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L was aware of his faults. He'd psychoanalysed himself every year since he'd learned of Sigmund Fraud's theory during the mandatory therapy sessions at Wammy's House. Therapy was soon unnecessary once he had corrected all the debilitating behaviourist issues on his own merit. He now knew himself in his entirety. The functioning of his brain speed and metacognition he could now present in percentiles, his limited emotions stunted by an inadequate childhood and the social handicaps it thus caused were analysed and evaluated. He knew his habits and addictions, why he did them and, if they proved a moderate threat to his health, how to stop them. He was fully present in his day to day, never mindless or subconscious, his every movement and decision was aware and planned. While he knew himself and his faults, he was, however, less aware of the unpredictability that was emotions due to his upbringing. Conclusions could be drawn from consistent data and a mean thus provided, yet anomalies occurred far more often where emotions were concerned, and when given a lack of repetitive data L became unsure. A word foreign in regards to his self awareness.
One such moment had been when he first played tennis with Light. The controlled test was preplanned to prove the hypothesis that Light shared a documented trait with Kira: competitiveness, and in addition, what particular type of competitiveness. It would prove whether Light cared about fairness, his willingness to cheat, his sportsmanship, his soreness when losing and his arrogance when winning. Light won. The test thus proved a 87% correlation between Light and Kira with an observed predisposition towards narcissism, it was a useful sum of data that L documented into his mental library and would be referred to in future interactions but, Light won. He had won with his own efforts and no foul play, L had predicted he would try and contest an out ball during their match though it hadn't happened. They ended the game with a shake of hands, all the while Light's eyes shined mirthfully through his faux modest expression. L's hand had spasmed in their shared grip, clutching the sweaty palm tighter by 2 dynamometers. Light's smile had twitched at what they both knew was an unintentional contraction, and, and L had been angry. His lungs burned as if he needed an increase in oxygen, though despite numerous deep breaths the prickling ache remained. L didn't like losing, and to the less aware eyes of a disguised Quillish it would have looked like he lost for the sake of the experiment. He hadn't. He'd wanted to win, the want while beating the leather ball hard enough to shake his arm, shoulder and torso had been absolute. Similar to his single mindedness in regards to typically unsolvable cases. The difference being, this was the first time he'd been exceeded in such a mindset. It was jarring, disorienting, angering and above all humiliating to know Light was laughing himself sick but no one else could see it but him.
An echo of the tennis match curdled beneath his sternum throughout their other meetings, all under the guise of polite acquaintanceship which L adhered to, though only just. Some normalised behaviours weren't worth the decrease in his mental processings. Through these interactions L came to the conclusion that Light was an intelligent individual, on par with himself but with a weakness to societal perception and possessing an abject cockiness. L was undecided about whether Light was aware of his faults and decided they weren't debilitating enough to change or was unknowing to the fundamentals of himself. It didn't matter in regards to the Kira case but strangely it was something L wanted to know regardless. He wanted to know if they shared a learned trait to accompany the many they already possessed or if he was still alone in his mental awareness. L soon came to the disappointing conclusion that they weren't as alike as he'd initially presumed when, through reverse psychology, L deduced that Light was the most likely Kira candidate at the current but increasing percentage of 91%. Unfortunately Light realised his perfectly solid alibis were incriminating, though only after he was on the Kira Team. When L presented his profiling of Light and Kira, the deductions he had thus made in addition to what the small team of police willing to assist in the Kira case knew so far, there was outcry. The later addition of Misa Misa was a tactical annoyance he attempted not to dwell on.
Another such moment of unsurety was when Light volunteered to be confined, it felt abjectly wrong to have another being of equal intelligence beneath him. The disordent feeling increased even more so when they were linked by metal. It was necessary, the surety of knowing Light's every daily action, interaction and, to a degree, emotion was vital during Kira's increasing unpredictability. Light wasn't happy with the arrangement, of course, though he understood. However L hadn't anticipated the sheer interconnected monotony they would share. Perhaps in figures and data but not in regards to how that would affect his emotions and moods. It was a flaw L knew of himself too well, he considered his emotions and others as secondary and as such he didn’t know what he was feeling until it negatively affected his day to day deductions. Then came such a day.
It was on a tensile couch occupied by himself and the shadow of his current mental disarray that he crouched, big toes rubbing and thumb pressing into his bottom lip, that he gazed at Light after the most bizarre admission. Analysing through his peripheral the crinkled documents in Light's clenched palm.
"Is there something on Light's mind?" He enquired, his tone insinuating boredom.
Light's eyebrows crumpled slightly, barely visible in profile as he feigned focus on the glaring television screen, legs crossed away in unease and body language closed. A hand cupped his face in a subconscious barrier and clenched fingers now began to fiddle with what they both knew to be pointless documents. The chain tinkled harshly across the glass coffee table. L expected a response such as "Shall we go to bed Ryuuzaki?", "I'm simply tired", "We need to catch Kira", or even "I worry for my overworked Father." And so the preceding question caught L quite off guard.
"What do you think of me?" Light mumbled, eyes still staring into the muted news report as fingers ceased their meaningless movements. L couldn't form a socially acceptable answer in a socially acceptable amount of time so he played the silence. A minute stretched between them, far longer than L had predicted. Light suddenly glanced up, obviously annoyed, and his eyes glinted like honey in the low light. A sensory sweetness tingled his tongue and he licked his thumb to disperse it. This made Light's furrowed brows and twisted lips flicker before returning with greater prominence. L found the reaction very curious.
"Surely Light knows the answer to that question," he intoned softly, unsure as to what Light wanted to discuss.
"I'm not asking about Kira!" He bellowed quite suddenly, they're quiet conversation and shy surroundings effectively broken and L wondered if it would prompt Watari, ever vigilant to the cameras live feed, to intervene before Light's emotions brought them to a culmination of fists once again since there was no task force to interrupt them so late. L remained still, not wanting to seem skittish or intimidating by moving, though it did little to put out Light's ire. He had both palms fisted, resting purposefully on his thighs as angry huffs that never fully filled his chest filled the space instead as he stared L into the sofa seats. Since joining the Kira Team, L watched Light for approximately 10 hours a day, more so when other cases didn't require his attention, but the depth of his brown eyes whenever they shared a stare always seemed to cause a peculiar reaction of raised telogen hairs.
"What do you think of me?" He asked again, a slight waver in his even tone. L could only thumb his lip in mild surprise. Not only was it the first conversation between them to broach more than phatic or transactional dialogue but Light had never shown such an adverse reaction to the insinuation of being Kira. L chose silence once again as he considered how to respond. It was unclear what had brought Light's irregularity upon them, but perhaps an irregular response was in need to correct the anomaly.
"Light is one of few I've ever had the pleasure of being unsure around," he spoke around his thumb. Light only looked at him, eyebrows raised and lips parted in bemused disbelief.
"And that's a compliment?" Light asked, head tilting slightly and fists unfurling at L's rare show of honesty. L's smile was obscured by his thumb.
"I was unaware you were after a compliment Light, surely you get enough of those but very well. You're eyes are like honey, will that suffice?" A silence pervaded the space for long seconds until a slow, creeping pink blotted Light's peach complexion, L's eyes widened at the sight. Light turned to the pixelated screen once more, hand moving to cup his face more thoroughly and L could only stare at the unfamiliar expression on a now familiar countenance.
L realised quite suddenly that he felt something for Light that he hadn't ever felt for another. Though he was still unsure whether it was friendship or something more obscure it didn't necessarily matter, it couldn't matter, and L wouldn't let it affect the case. His emotions were never a primary focus throughout bygone cases or even his everyday life. It would be simple enough to ignore it, he had to, he couldn't let himself be biased. After all, he still needed to prove the evidence accumulated in his own mind that Light was undoubtedly Kira as much as Kira was undoubtedly Light, and no emotion, attachment or sentimentality would stop the inevitable act of justice. Though L knew, as surely as he knew himself, that it would.