One-Shot Collection: L Lawliet x Reader

✞ Mentoring ✞

This time not even Watari had been able to save him. He'd been lucky that the families of the boys he'd fought with hadn't pressed charges, he'd left them pretty badly hurt and he was sure he'd left more than one broken nose. It wasn't his fault; he was tired of being bullied for as long as he could remember. He hated school, he didn't need it, but if one day he wanted Watari to let him devote himself fully to his career as a detective then he had to finish high school and then college.

Fortunately, his intellect was the only thing that had kept him from being expelled. Instead of having to find another high school to attend, L had been given the ultimatum to help other students improve their grades by tutoring them. Living with people he didn't like had been the problem in the first place, but if doing that, as much as he hated it, would save him from another three hours of yelling from Watari and his brother, Roger, then he'd rather at least try.

The problem was that he had been left with the worst of the worst. He had given maths lessons to a girl in his class who gave a new meaning to the word "idiot" by not understanding what he was saying no matter how simply he tried to explain it. He also helped the typical captain of the football team, who kept checking his phone and occasionally talked about the girls who followed him, not caring that he was about to repeat his last year of high school. And now they had found a new way to torture him. He was going to give general tutoring to (Y/N), a problem student who did nothing but sleep in class, sneak out of school every chance she got, and annoy the teachers by constantly assuring them that she was so much smarter than everyone else. She was the least popular girl in school, even more so than him, who ate alone, hiding in the library, or behind the stairs if necessary. So, when She arrived, he knew he was just going to give a monologue about classes in general.

She had a very unfriendly expression on her face and hadn't even bothered to take her backpack with her, she just sat in front of L, looking at him while wondering if this was some kind of joke where they gathered the weirdos of the school. As the minutes passed, L was still talking and (Y/N) was starting to fall asleep, so she decided to take the objects she found on the table to play chess with herself, something she had been doing since she was little and had learned to do in almost any situation to cope with her boredom. L was getting distracted by what she was doing, and while he kept talking at first, he became mute when he realised that what (Y/N) was doing actually made sense, and quickly realised that she was playing chess with the pencil sharpener being the queen and the paper balls being the pawns. L picked up the materials from the table and pushed them aside, annoyed that she didn't even feign a little interest like the idiot girl or the team captain, who, if nothing else, nodded when L asked him a question, even if he wasn't really listening.

(Y/N) was quite annoyed that he had interrupted her at a key moment in the game.

"Listen to me, alias boy," she frowned, crossing her feet on the table, "I know what stereoisomers are. I learned that before I learned to walk. There's nothing you can teach me."

L raised his eyebrows at your arrogance. Everyone treated him like that, everyone wanted to think they were the smartest. But what surprised him was that he had described stereoisomers without even explaining that was their name; that is, you must have known what they were because you had figured out what he meant before he told you what they were called.

"Well, then you also know what geometric isomers are," he asked.

"Same thing," you shrugged. "Only they can't be converted into each other without breaking the chemical bond."

Right again. L didn't get it. Your grades were zero. You literally didn't have a single point on your report card, not even for attendance. You never attended class, you didn't make the effort to answer the simplest of questions, and you hadn't been affected by being held back a grade because of your lousy performance, but clearly you weren't as far behind as L thought you were. In fact, the subject you were talking about wasn't your typical high school class.

"I'll tell you what. If you answer all my questions correctly, I'll leave you alone."

« Prouver que j'ai raison serait accorder que je puis avort tort. »

That's great. Now you knew French too.

"Whatever. I'm trying to make this easier for both of us, if you'd rather waste time playing chess with yourself, go ahead. I'm not doing this for fun either."

"You should have thought of that before you ruined my board," you muttered, picking up the materials to put them back the way they were. "Luckily, I have a photographic memory."

"And if you're so smart, why do you get such bad grades?"

"Because I'm bored," you confessed. "I haven't been taught anything I didn't already know. Doing homework or going to class would be a waste of time."

"So, what do you do then?"

You were surprised that L believed you. Normally people believed that it was just a lie of yours to excuse your lousy performance since middle school. Everyone thought you were too stupid to have a place in the school, but L didn't seem to have a problem believing you, and now he was interested in what you did? What was going on?

"I'm currently studying psychology," you replied. "Specifically, criminal psychology."

And with that alone, you had L's undivided attention.

"Is that so?" he asked to himself, thinking for a couple of minutes before smiling. "What's your purpose?"

"I don't know, I just learn about things that interest me," you shrugged. "Though lately I've been thinking about becoming a cop or something."

"Like a detective."

"Yeah, why not?"

"Would you mind telling me a bit about your sense of justice?"

"At what point did this turn into an interrogation?"

"At the point I realised we could be of mutual help."

"I don't trust you. Everyone knows Ryuzaki is an alias, I don't know what kind of stuff you're into."

"I think you have a good idea."

Of course, you did. L didn't know it, but you'd been obsessed with him for a while. L screamed mystery everywhere you looked, and you'd wanted to find out what he did for a living and why he was so discreet and strange. The fact that you hadn't managed to find anything proved your theory that he was either a dangerous person, or a person in danger. And since he was particularly interested in your knowledge of criminal psychology, you deduced that he was a private detective.

"Anyway, I don't see how I could be of any help to you," you admitted.

"You seem to be quite intelligent. If you're as bright as I think you are, I'd be interested in a second opinion on some things I'm working on. My theories are convincing on their own, but I can't be totally sure until I get a second opinion."

And while it was partly true, L wanted to find an excuse to get to know you better and see you again. He may not be a person who enjoyed spending time with others, but he had found a woman who seemed to understand the way he saw the world. You hated high school even more than he did, and unlike L, you didn't have a Watari to stop you from doing your own thing and getting your own way. Besides, you were quite attractive and it was nice to look at your face even with your disdainful expression.

"Okay, Mr. Detective. It's not like I have anything better to do."

And that was the beginning of their friendship, which you could not have imagined would be short-lived. You would both end up madly in love with each other, and in a few months you would become a couple.