To Conclude, a death note fanfic

CRACK FIC. The result of boredom.

In which L fakes his own death, Watari doesn't die, and Light thinks he's won. Has a hazy hold on canon. Vague Light x L.

Today, L decided he was going to die.

More specifically, he decided he was going to fake dying.

The detective supposed, as he stuck a bit of chocolate torte in his mouth, that everything had to go indefinitely smoothly. No slip-ups whatsoever. He daren't think what would happen if Watari were to completely botch up the whole operation and perhaps dump his body in the Pacific instead of in a coffin full of strawberries and whipped cream like he'd specifically requested in his will.

Oh, but he guessed whipped cream would be rather difficult to breathe in. L chewed a maraschino cherry thoughtfully. And twirled about a fork in concentration.

Eventually, after a great bit of thinking, he decided that a bag of chocolate-covered strawberries would be satisfactory for this.

He would have to remember to tell Watari about that. Provided that he was in a composed enough state after hearing of L's plan to fake his death, all for just confirming a guess.

Or perhaps he would put it in his will. His… mock will, as Light might get quite suspicious if he didn't leave any such thing. Such a paranoid little brat.

L smiled, a tiny tiny tiny bit of affection in it.

He reminded himself to tell Watari to keep his body safe… somewhere. God only knew what Light might possibly do to it in the excitement of his victory gloat.

Hm.

Happily, L curled his tongue around a glazed strawberry and contemplated.

Light suspected that the tea had been poisoned. Or drugged. Contaminated, anyway, with something bad.

But with a dead L at his feet, did he really care at all? The sweet-addicted, barefooted, irritating, baggy-eyed, messy-haired, bloody brilliant-though-of-course-Light-would-never-admit-it bane of his existence was dead. So why should he care? [he thought, with his triumphant glowing eyes of doom.]

Light later went home skipping that grievous, grievous day.

Incidentally, L was extremely proficient at creating and perfecting chemical compounds used to treat illnesses, relieve symptoms, or modify chemical processes in the body for specific purposes. In other words, he was very good at making drugs, and his latest masterpiece was a little pill that, when taken, slowed the heart down sufficiently enough that a pulse cannot be felt. Coma-inducing, basically.

The pill can be dissolved in various liquids, and is tasteless, odorless, and, overall, quite hard to trace.

Everything was quickly arranged, everyone was alerted, and the funeral was set in two days. In the meantime, Watari made sure the body was sealed tight in a sleek black coffin where Light couldn't get in.

When Light daydreamed--

Complete and utter chaos. He was the ruler of a new world, and he loved it. He drank in the air, the pure, clean air untainted by evil, like an intoxicated madman.

He said hello cheerfully to an apple vendor, who Light knows is a kind and good man (since would he really let anyone who is not live?), and he goes over, buys an apple, and bites into it. Delicious. A slightly acid taste, like wine.

He licks his lips almost sadistically.

Unbeknownst to him, if Light were ever to get completely, utterly drunk, he would have a tendency to wander into realistic daydreams, during which his physical body may do things that are not exactly advisable for a sane, dignified person. It is worth knowing that if this ever happens, Light would have absolutely no recollection of what he had done during the time he was heavily inebriated, just like many other people.

Of course, he doesn't know about this, since he never, ever drinks.

Back to L's magnificent pill: it is fatal. Usually. When one takes it, one goes into a deep, deep coma from which one is hard-pressed to wake up.

Yet for some reason only L knew and an expert physiologist can possibly work out, the pill was quite safe on people with freakishly high body sugar content.

A funeral later, L woke up. The coffin was rather small, but he didn't much care for the size, since it provided him with enough room to move his arms capably around (and enough oxygen to probably last him about thirty minutes or so). Struggling a bit, he groped his surroundings and found a bag, which, as he did some more feeling around, felt like it was full of smooth, strawberry-shaped things.

L smiled. Good job, Watari. I ought to give him a raise. Or something.

He lay silently in the dark for a few more minutes, eating chocolate-covered strawberries with one hand and feeling around for his cell phone with the other. Eventually, he found it, and dialed as precisely as he could, which was pretty precise, in the dark.

The oxygen was quickly beginning to thin, but L didn't quite care. At least, if he actually died, he would die feasibly content with strawberries.

Watari felt his phone ring.

Time to pick up the young master, he sighed.

L gingerly stretched out his arms. "That feels better," he noted, tucking one hand comfortably in a pocket and licking the chocolate-stained index finger of the other one.

"Yes," said Watari quite dryly, yet with a bit of relief. "It still seems quite incredible that you made it."

"Mm." The other looked up at the sky. "It is not in my prerogative to fail, Watari."

"I am well aware."

They started to walk.

"So… it seems Light-kun is indeed Kira."

Watari's face was still. Inwardly, he really did like the boy, though Light did seem a bit mentally unbalanced all the same. Charming, though.

A breeze blew. L sniffed.

"Also. Was anyone with alcohol near my body during my whole…" He waved his arms vaguely. "… dying thing?"

A pause occurred.

"I do not believe so, no."

"How strange." L put a finger to his mouth and tipped his head a bit. "It smelled like wine inside the coffin." He sucked on an index finger thoughtfully. "And I think there are bite marks on my neck."

"How… strange," managed Watari.

They drove past Light's house, and Watari got an uneasy sense of foreboding when L told him to stop.

"You won't…"

His younger companion threw him a slightly amused look.

"It's fine." L paused, and glanced at the house behind him. After a silence, he added:

"… arguably fine… but at the very least, there's some semblance of fine-ness." He smiled. "Do get back in the car."

The elderly man got back in the car.

He wondered if he should worry about the thing L had taken with him.

And also, Watari wondered if L was currently on crack.

Light lay back on his bed, grinning uncontrollably. From the window, Ryuk watched him, a tiny bit scared and a tiny bit amused. Mostly he was feeling something rather like constipation, though he supposed it was because he hadn't had an apple in two hours.

"Uh… Light…?"

"Oh, hush, Ryuk. I'm currently busy planning an entire world right now, now that L is out of my way. So hush. Go and play with your dolls or something."

Ryuk was admittedly stunned.

"Um…"

"Ryuk," snapped Light, sounding more like his usual self, "you're distracting me. What do you want?"

"Uh…"

"Do you have an idea for my new world? Is that it?"

"Uhm…"

"Fine! Pitch me an idea, then!"

"Er…"

"Come on! Any ideas at all? What about sky color? Physical laws? Do you think it should have gravity? Would the concept of numbers exist at all?"

"Uh--"

Light gave a disgusted sigh. "Or I suppose you'd just want all the trees in my new world to be apple trees."

Ryuk perked up. That does sound nice.

"Figures. You'd want nothing else, and I have to plan out the details that actually matter," muttered Light, turning back to his contemplations of the world he'd create. "Now leave me alone, or else--"

"Or else what, Kira-kun?"

Light froze. Completely, utterly froze.

Ryuk shifted and looked guiltily at anywhere but Light. "Yeah… I was going to warn you about him, but you seemed so distracted."

"You--"

L smiled quite placidly, despite the fact that Light looked like he was practically going to… to…

The detective quite admired Light's ability to look so absolutely furious and surprised that even L's brilliance could not help him in constructing an adequate metaphor to describe Light's ability to look so absolutely furious and surprised.

"Hello, Kira."

One of Light's eyes was twitching. L was not surprised.

"You-- died-- how-- the hell-- how the hell--"

The other man gave a sardonic smile and held up a lock pick. "Your parents are not home right now, it seems," L remarked. "A social function? Work? And what about your sister, hm?" He pulled at a dark lock of hair.

"But I suppose it doesn't matter. Not at this very moment." He looked quite stern for a moment. "Though you must know, Light-kun, that it is not safe for little boys to stay home alone."

"That's not what I meant!" Light's voice has risen to a screech, and his hands entangled themselves in chestnut brown hair. "How the fuck are you alive?!"

The detective calmly nibbled a thumb. "Crude, Light-kun. But have you considered the possibility that perhaps," he offered with utmost seriousness, "I am not even alive, and you are having what is called a paranormal experience?"

Light stared at him.

"Or possibly," L continued nonchalantly, "you have finally lost your mind." He raised a single eyebrow. "Do you normally hold conversations with invisible beings in your room, Kira-kun?"

Light. Stared. At. Him. And his hands started to shake.

L smiled.

"Your eyes are quite lovely, you know, when they're all big like that."

In one corner, a certain shinigami couldn't help the snicker that escaped him.

Light was trembling.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOFF!"

"Oh, Kira-kun."

"Would you stop calling me that, you insomniac freak?"

"Must you resort to such infantile tactics? Kira-kun."

"Shut the hell up! You're supposed to be dead!"

"And you," pressed L, "are Kira. My suspicions are confirmed."

"Shut up!" cried Light. He took a few deep breaths and forced his body to relax. After a shaky sigh, he said, voice not trembling at all:

"Since you probably won't leave, how about we talk about exactly how faking your death confirmed that I am Kira? It'll give us a conversation topic, at least." Light inched slowly away from the other.

"Simple." L inched a bit closer. "You had an especially manic grin on your face when I fell. That was the last thing I saw, you know, before I blacked out."

"Fuck," Light muttered, and inched away again.

L studied him. "Your eyes give away a lot at the most intense of times."

Light twitched as L moved in a bit more.

"Also-- how did you do it?"

"A drug," L replied, waving a hand. He elaborated no more.

"A drug that you developed?" the other man muttered shrewdly.

L smiled. It was not a nice smile.

"Indeed. It is completely fatal, except for people who have high body sugar."

Light stared at him. Again. And then:

"Was there any reason as to why you chained both of us again?"

The detective considered this, and, with the somber air of imparting a great and personal truth, said:

"None whatsoever."

"Then why the hell--?" Light tried to scramble away, but L stopped him.

"Light-kun," the older man said sternly, "there must always be, at best, a foot and a half distance between us. So don't try to move away."

Why a foot and a half? asked Light mentally, then decided he didn't care to know.

Ryuk, meanwhile, was laughing his guts out in the corner.

Some two hours later of questioning, being questioned, falling into sulky silences every now and then, evading physical contact, being alternately called 'Kira-kun,' 'Light-kun,' 'Kira,' and, in one memorable slip-up, 'my Light,' Light felt ready to kill himself. Screw the world he was so carefully and lovingly planning just a few hours ago.

Your god, he calmly told an imaginary inhabitant of his imaginary world, is dead. Or rather, about to be. He's being currently pestered by a panda-eyed mutant who's surprisingly not diabetic considering how much sugar he consumes each day and holy fuck, did he just bring out a bag of chocolate-covered strawberries?

"Want one, Kira-kun?"

"… ugh."

Light opened his eyes and stared up into space.

Omigod, it was all a dream, wasn't it?

Today felt rather different. L frowned. The rain was pouring down in buckets, and the bells… the bells.

He knew he was going to die. And so…

Some time after an symbolic and extremely sensual foot massage, L died in Light's arms.

As his life blacked out, the great detective looked up, seeking for the truth, for confirmation, for validation… and got a somberly grievous look in return.

Light was an extremely talented actor, after all. And he was not going to slip up, not even at what seemed like the very last moment

Later, Light told Watari to stuff L's coffin with as much whipped cream as it could hold.

Let him choke on it, he thought spitefully. (And with a tinytinytiny bit of affection.)

"And some strawberries," he added politely to the bewildered older man. "I'm sure he would like that."

And so they'd grown fond of each other's mannerisms. :D

I had no idea where this entire thing came from. I suppose I kind of screwed you over with the whole dream thing. BUT AT LEAST LIGHT DIDN'T HAVE THAT HORRIBLE SMILE WHEN L DIED, RIGHT?

This is probably one of the strangest stories I've ever written. I've never written crack before, so it may have come off rather awkwardly…

And if you're wondering why parts of Light's dream were in L's point-of-view, then. . . uh. It's a dream. And anything can happen in a dream.... yes? =3