I needed to upload this somewhere, so I'm just going to leave it here. Un-betaed.

Happy birthday Light-o!! Here goes a little something for you!

Inexplicable happy Kira-less AU FTW! (I still love your crazy ass kami, but let's allow Light-kun to enjoy his birthday insanity-free this time).

28th of february, 2010.

The most horrid smell was coming from the kitchen.

It was, no lie, the worst smell Light had ever experienced in his relatively short but nonetheless abundantly eventful life.

He thought about pretending not to notice, but it was starting to get worse. Visions of an entire family of marsupials deciding to crawl up and die in their cupboards kept surfacing in his mind's eye.

Sadly, he could guess with what he presumed was astounding accuracy just what exactly was happening in the previously pristine kitchen. It didn't take a certified genius to do the math.

It was the 28th of February, it was roughly eight thirty in the morning, Watari was nowhere to be found, and L's work space was suspiciously empty. Logic followed: L was trying -unsuccessfully, by the smell of it- to bake him a birthday cake. Watari was probably out procuring what he deemed a more edible kind of pastry, as he was no doubt -with his magical powers of precognition- able to foresee the inevitable outcome that was to follow L, in a kitchen, cooking (any type of cooking), without assistance or supervision.

Light allowed himself a moment to appreciate such an endearing, if inescapably futile, gesture, before he took one last -for the most part- uncontaminated breath and started charging straight for the war zone.

In all honesty, he thought such bravery should be praised, commended and generally awed at, but alas, he was sadly lacking in impressionable spectators.

When he finally opened the door it was, as cliches would have it, worse than he'd imagined.

There was not a surface, from floor to ceiling, that wasn't currently covered by substances unimagined. All of it had become a white, yellow, pink and green -green?- mess. A mess in which it took him a few seconds plus a rather comical double-take to finally spot the detective-turned-pastry chef, as he was sporting perfect camouflage, what with himself also covered head to toe in multicolored goo.

He was standing in front of the center isle, looking absolutely miserable with a butter stick in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, the only recognizable features his signature slouch, unkempt hair -heavens knew how it had survived mostly intact- and his pitch black eyes, which were currently wide open in full-blown wet puppy dog mode. It was adorable in the same way it was when upon coming home, you found said puppy had proceeded to deplete your stock of toilet paper by spreading it throughout the house.

Undeniable cute, with a side note of exasperated annoyance. Which was usually the case when it came to the number one detective. Although sometimes the proportions were inverted.

The point was, it was quite a spectacle.

It was a rather disheartened voice that interrupted his thoughts. "Light-kun has just ruined his birthday surprise."

Light managed a mostly straight face, and limited himself to an eyebrow raise. "Are you sure? I think you beat me to it."

At this L's dejected expression kicked it up a notch, and raised a pout to the puppy-dog eyes. "Light-kun is mean. He fails to appreciate the extent to which I've endeavored to concoct a perfect looking specimen of a cake for his 24th birthday. He knows that for no other would I go to the lengths that I've gone to make this a pleasant birthday, especially while he is away from his home and family. And yet all he does is mock my efforts." He sniffed and looked away, apparently to thoroughly inspect some eggshells that had somehow found their way to the ceiling.

The melting butter-stick and wooden spoon he was still holding weren't helping the act.

Light sighed. "I'm sorry L, but you have to know by now what happens every time you go into the kitchen with the intent to cook. I swear parakeets have a steeper learning curve than you."

He managed the final steps to the isle without cringing too much about the squelch his shoes made against the tiles, and started rummaging through the drawers for a clean dishtowel. "Nevertheless, I suppose the adage stands, and it's the sentiment that counts."

With a victorious 'Aha!', dishtowel in hand, he immersed himself in the task of getting the worst of the goo off the sticky detective. While he was at it he almost didn't catch the muffled 'Damn straight it counts', and barely stifled the laughter that threatened to surface, which would have no doubt upset L further.

After he'd finished his ministrations -that frankly hadn't made that much of a difference- and got L to finally abandon his wooden utensil (the butter had slipped to the floor to join the unidentified mess on the floor a couple of minutes ago), he started ushering the detective out of the kitchen.

"Where are we going Light-kun?" the older man asked over his shoulder.

"You are going to the bathroom to get this stuff off yourself before it dries. I'm going back to the pits of floury hell to see if I can get at least part of it cleaned before Watari returns and promptly has a heart attack."

"Should Light-kun be doing that on his special day?", the detective asked while getting hand imprints all over the bathroom door and it's frame, like some kind of rupest painting.

Light got the shower running while L just stood there in the middle of the room, goop slowly dripping from his hands and clothes. "Well, it's not like I'm not used to cleaning after your messes."

At the detective's pout -but no rebuttal- Light offered a tired smile. "Look, it's fine. Just get yourself cleaned, Watari and I will take care of the kitchen, and by noon we'll be out celebrating at whichever ridiculously expensive restaurant you're taking me to in order to make up for this domestic catastrophe you've caused."

L shuffled his sticky toes against the tiled floor, and looked up as if considering the deal.

Really, Light should have known by the glint in the detective's eyes when they set on him again.

"Fair enough."

That's about all the warning he got before he suddenly found himself in he arms of a very slimy, very sticky L. Damned his sneaky ninja skills! Light hadn't even seen him pounce!

As his pulchritude inclined mind attempted to process the current circumstances, and L rubbed his cake-mixture ridden face over his stunned partner's cheek, neck and shoulder, he barely managed to catch the softly murmured 'Happy birthday Light-kun' against his shirt.

-

As he laid in bed that night, still scratching some crusty cake-goo from behind his left ear, Light Yagami surmised that all in all, as far as birthdays went, this had been a pretty damned good one.

Light! I will always love you, my most favourite sociopath! Even if you've been dead for a month, happy birthday kami D: