it was Sayu; but this didn't really help his cause.

"What?"

She didn't respond; she was staring at him blankly, like there was something on his face. (He resisted the self-conscious urge to reach up and check his hair for any remaining shampoo for the sake of tempered nonchalance.) There was something in the way she looked at him that unnerved him, and he had to glance away for a moment before repeating, more emphatically now:

"What?"

"Oh." She blinked and straightened as if on cue. "She's, you know, um, downstairs." He lifted his eyebrows at her, was about to ask her if she meant Misa was downstairs when she cut in, told him, "I meant Misa's downstairs. She asked me to get you. Told me to tell you to hurry up—that if you're going to take any longer, you better look hotter than usual. Um, that's what she told me."

He stared at her in silence, tried to make sense of how odd that sounded coming from his sister (but why he wasn't as disturbed as he should have been).

"Right."—she glanced away, like it had occurred to her that she'd been looking at him too long—"I'll tell her that you're almost ready," she muttered. Sayu whisked out of the room quickly, her head low. (He pretended that the pink tint on her cheeks had just been his imagination.)

Light closed the door behind her, (which was silly because why bother?—he was already dressed) and turned to look at himself in the mirror. His hair was matted to his forehead and the sides of his face, and his fingers flexed reflexively in response. He combed it back into place, fixed the layers so they fell neatly over his forehead. His hair still looked too long (if he stepped back and unfocused his eyes, he was sure that he would look like…)—maybe because it was wet from his shower, or his towel had ruffled it more than he would've liked, or because he hadn't trimmed it in a while, (and he'd told himself that he would get around to it—when he had the time).

"Why did you change the channel?" Light tried to keep the smugness out of his voice as much as he could. He shifted Misa's coat from one arm to the other and looked at Sayu, who set the remote aside and picked up one of her college textbooks.

"Because I wanted to," she deadpanned.

He smirked just the slightest bit, leaned against the wall as he waited for Misa to finish helping their mother in the kitchen. "But I thought you were the one with the mad crush on Ryuuga Hideki."

"I was fifteen, onii-chan," she told him, emphasizing her point by giving him an are-you-still-treating-me-like-a-child? sort of look. "Everyone had crushes on pop stars back then—well, except you, but that's because you were a nerd." He narrowed his eyes in response and she giggled and threw one of her mechanical pencils at him.

"Why do you care anyway?"

Light pretended he hadn't heard her (Ryuk wasn't making things easier by saying, Hey, Light, your sister just asked you a question, you know) and called into the kitchen, impatience edging his voice as he asked Misa if she was done yet. (He had to get back to work, and the look on his sister's face was suddenly making him uncomfortable.)

Misa came out of the kitchen in a sort of frenzied dash. "Misa is sorry, Light-kun! Misa was just helping with the dishes!"

"That's fine," Light said shortly. "Let's just get going."

He helped Misa into her coat (strictly a formality—he wanted to make a decent impression on his mother); she whirled around girlishly, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and began wiping off any excess red lipstick with one hand and touching his hair with the other.

"Misa thinks Light-kun looks better with long hair," she approved, smiling sweetly when he looked at her.

He was about to tell her that he was planning on getting it trimmed that weekend when Sayu suddenly spoke from her spot on the couch. "Really, Misa-san?" she asked her thoughtfully. "I think onii-chan looks better with his hair neat and trimmed. It suits him."

He and Sayu touched gazes for a moment, and Light realized that he was more pleased than he should have been (and found that he didn't care, either).