TITLE: uncanny valley
FIRST PUBLISHED: January 29, 2023
SUMMARY: The first night Light & Ryuk spent as roommates.
SERIES: new rules [part 1]
oOo
The first evening Light spent with the death god was awkward, to say the least. He managed to flee into the bathroom to get changed and ready for bed, telling Ryuk sternly to stay outside, which the shinigami acquiesced to with a shrug—but when Light went back into his room he realized this hadn’t at all been the end of his problems.
“Uh, Ryuk, would you mind…?” he asked delicately.
“Huh?”
“You’re sitting on my bed.”
“Yeah, it’s comfortable.”
“Well, I’m going to have to sleep, so you’ll have to move.” Ryuk scooched over a little. Light just stared at him.
“You’re not planning on staying there all night?”
“Why not? You’re sleeping. Maybe I’ll sleep too. Shinigami do that every so often, you know.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to do anything more interesting? You could… watch TV. You could use my chair and everything. As long as you keep the sound down.”
“Why, trying to get rid of me?” Ryuk asked cannily.
Light swallowed. “N-no. This is fine. I just thought you might get bored, that’s all.” He slid under the covers on the side that Ryuk wasn’t lounging across, thankful at least that the shinigami was on top of the covers and not underneath them. His entire body was tense, and he felt himself trying to breathe quietly, to not move, like maybe, somehow, he’d be able to hide that way.
But that was ridiculous. He couldn’t let Ryuk think that he was afraid of him. If the shinigami really was going to follow him around for as long as Light had the death note, Ryuk couldn’t be allowed to think he was able to intimidate Light into anything. So, very carefully, Light forced himself to relax, and to breathe easier. Fortunately, Ryuk wasn’t tossing and turning. He wasn’t moving at all, actually, and the only reason Light knew for sure that he was there was because he could feel the weight of the shinigami pulling against the other side of the blankets. The shinigami didn’t breathe. That was almost the most unsettling thing about this whole situation, although why would a shinigami need to breathe? But to think of someone, something, in here, that Light couldn’t even pinpoint with his other senses—
Light flipped over onto his side, so he could face Ryuk, looking at him while keeping his eyes almost completely closed.
“I know you aren’t asleep,” Ryuk said. And Light flinched.
“I didn’t say I was asleep. I’m trying to sleep, though, so be quiet, okay?” he said.
“Okay,” Ryuk said, and then fell silent again.
His mouth had moved when he spoke, but not quite enough, and not quite when it should have. It was like someone who didn’t know how bodies worked was trying to move a puppet around. That was a disturbing thought, too.
The shinigami’s eyes were wide open, staring at Light.
“I thought you were gonna sleep too?” Light said, opening his eyes fully and putting aside the fiction that he’d been anything but awake.
“Mm? I was sleeping, what’s the big deal?”
“With your eyes open?”
“Ah, heh… oops.” Ryuk closed his eyes. “That better?”
It was, almost.
Light watched the still figure. He wondered if the shinigami really could fall asleep instantly, or if he’d been trying to pull one over on Light. Carefully, he reached out a hand, waving it slowly in front of the shinigami’s face, wondering how deeply a death god slept. Or if they were like those predators that snapped to alertness at any change in their surroundings.
“You got something to say?” Ryuk asked. Light stopped moving his hand.
“Ryuk, are you an ectotherm?”
Ryuk opened his eyes. “I’m a death god. There’s no comparison. But I guess if you want a metaphor, sure.”
Light nodded slowly. A cold-blooded animal. Somehow fitting, really. It explained why there was no body heat, not the faintest hint of it, coming from the monster on the other side of the bed. If Light had closed his eyes, he’d never have known there was something just a few centimeters away from his hand. “So you wouldn’t show up on infrared cameras,” Light said.
“That’s true,” Ryuk agreed. “But like I said, I don’t show up to anyone but you anyway.”
“Visually?” Light wondered. “Or at all? Maybe they can’t hear or see you, but could someone bump into you?”
“Only if I let them,” Ryuk said. “Here. Try it.” He held out his dark, clawed hand, adorned in its heavy silver rings. Hesitantly, Light reached out toward that hand, shuddering when he brushed against something smooth and strange that his mind rebelled against defining as skin. And then, in another moment—he didn’t feel anything at all, but instead saw his hand going nearly through the shinigami’s, as though the death god weren’t even there.
“Ah,” Light said. He pulled his hand back. “That’s good to know, Ryuk. It would definitely be hard to explain if people started randomly crashing into thin air when they were around me. They might start thinking I was possessed or something,” he added drily.
“You are possessed,” Ryuk said.
“It was a joke, Ryuk.”
“...Oh.”