Chapter Text
"Is there something you wish to talk about, Matsuda?" L asked the next morning, his eyes bored into Matsuda's soul, and the young detective wanted nothing more than to gauge them out and watch L bleed. Matsuda has never been so scared of himself before because it wasn't the thought that scared him; it was the fact that he was so close to carrying it out.
"No! Uhm, is there something wrong?" Matsuda asked cluelessly, and L gave him a long stare. Matsuda's hand twitched near the holster of his gun, and L nodded like he'd answered some sort of silent question.
...
'I was going to strangle you with the same chains that bound you to L.' That sentence was oddly poetic; it potentially had a double meaning. When L heard that over the speaker of the bug he'd hidden, he'd thought that he was hearing things.
He couldn't imagine that voice saying words so venomous; still, in his time, he'd seen seemingly kind people suddenly snap from Jekyll to Hyde in a split instant. He stared at Matsuda apathetically. Matsuda was looking him straight in the eye, and he made a movement that L wouldn't have noticed if he were the average person.
"I hadn't taken you for someone so...trigger happy." L muttered but didn't look away. The staring contest that ensued was interesting because that signature lazy smile was still very present on Matsuda's face. "Matsuda trigger happy? Is that a joke?" Misa narrowed her eyes at L, who made a barely audible huff sound.
Misa was always a little bit defensive over Matsuda; he probably reminded her of herself. A younger, more innocent version, despite the fact that he was older. The way Matsuda presented himself intrigued L a great deal. There were moments where he got to see the twisted inner workings of that man's mind.
If L wasn't so unwaveringly sure that Light was Kira, Matsuda would be his second guess.