Hello! For those of you who haven't read this fic before, this is in fact a re-posting of Mind Games. It was taken down after two years, because apparently I wrote an author's note where I shouldn't have. At one point it boasted over 200 000 hits and 934 reviews. I've decided that posting this fanfic anywhere else is too hard for my computer-illiteracy to handle, so here it is. I haven't changed a thing, except for taking out some of the author notes, just to make sure that I don't get kicked off the site again. Thanks to everyone for their support. You've all been wonderful to me, and so very patient. It seemed a shame to let one bad rap let this whole story waste away on my hard drive when I knew that so many people wanted it back. Thank you all once again.

Disclaimer: wild-filly does not own Death Note. If she did, L would be loved and cherished and most certainly not by Raito.

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Mind Games

Chapter 1: Insomniacs make Lousy Roommates

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I just can't look, it's killing me

And taking control

Jealousy, turning saints into the sea

Swimming through sick lullabies

Choking on your alibis

But it's just the price I pay

Destiny is calling me

Yagami Raito had seen many strange things in his lifetime. Having a gaunt, staring and apple-obsessed Shinigami appear in your life tends to make most other events seem relatively mundane. Indeed, had this particular situation that he was currently faced with not come up, then the arrival of Ryuuk could have maintained its previously unchallenged reign as the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him.

This however, was all before he ended up handcuffed to a member of the same gender.

Now, Yagami Raito thought himself relatively normal for a young homicidal genius sociopath. It can also be fairly said that Raito had not thought it logical for himself to become handcuffed to the spidery detective that was Ryuuzaki, L. He had contemplated many possible outcomes, but this one had well and truly thrown a spanner in the works. He had expected confinement, but this was certainly not the type that he had had in mind. If it had occurred to him that L would go to these highly embarrassing lengths, then he might have considered making a couple of provisos before advocating his innocence be proven through imprisonment. As far as Raito was concerned, what he was going through was now nothing short of torture.

It was now three in the morning, and Raito was sprawled in front of his computer, staring blankly into the fuzzy screen. Actually, it was his eyes that were doing all of the fuzzing. The screen was perfectly functional. Not that he was going to admit that. There wasn't a chance that he or his body were to blame for this slump.

It was all L's fault.

And indeed, like with most things in life, Raito was correct. The spindly insomniac was riveted on his own screen, black eyes even darker with self-enforced fatigue, great shadows gouging grooves into pallid skin. Frail fingers tacked the keys at intervals, mouse clicking and mingling with the faint tick of Raito's watch and the hum of the water cooler. Other than that, the room was deathly silent. All that confirmed that L was still alive was the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and the occasional flutter of his lids over tortured pupils. It amazed him that such a sharp mind needed to run on so little sleep. Raito himself, however, was another kettle of fish entirely.

"Haven't we done enough for the night, Ryuuzaki?" He tried to make the statement noncommittal, allowing his body to release a yawn that he had been suppressing out of pride. "Unless there's something groundbreaking that you've just found, I don't see the point in staying up like this."

L stared diligently ahead, without even blinking to suggest that he had heard Raito's complaint. Raito felt his fists clench despite himself, blinking heavily. His eyelids felt as though someone had lined them with lead. Even a genius had to sleep sometime. Although apparently L seemed capable of deferring this necessity for painfully prolonged periods of time. Lifting one hand to rub the sleep from his eyes set the handcuff links clinking, finally catching the hunched detective's attention.

"Sorry Yagami-kun?" It was both an apology and a question, and yet also neither. Raito steeled himself not to let his annoyance show.

"I'm tired, Ryuuzaki. I'm not functioning productively enough to merit staying up any longer." The politeness of his words grated on Raito's nerves. How was he supposed to maintain his perfect mask when he was being tortured so? There was no way that he was going to ask L outright to go to bed. It just sounded so… weak. Not to mention dodgy.

"Hm." L's response was as emotive and informative as Raito's carefully monitored facial expression. He cursed mentally. By the progress of things, he was going to have to play the pathetic role in order to get anywhere. How humiliating. He never thought he'd see the day that he'd be begging another male to stop work and come to bed. He shuddered. The words sounded wrong even in his head. He had to find some way to make it sound less disturbing than he thought it was. Sometimes it sucked being a genius. He was able to interpret words under all kinds of different contexts; very few of which at the moment said a lot about Raito's own sexuality. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

"Please. We started working just after eight this morning. I don't know how you manage to support these hours, but I'm just not as good at it as you." There. He'd finally admitted defeat to L in one precious area of life. Raito clenched his teeth. Such humility was almost agonizing. How very peculiar. But if it obtained the right reaction, then it would be worth it. Besides, what was wrong with being beaten in the 'Who doesn't need mascara to look like a panda?' contest? He could let L pull this one over him. He had bigger problems to overcome.

"Ah, Yagami-kun. I forget so easily…" L trailed off, absentmindedly brushing spiky black bangs from his face as he stared pensively up at the ceiling, thumb pinched between both lips meditatively. "This is a nuisance. I am not in the least bit tired." He sounded most putout, insofar as Ryuuzaki was ever openly annoyed. If Raito weren't so haggard with his own annoyance, then he might have thought to note this with some interest.

"Well I am," retorted Raito irritably. "Just perch the laptop on the night table or something. I can ignore the light. I just need to get some sleep."

L blinked, rolling one eye back at Raito. "But I can't sit properly on a bed." He was whining at Raito? What was the world coming to…

"Just lean your back against the headboard." How obvious was it?

"I can't balance a laptop on my knees. The screen tips, and besides, the underside of the computer is too hot." L listed off the reasons on his fingers, pointedly gesturing with each one, staring pointedly at Raito in the process.

"Then sit like a normal human being for a change," Raito was getting more and more angry. Was L testing his patience? Did he expect Raito to crack under the pressure of not enough sleep and aggravating arguments? It was a surefire way to get him to crack one way or another. Being locked in a cell was bad enough, but at least he was able to sleep then.

L chose not to respond to that comment, instead shaking his head and turning back to his laptop, poring over some document with miniscule text and proceeding to ignore Raito. Raito gritted his teeth. I mustn't do anything incriminating. I can't let him suspect me just because I'm a little tired. Ryuuzaki was flicking indiscriminately through police documents and websites. There was nothing very important amongst those pages that Raito could see. L was stalling for some reason, and Raito had a bad feeling that he knew what reason it was.

"Ryuuzaki-kun?" L didn't even move. One stray lock of hair slipped from its perch on the boy's messy stack, but that was all. Raito took a deep breath, hoisting a demure, reproachful mask back into place. "I'm sorry."

A barely perceptible movement caught his eye, as L inclined his head ever-so-slightly towards him. "For what?"

"Being rude," Just don't choke, no matter how irritating the words are. "I'm just so tired I'm not thinking properly. Please. Can we call it quits? I want to go to bed." There. He'd said it. Now all that needed to happen was for the world to spontaneously combust.

Amazingly, L's swivel chair spun slowly around so that the other boy was facing him, dark eyes owlish under his tangled mop of hair. The detective's eyes were serious, wide and stark within the hollows of their sockets. "Very well, Yagami-kun. You only had to ask, you know."

At that moment, if Raito had had the Death Note, he'd have sat and written every name in existence down just on the off-chance that he could have wiped that docile smirk off his unwitting rival's face.

Raito sank gratefully down onto the well-sprung double bed. It was extremely odd to be sharing a bed with another person. Yes, in his childhood he had gone over to sleepovers like other children, or shared a bed with family members when there wasn't any space at get-togethers, but never had it happened like this before. For one thing, he didn't even know L's real name. Secondly, L was probably the last person he'd have picked to share a building with, let alone a bed. And thirdly, he had never realized just how inconvenient chains could be. Every time he attempted to shift position, he was either hindered by the clanking clinks, or experienced a chill as a metallic coil pressed against flesh.

L settled awkwardly to his right, prodding the pillows and fiddling with the blankets. Raito glared sleepily at him. "Must you do that?"

"Yes," replied L simply. With one deft tug, he swept the top blanket right out from under the startled Raito and proceeded to fold it pedantically into a curve about his pillow. It had to be one of the most peculiar things that Raito had seen from L all day, along with the eating of marshmallows with a cocktail skewer and portable heater.

Raito swallowed his annoyance and instead voiced his more pressing curiosity. "What are you doing, making a nest?" It looked for all the world that the wide-eyed detective was manufacturing a crude nest out of blankets and pillows. It was the first time that Raito had witnessed this behaviour. Not that he made a habit out of observing Ryuuzaki, of course.

L glanced at him coolly. "I always sleep like this. When I do sleep, that is."

Ah. Raito had had a feeling that he usually fell asleep before L did, but this just proved it. That brought another little thought up to the surface. "What do you do when I'm sleeping and you're not?"

L shot him a puzzled stare. "I think about the Kira case, or about something else that catches my attention."

"Like what?" The question was posed innocently enough.

"Like pondering the strange things that you call out in your sleep and occasionally having to pry myself out of your wandering clutches."

Raito's face instantly took on the hue and temperature of cooked beetroot. "What did you say?!" he spluttered in humiliated disbelief. "I most certainly would do no such thing!" The very thought filled him with disgust, and he had a strong suspicion that the other boy was teasing him. It was hard to tell, as L stared back at him as blankly as ever.

"In your conscious state, perhaps," mused L demurely as he patted another pillow carefully into place. "You'd be amazed what people do when their brains drift off and their subconscious takes over."

"No subconscious of mine would behave like that," growled Raito stubbornly. "It's all the fault of these stupid handcuffs. If you'd just take them off then I could get to sleep and you could stay up as long as you wanted."

L shook his head sadly, examining the patchwork of his newest addition to the blanket collection. "I can't do that, Yagami-kun. You know that."

"You can so," insisted Raito. "I keep telling you I'm not Kira, and besides, this place is filled with cameras and microphones. What could I do that would possibly get past your security with or without the handcuffs?"

"What could you do?" L easily threw the question back at him, sleepless eyes staring starkly back at the weary genius.

"Nothing! That's my point." Hm. A new tact sprang to mind. He turned away from L, lying with his back towards the quizzical detective. "For crying out loud Ryuuzaki. You said that you were my friend. Why can't you trust me?" A sappy move to pull, he knew. But on the other hand, it might just work. L might be well-versed in the interpretation of humans in general, but not of those he considered friends. Emotions conflicted with reason. Logic would be pushed aside in favour of some other answer that the head wanted to, rather than did believe. Would it work on L? Ryuuzaki might have just demonstrated an inappropriate sense of humour only a minute ago. It was unlikely, but still worth a gamble.

"You are my friend. That doesn't mean that you aren't Kira." L stated simply. Raito felt the bed shake as L lowered himself into the tussle of blankets and pillows that he had gathered for himself. He resisted the urge to turn around and see how precisely L had managed to fit into the fort of blanketing.

"You are saying that you would be friends with Kira?" sneered Raito. "Whose side are you on?"

"No," mused L quietly. "I'm saying that Yagami-kun is my friend. I am also saying that Yagami-kun might be Kira. I have also said that I am hoping that I am wrong about the latter."

Raito grimaced and buried his head into his own pillow, noting with some annoyance that L had taken the softer ones. "Then why not believe me when I say that I'm not? It's not that you can't believe me, it's that you just won't." With that, he pulled the blanket up to his ears in a pointed show of not paying attention. L didn't say anything. Let the sugar-fixated detective think that he'd hurt him. That might change the standings a little. Raito was good at manipulating people in general, but L was proving a difficult one to steer as a person. Could he perhaps achieve better results under a different masquerade? L obviously wasn't used to having friends, if the fact that he'd picked a murderer with a god complex as his first was anything to go by, so perhaps he could get the handcuffs off, as well as suspicion, by acting more like a friend?

It was a novel concept, and not one that appealed to Raito very much, but it was a hypothesis that just might prove accurate. But how to enact it?

Luckily, although questionably so for Raito, his answer came only a few hours later.

Raito blinked muzzily, buried deep under the mounds of blankets that had been piled onto the bed. So warm, so sleepy. His body was completely relaxed at last, warmth all about him in the dull brightness of the room. He could almost forget that he was not at home, and not at liberty. The thick walls of plush coverings were a great comfort. It felt as though he were completely enshrouded in a warm, soft cloud. There was also a great source of heat across his back. A heated blanket? He wouldn't put it past L, what with all those blankets he had been hauling out. Not that Raito had complained about this of course; there were more barriers between himself and the spindly, socially-challenged figure that was L.

L. The thought of his rival sent a spark of wariness flickering up to his brain. He was sharing the same sleeping quarters as L. Vague cognizance of what L had said earlier about Raito's sleeping habits came flooding back to him with a burn of shame. Deciding to see what had happened in the course of his sleeping, and hopefully repair any damage before it was fully light, Raito allowed one eye to open a crack. And hurriedly shut it again.

Oh good lord.

Steeling himself and opening the eye again, Raito determined that the situation was, indeed, as bad as he had first thought it to be.

The chain that connected L's wrist to Raito's had become tangled during some course of the morning, when both youths were asleep at the same time for possibly the first time. It was now wrapped in a most intriguing fashion about Raito's torso, effectively pinning his arms to his sides. But, as disturbing as that was for the university student, that was not the worst of it.

Curled in a catlike fashion, nose a mere handful of centimetres away from his own, was L. Staring back at Raito, in a catlike fashion, was L. A horrified catlike fashion, but a catlike one nonetheless. It occurred then to Raito that the warmth at his back was in fact L's arm draped over his ribcage.

Neither of them said anything. They just stared, too shocked to move.

"Take this damn chain off me now!"

L was the first to react, shooting backwards as Raito flushed with embarrassment and anger. Squirming, arms still tightly constricted about his sides, in the brief moment when Raito was changing from shock to seeing red, he wondered just how on earth he had managed to become so entangled in the first place. The logic was questionable, and he didn't particularly like the envisagement of how said logic had come about. In between thrashes, he decided to file that thought under "suppressed memories" and never think of it again.

L shuffled himself backwards as far as the chain would allow, face still paralysed with shock. He seemed transfixed by Raito's struggles as he tried to shuck himself from the constricting chain. If Raito hadn't been so enraged, he'd have thought the look of complete and utter disbelief and confusion writ across his rival's pallid face quite hilarious.

"Yagami-kun," L stuttered, eyes still wide and incapable of movement. For once, the great detective was at a loss for words.

"Don't just sit there, help me!" The demand seemed to knock L back into reality. The wiry young man leant over and spun his chained arm in a circle over Raito's head, slowly unwinding the chain.

Arms freed, Raito angrily tossed the chain links to one side and massaged his ribs under his pyjama shirt. Red marks flared where the links had dug in, deep imprints evidence that the chain had been wrapped there for some time. "This shouldn't have happened," he muttered darkly. "This chain business is a menace. Not to mention it hasn't proven anything."

"I'm sorry, Yagami-kun," murmured L. "I did not foresee something like that happening."

"How could you not?" questioned Raito forcefully. "You fell asleep and the two of us were attached to a chain, so of course something like that would happen! I'm just surprised that it didn't happen earlier."

"It didn't happen because I wasn't asleep any of those times."

Raito froze, caught off guard. "That's impossible. That means that you haven't slept for the eight days that these chains have been on."

"I powernap in between pages loading on the internet."

"You're kidding." Raito knew that his expression was set to 'shocked' mode, but also knew that this was an entirely voluntary thing. "Why haven't you slept until now?"

L shook his head, black eyes expressionless. "Would you fall asleep next to Kira?"

Actually my choices are limited on that front. "No, but I'm not Kira. Does this mean that you no longer suspect me, or that you passed out from exhaustion?" He was still shaken enough to get away with sarcasm. L just stared back at him with a bemused look on his face. "I don't know… I don't remember making a complete decision on that."

"But you fell asleep, so that means something doesn't it?"

"What does it mean?" That was two questions thrown back at him in one morning. He needed to learn how to attach homing devices to his statements to prevent this from occurring in future.

"I don't know," he shrugged, plastering a speculative look onto his face. "Maybe it's your subconscious relaxing around me even as your mind doesn't. After all, some people put a lot of faith into their instincts. Did your instincts just declare my innocence?"

L was giving him a funny look. It wasn't quite a glare and it wasn't quite a grin. "You think that, do you?"

"If I said so, then I obviously thought it. After all, it's not as if I'm reading palm-cards."

L eyes were locked onto his, pupils rapt as if searching for some flicker that would give Raito's deceit away. He offered nothing. Let the other young man think whatever he wanted. Either way, the whole chain incident had been his fault, so let him deal with the consequences. Speaking of which, he was certain that those red marks were going to bruise. He hiked up his flannelette shirt to take a closer look at the damage.

"Hmph. I hope these don't leave a mark," he commented dryly. Not a chance of that happening though. Some of them were already turning a faint shade of purple. L's focus detached from its probing of Raito's pupils and onto his bruised torso. One hand raised, and faltered in the air. For one moment, Raito thought that L was going to lean over and touch one of the small indentations. The other boy's eyes were filling with something. Was it regret? Sympathy? He had never seen Ryuuzaki demonstrate much by way of emotion, least of all compassion towards the one he suspected of being Kira. Instead though, after a moment's hesitation, L brought his hand instead up to his mouth and bit down on the thumb in his usual pensive manner.

"I'm sorry, Raito-kun. Truly sorry."

And from there the games could begin.