[There's something careful and measured about the way L continues to regard Mello, as though trying to gauge the threat level with his considerably slowed reactions. The verdict he reaches is that the threat is at least not imminent, and it doesn't come with a change in posture, a slackening, the release of held breath.
It's just a quiet answer, one word, something anyone not close enough could mistake for him clearing his throat.]
Gin.
[No tonic, no soda or juice. Clear as it is, it still looks thicker and heavier than water in the leaded glass on the bar. L stopped trying to enjoy alcohol a long time ago, preferring to treat it as a masochistic purifying ritual rather than a hedonistic or relaxing indulgence. L has indulgent rituals, certainly, but they tend to pull him back in time, gorging on cookies or curling up around a mug of hot cocoa and marshmallows, prodding with his tongue at a sore and ominous dark spot on a back tooth and summarily ignoring it.
The vices of adulthood, contrarily, conversely, disgust him. When he partakes, it necessarily means paying some kind of personal penance. Cheap and burning liquor, sex partners who will bring more trouble than pleasure, a job that's as dangerous as it is exciting.]
[And Mello has been one for indulgence, as well. Before and after arriving here. Before, his indulgence was victory. Cut and dry. Dry like the gin sitting in front of his mentor, his idol, someone who could be God if the other would only allow it. Now? Sex and vices, because what else is there. L protects their enemy. L fucks their enemy and keeps house with him. The sickest game.]
[But all of them have always been ones to play games, aren't they?]
[He scrunches his nose in response, body relaxing a bit in response to the slight visible relaxation in the one he came here to confront. The rowdy crowd around them doesn't exist, the bartender doesn't exist, the floor beneath them doesn't exist.]
[Just this. This moment and the two of them momentarily not angrily biting at each other's throats. Mello perceives it that way, at least. And so he reaches for L's glass, forward as it might be.]
[But he's always been a forward thing, hasn't he? He's even dressed for the occassion; things are a bit tighter than they should be — it reminds him of his presentation to the world in Los Angeles when he had something to prove.]
[The glass isn't worth a battle. Not when L is known behind this bar, can communicate to the tender with a tap on the rough-hewn wood that he wants another added to his tab. He hates the learning process at a new place, because he hates explaining why he orders things that hurt to drink.
He doesn't stop or deny Mello, but the dark band around his wrist is fully still now. Side-set eyes catch some of the bar's dim light.]
It's not good...
[A lackluster warning. This isn't top-shelf gin, not even middle shelf.]
[Referring to Yagami of course, but while that will always be something that tugs at the back of Mello's mind as an affront: he has no intention of bringing it up now.]
[He takes the smallest sip — just to prove a point, make something of himself — but slides the glass back immediately after, turning a blonde head to lightly cough after the taste of the overly dry alcohol.]
Don't bother with another. [His words are soft. Lost. Why did he come here?]
[When the bartender arrives, he orders himself a cognac — triple — and languidly leans his elbow onto the bar, itself.]
[L's expression is dull and unchanging at Mello's comment about taste. Silly thing to get offended over; not so silly that he would consider it a lighthearted joke.
He takes his gin back, as well as the second one the bartender brings him in spite of Mello's instruction. The man's fingers trail with some doubt; he's seen L drink before and has an idea of his tolerance. He's not cut off yet, but the notion that he might wind up that way isn't off the table.
He downs the first, finishes it, coughing into his sleeve. He hates it, too. It tastes like the poison it is, though, and so he at least loves its commitment to truth.]
I do.
[He sounds hoarse and has to clear his throat, hand wrapped around the second glass.]
[And Mello squints when L coughs; why would someone torture themselves that way? Guilt. A desire to suffer. Mello's never known any of that — even when he was almost fifteen and walking down the cold, pouring streets of London, Mello never desired discomfort. It pulls at something in him, but that's not why he's here, is it?]
[His body shifts against the bar, accepting the cognac when it's delivered. Now, he concentrates on L's face, his expression. He fucking wants to hurt, and Mello — with all of his lingering childish curiousity — wants to know why.]
Here.
[He urges the glass towards his mentor. Former mentor. Competition. Whatever.]
[L glances at the cognac as it's placed in front of them and slid his way. More alcohol's not a great idea right now, but he doesn't come to this district and these dark corners in search of wisdom. He's tried it; it leaves him hungry and aching, dreading something that doesn't have a name.]
I've tried all of it. Everything this place has to offer. Other places. I know it's a gentler finish, but... so's coffee.
[I want this, now.]
Besides, I won't make it home if I drink so much so quickly.
[Mello shifts a bit closer to L; while he wouldn't consider cognac to possess a gentle finish, it's surely different than the dry, scratchy finish of a sip of gin. But he sips a bit of his own in response to the refusal, acts as nonchalant as possible.]
Mm.
[He's a selfish thing, and Mello doesn't care whether or L makes it home without drunken struggles. He's a powerful witch; what can really happen?]
[What Mello wants spans leagues and universes, and there is no immediate response. Instead, he sips the cognac. It's warm, sweet, and burns going down as it always does. Heady, thick. He's regarding L with a standoffish gaze; how can he even seem vulnerable, right now? A moment, two, before he goes on.]
I.
[But Mello was never one to hesistate.]
Hurt her, [he admits, and fuck if it doesn't make him feel small to do so.] It wasn't intentional, and when you said that I hurt you —
[The sentence is left unfinished, but his eyes ask: was it the same?]
[Rub it in. That's all L has ever done since Mello came back here. Though there's still the child in him that near-flinches at the reprimand, and he takes another sip to wash it away.]
[Maybe he wants L to scold him, in a way. Show Mello that there's still something there — no matter what it is.]
She's fine, [he snips, sounding like an abusive 'lover' at his worst. But really, she is fine. To his knowledge, at least.]
[L's drinking. L's well on his way to drunk, if he's not there already. But he asks like it's an obvious truth, poorly and insultingly obfuscated.]
I've been her tutor for months. We've shared kindness and comfort... of course I'm protective of her. Did she just tell you she's fine? Are you assuming it, or... is she really?
[Comfort. Is that what L wants to call it? Either way, Mello is torn between sickening jealousy and the absolute need for L to challenge him on a visceral level in order to show that he gives a shit at all aside from concern over Alex. Alex is fine. Mello can and will take care of her. This is about them, right now.]
[He takes a long, deep drink from his glass before he answers and when he does: there's no shame in his eyes as he practically stares his (former?) mentor down.]
Says she is, but she never is yea.
[There's always something there. A tremor of nerves, doubt. Mello can feel it through the bond even when nothing has happened at all. He often wonders if he's the one who makes her nervous, or if that's just her baseline.]
Don't suppose you have any insight to that as her 'teacher.'
[Something about L's lackluster distance sharpens, draws more present at Mello's admission.]
Only drunks and children tell the truth.
[Now we're getting somewhere. There's no reproach or judgment in his eyes and his tone as he turns to face his would-be successor more fully, holding his empty glass in his long, thin hands.]
Experiences shape us. The circumstances of birth influence experience... doubtless, you know as much as I do about hers, if not more.
[What he knows isn't his to share; he suspects that all three of them are in an eternal stalemate as far as sharing sensitive information goes.]
Do you want to help her, or to own her? Honest question... I feel it's important to know.
[A muffled mph at that question. Does L really think so lowly of him. Mello doesn't answer immediately. For a long, few moments actually. Simply turns his lips into a grim line before he takes another sip, maintains the silence.]
[His body is tense and relaxed at once, and he won't look L in the eye. Not right now, at least. He's conflicted, out of his element. Beside him is his idol: someone that he once revered so much that he would have complied with anything, someone he once found God-like. Fuck, he'd even crawled on top of him that time when he wasn't more than a child, didn't he?]
[And L threw him to the floor then, as he does now.]
[Some lessons will never be learned.]
Both, [he replies: simple and concise, and he wishes this wasn't anything more than them. Doesn't L know? Doesn't L remember?]
[Oh, but he remembers too much. Things of which Mello has no recollection.]
[L has spent an entire career conquering and claiming the identities of others. Even he knows the limits of lies and hypocrisy, what he can get away with when he's being meaningfully confronted by another who desires and demands voraciously, filling something empty and rotten until it's silver-coated, hoping that no one perceives weakness or decay.]
Understanding it means having a sense of when it hurts more than it helps, though. That's rather the point.
[Mph. Mello doesn't want that answer. What he wants now is L's attention but instead: he's receiving the subject at hand. His glass is empty like his stomach — sinking and aching — and he can't turn his eyes to the older man. Not yet.]
[Everything, Mello thinks. A year ago, even, he would have never imagined it would be possible to have such a bitter thought regarding L. The last he can remember — during the heat of the investigation — was land-shifting annoyance that L knew of his proteges and chose to delete his fucking intel in the instance of his death.]
[Even then, the wide-eyed little blonde boy thought there had to be a reason. L did nothing without purpose.]
[And now?]
[He surveys the other, drink still in hand. The furrow of his brows is a mixture of confusion and offense; L has done nothing but fuck with him since Mello arrived in this place. Arrived dead and confused, and L could've been the one to pull him out of it, but instead — ]
[Instead it was fucking Kira who offered guidance, even if Mello would never trust the villain's motives.]
[A slow blink, another sip to clear his head of intrusive thoughts.]
[He ends up returning the inquiry with a lift of his shoulders, murmuring something about 'I used to trust you, you know' around the rim of the glass.]
[L's eyes linger witheringly on Mello. Mumbled or not, able to hear clearly or not above the ambient din in the bar, the general gist of his meaning isn't difficult at all to discern.]
You've always been angry. At nothing and everything. I don't suppose you know how to be outside of that state, when it informs the baseline of your very existence... but anger asks for an object, or it doesn't really work. It's like curiosity or anticipation, that way.
[The shrunken orca has started to circle L's wrist again, but slowly, as though it's a quarry.]
Unconsciously, we all work to maintain what we know and where we're comfortable. At the bottom of enough glasses, here, you'll find anger, and I'll find melancholic boredom. Wherever we go to bed, that's what we'll respectively find, and wherever we wake up, that's what we'll respectively find. It's not fucking with you; it's that nothing changes, not even here.
[If most of that didn't ring true, Mello would swear to himself and a non-present God that the hopelessness rolling from L's tongue was only the alcohol speaking. But that isn't the case, is it?]
[No. Because what are any of they without purpose? There's certainly none here. Not really.]
[Glazed eyes lock onto the orca long enough to ponder how it behaves in relation to L — Mello's own Phylax is such a vile thing.]
So you think you're my default, then.
[Accompanied by a chuckle. L thinks that he's the only real thing that exists to Mello in this world and something about that rings of hubris. A hubris Mello would admire under any other set of conditions, but now?]
[L knows how they all operate. Of course Mello would find his location if he wanted a meeting. This is gaslighting at its finest, and he's not going to bite. Not now, anyway.]
Yeah?
[And now he's drained the glass. And fully intends to order another. Tomorrow's bound to be shit. He positions himself closer to L, lowers his voice because accusations are never taken lightly. No matter where they come from.]
[The bartender glances over, drying a glass as he approaches with his brows raised. L mumbles his answer before he arrives.]
Yagami's not your concern anymore. I'm talking about the woman you hurt, who you want to help and own. Even drinking, and wandering... I don't stray far from the topic at hand. That's what you came to discuss, isn't it? Alex, and us.
[Focus up, he doesn't say out loud, but the implication is in his tone. He quickly places another drink order; at this point, beer would be reckless.
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It's just a quiet answer, one word, something anyone not close enough could mistake for him clearing his throat.]
Gin.
[No tonic, no soda or juice. Clear as it is, it still looks thicker and heavier than water in the leaded glass on the bar. L stopped trying to enjoy alcohol a long time ago, preferring to treat it as a masochistic purifying ritual rather than a hedonistic or relaxing indulgence. L has indulgent rituals, certainly, but they tend to pull him back in time, gorging on cookies or curling up around a mug of hot cocoa and marshmallows, prodding with his tongue at a sore and ominous dark spot on a back tooth and summarily ignoring it.
The vices of adulthood, contrarily, conversely, disgust him. When he partakes, it necessarily means paying some kind of personal penance. Cheap and burning liquor, sex partners who will bring more trouble than pleasure, a job that's as dangerous as it is exciting.]
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[But all of them have always been ones to play games, aren't they?]
[He scrunches his nose in response, body relaxing a bit in response to the slight visible relaxation in the one he came here to confront. The rowdy crowd around them doesn't exist, the bartender doesn't exist, the floor beneath them doesn't exist.]
[Just this. This moment and the two of them momentarily not angrily biting at each other's throats. Mello perceives it that way, at least. And so he reaches for L's glass, forward as it might be.]
[But he's always been a forward thing, hasn't he? He's even dressed for the occassion; things are a bit tighter than they should be — it reminds him of his presentation to the world in Los Angeles when he had something to prove.]
May I?
[Of course he may. Mello will take it anyway.]
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He doesn't stop or deny Mello, but the dark band around his wrist is fully still now. Side-set eyes catch some of the bar's dim light.]
It's not good...
[A lackluster warning. This isn't top-shelf gin, not even middle shelf.]
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[Referring to Yagami of course, but while that will always be something that tugs at the back of Mello's mind as an affront: he has no intention of bringing it up now.]
[He takes the smallest sip — just to prove a point, make something of himself — but slides the glass back immediately after, turning a blonde head to lightly cough after the taste of the overly dry alcohol.]
Don't bother with another. [His words are soft. Lost. Why did he come here?]
[When the bartender arrives, he orders himself a cognac — triple — and languidly leans his elbow onto the bar, itself.]
Figured you'd prefer something sweeter.
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He takes his gin back, as well as the second one the bartender brings him in spite of Mello's instruction. The man's fingers trail with some doubt; he's seen L drink before and has an idea of his tolerance. He's not cut off yet, but the notion that he might wind up that way isn't off the table.
He downs the first, finishes it, coughing into his sleeve. He hates it, too. It tastes like the poison it is, though, and so he at least loves its commitment to truth.]
I do.
[He sounds hoarse and has to clear his throat, hand wrapped around the second glass.]
It's just that I can enjoy sweet things sober.
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[His body shifts against the bar, accepting the cognac when it's delivered. Now, he concentrates on L's face, his expression. He fucking wants to hurt, and Mello — with all of his lingering childish curiousity — wants to know why.]
Here.
[He urges the glass towards his mentor. Former mentor. Competition. Whatever.]
Try this.
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I've tried all of it. Everything this place has to offer. Other places. I know it's a gentler finish, but... so's coffee.
[I want this, now.]
Besides, I won't make it home if I drink so much so quickly.
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[Mello shifts a bit closer to L; while he wouldn't consider cognac to possess a gentle finish, it's surely different than the dry, scratchy finish of a sip of gin. But he sips a bit of his own in response to the refusal, acts as nonchalant as possible.]
Mm.
[He's a selfish thing, and Mello doesn't care whether or L makes it home without drunken struggles. He's a powerful witch; what can really happen?]
I want to speak to you about Alex, yea.
[Cut to the chase, then.]
And about us.
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[He pulls the second glass of gin towards him. He'll need more then, he's decided.]
Start, then. Say what's wrong. What you want.
[He drinks the gentlest thing his lips can touch without it feeling profane.]
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I.
[But Mello was never one to hesistate.]
Hurt her, [he admits, and fuck if it doesn't make him feel small to do so.] It wasn't intentional, and when you said that I hurt you —
[The sentence is left unfinished, but his eyes ask: was it the same?]
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Overbright eyes turn Mello's way, sharply, when he ways what he does.]
You hurt her.
[He repeats it, slowly, soft like the air has been mostly crushed from his lungs.]
She's your Bonded, and your lover.
[Like L was once. That hangs between them like something dead and rotting.]
Is she... safe? Alright?
[Reaching, blindly, for more to drink. The tender has afforded him a small mercy they'll both regret later, more of the acrid same.]
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[Maybe he wants L to scold him, in a way. Show Mello that there's still something there — no matter what it is.]
She's fine, [he snips, sounding like an abusive 'lover' at his worst. But really, she is fine. To his knowledge, at least.]
You're protective of her.
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[L's drinking. L's well on his way to drunk, if he's not there already. But he asks like it's an obvious truth, poorly and insultingly obfuscated.]
I've been her tutor for months. We've shared kindness and comfort... of course I'm protective of her. Did she just tell you she's fine? Are you assuming it, or... is she really?
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[Comfort. Is that what L wants to call it? Either way, Mello is torn between sickening jealousy and the absolute need for L to challenge him on a visceral level in order to show that he gives a shit at all aside from concern over Alex. Alex is fine. Mello can and will take care of her. This is about them, right now.]
[He takes a long, deep drink from his glass before he answers and when he does: there's no shame in his eyes as he practically stares his (former?) mentor down.]
Says she is, but she never is yea.
[There's always something there. A tremor of nerves, doubt. Mello can feel it through the bond even when nothing has happened at all. He often wonders if he's the one who makes her nervous, or if that's just her baseline.]
Don't suppose you have any insight to that as her 'teacher.'
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Only drunks and children tell the truth.
[Now we're getting somewhere. There's no reproach or judgment in his eyes and his tone as he turns to face his would-be successor more fully, holding his empty glass in his long, thin hands.]
Experiences shape us. The circumstances of birth influence experience... doubtless, you know as much as I do about hers, if not more.
[What he knows isn't his to share; he suspects that all three of them are in an eternal stalemate as far as sharing sensitive information goes.]
Do you want to help her, or to own her? Honest question... I feel it's important to know.
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[His body is tense and relaxed at once, and he won't look L in the eye. Not right now, at least. He's conflicted, out of his element. Beside him is his idol: someone that he once revered so much that he would have complied with anything, someone he once found God-like. Fuck, he'd even crawled on top of him that time when he wasn't more than a child, didn't he?]
[And L threw him to the floor then, as he does now.]
[Some lessons will never be learned.]
Both, [he replies: simple and concise, and he wishes this wasn't anything more than them. Doesn't L know? Doesn't L remember?]
[Oh, but he remembers too much. Things of which Mello has no recollection.]
You understand that, yea.
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[L has spent an entire career conquering and claiming the identities of others. Even he knows the limits of lies and hypocrisy, what he can get away with when he's being meaningfully confronted by another who desires and demands voraciously, filling something empty and rotten until it's silver-coated, hoping that no one perceives weakness or decay.]
Understanding it means having a sense of when it hurts more than it helps, though. That's rather the point.
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You're fucking with me.
[A murmur. An accusation.]
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[More impatient and tired, than forceful denial. He is impatient; he is tired.]
What would I have to gain from that?
[Appealing to something that Mello can believe or appreciate, if the notion of experience leading to fatigue isn't cutting it.]
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[Even then, the wide-eyed little blonde boy thought there had to be a reason. L did nothing without purpose.]
[And now?]
[He surveys the other, drink still in hand. The furrow of his brows is a mixture of confusion and offense; L has done nothing but fuck with him since Mello arrived in this place. Arrived dead and confused, and L could've been the one to pull him out of it, but instead — ]
[Instead it was fucking Kira who offered guidance, even if Mello would never trust the villain's motives.]
[A slow blink, another sip to clear his head of intrusive thoughts.]
[He ends up returning the inquiry with a lift of his shoulders, murmuring something about 'I used to trust you, you know' around the rim of the glass.]
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You've always been angry. At nothing and everything. I don't suppose you know how to be outside of that state, when it informs the baseline of your very existence... but anger asks for an object, or it doesn't really work. It's like curiosity or anticipation, that way.
[The shrunken orca has started to circle L's wrist again, but slowly, as though it's a quarry.]
Unconsciously, we all work to maintain what we know and where we're comfortable. At the bottom of enough glasses, here, you'll find anger, and I'll find melancholic boredom. Wherever we go to bed, that's what we'll respectively find, and wherever we wake up, that's what we'll respectively find. It's not fucking with you; it's that nothing changes, not even here.
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[No. Because what are any of they without purpose? There's certainly none here. Not really.]
[Glazed eyes lock onto the orca long enough to ponder how it behaves in relation to L — Mello's own Phylax is such a vile thing.]
So you think you're my default, then.
[Accompanied by a chuckle. L thinks that he's the only real thing that exists to Mello in this world and something about that rings of hubris. A hubris Mello would admire under any other set of conditions, but now?]
You're wrong.
[Besides.]
I haven't come to talk about that.
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[He lazily reaches for the remainder of his drink.]
It's not my point, though. Your anger doesn't just affect us. Don't be fooled by an uncommonly good ability to conceal pain.
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[L knows how they all operate. Of course Mello would find his location if he wanted a meeting. This is gaslighting at its finest, and he's not going to bite. Not now, anyway.]
Yeah?
[And now he's drained the glass. And fully intends to order another. Tomorrow's bound to be shit. He positions himself closer to L, lowers his voice because accusations are never taken lightly. No matter where they come from.]
And who else is it affecting?
[As he signals for the bartender.]
Yagami?
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Yagami's not your concern anymore. I'm talking about the woman you hurt, who you want to help and own. Even drinking, and wandering... I don't stray far from the topic at hand. That's what you came to discuss, isn't it? Alex, and us.
[Focus up, he doesn't say out loud, but the implication is in his tone. He quickly places another drink order; at this point, beer would be reckless.
He does not order beer.]
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