Let me paint a picture for you.

Outside, it's raining. The kind of heavy, steady rain where anyone who dares venture out on such a night has a black umbrella overhead and the collar of their trench coat drawn up around their ears. And beneath a flickering street lamp is a small brick building with a dark green door. As you can see, it's a bit run down, but come on in. That's where I am.

That's me at the desk. The room's single light emanates from the small lamp with the gold pullstring as my fingers clack away at the typewriter, forming the words you're reading now. The rain patters the window, sliding in teardrops down the glass, and the muffled, bluesy tune of a saxophone on the radio drifts from the apartment upstairs.

Come on in and have a seat.

My fedora is hung on a hat rack by the door, my own trench coat beside it. Flimsy pieces of yellow hair droop over my forehead, escaping the rest, which were combed into place hours ago. Slowly, and with my narrow, blue eyes on the page, I reach for a bar of chocolate half wrapped in silver paper. My jacket is slung over the back of my chair, the pin-striped pattern matching the high-waisted slacks I wear with a white, button-up shirt, a loosened tie, and suspenders.

A corner of dark chocolate snaps off in my teeth before I set the bar aside once more. A thin and lazy wisp of smoke rises from the ashtray to my left, and I hover my burn-scarred fingers over the typewriter once more.

Our story begins here.

**********

It was raining that night too.

It's always raining in these expositions. Don't ask me why, I don't make the rules.

Anyway, the night was much like tonight- the night she met him. It was dark and drizzly. Trench coats, umbrellas, hazy street lamps- you get the picture.

A pin-up with victory rolls and scarlet-painted lips serenaded the patrons of a local watering hole, the blue spotlight glittering off her violet dress with the slit all the way up the side. The baritone throb of a stand-up bass accompanied her from the shadows as a barkeep twisted a towel inside a glass.

And at the bar sat the agent, Naomi Misora, her cheek slouched against her bent fingers, her ink-black hair swept up halfway in pinned rolls with the remainder of it falling in loose, soft curls down the back of her leather jacket. Her white shirt with the rounded collar and buttons that lined only the top half was tucked into high-waisted charcoal slacks with a belt and black ankle boots. She wore minimal makeup, her eyebrows gone over subtly with a pencil and her thin lashes emphasized by kohl. Just a touch of blush with a soft, pink lipstain finished her look, as she wasn't one for the dramatic eyeshadow and show-stopping rouge.

The tip of her finger swirled listlessly round the rim of her whiskey glass, the honey-colored liquid inside drained by only one or two sips at the most. The rain continued steadily on as thunder grumbled distantly, and the sultry singer wrapped her fingers delicately around the gleaming silver microphone stand as she crooned out the final note of her song.

Amid the light applause that followed, Naomi sat up straighter and knocked back the remainder of her drink, thunking the sturdy glass back down onto the wooden countertop. Flagging the bartender with a flick of her finger, she puckered a bit at the musky burn sliding down her throat. It had been awhile since she'd had hard liquor... a glass of wine in the evenings wasn't out of the ordinary, but tonight, she felt like she needed something a bit stronger. Getting suspended from your job will do that to you, after all.

Another tune, this one more jazzy and upbeat, started up on the bass as she watched the whiskey dribble out of the bottle and into the glass. Wordlessly thanking the barkeep with brief eye contact and a curt nod, Naomi reached for her second drink.

"And this," the mustached man behind the counter spoke plainly, "is from the gentleman in the corner." He slid a thin, sealed envelope towards her.

Furrowing her brow as she lowered the glass from her lips and swallowed, Naomi stared at the unusual offering. Then, looking over towards the indicated corner, she beheld the aforementioned gentleman...

She couldn't see his face, as it was concealed in shadow, both from the dark corner he sat in and from the deliberate measures taken to hide his features. A wide-brimmed Stetson skimmed the top of drawn-up lapels, as the man's rather peculiar posture was hunched and shrouded. His trench coat was dark green, and his gloved fingers held what was much too thin to be a cigarette to his lips, the tips of his thumb and first finger rolling it leisurely back and forth. Squinting, Naomi realized it was a lollipop stick.

Her gaze returned to the envelope in her hands, turning it over and then tearing off an edge. A small piece of paper dropped out. Picking it up and lifting the single fold, she read the smudgy, typed words.

Alright, pause here... freeze frame.

Now, at this point in the story... I have to skip ahead. See, I gather that you've all heard this one before, as told by another version of myself in another timeline. The details of the story are all in-tact... Ryuzaki, Un-Private Detective, gruesome murders, severed limbs, and all of it ending with Beyond Birthday lighting himself on fire. I'm not going to retell it all. I'd be wasting both my time and yours. Instead, I will just focus on where my timeline differs from yours... because in my universe of blues melodies and cigarette smoke, things turned out a little differently for the Agent Misora and the Detective L...

As for Beyond Birthday, well, he's pretty much the same as the one you're familiar with.  He'd look a little different, I suppose.  A black collared shirt shoved into pleated pants far too big for his lanky frame pulled up and secured with a belt that bunched the waistline... a tie knotted loosely and incorrectly, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and suspenders with tarnished clasps... and most striking of all, the badly-combed, greased hair and the makeup that resembled a silent film actor on a grainy black and white screen.  A bit of strawberry jam always managed to cling to the corner of his mouth, too, standing out rather unsettlingly against his powdered complexion with ink-black liner smudging the undersides of his eyes. 

This is why Naomi Misora's steps slowed as she approached the train station and beheld a man dressed in baggy pants, a loose shirt, and shadowed undereyes.  She was struck with the odd sensation that she'd seen him before, and yet, also like she'd known the fake and this was the original.  

Anyway, you know how this goes.  He lunged at her, trying to throw his arms around her, and she reacted by kicking his ass right down the stairs.  Now, scenes like this may be passed by in your world, but in mine, they draw a crowd.  People gathered round, gaping and murmuring to one another as Naomi raced down the steps.

"FBI!"  Flashing her badge, Naomi ordered the onlookers to go about their business before turning her attention to the crumpled frog of a man slowly rolling into a sitting position and mumbling something about understanding now...  "Are you alright??"  Naomi felt as though her reflexes may have been a bit overboard, despite the stranger's blatantly inappropriate behavior.

"I'm alright," he answered in a calm voice, not bothering to move aside the hair that hung over his dark-rimmed eye sockets inset with two grey circles that stared up at her without apology.

"You shouldn't throw yourself at people like that!" Naomi chided, all the same offering her hand to help him up.

He took her hand, his own being very slim and cold.  "Thank you," he muttered gratefully, ignoring her reprimand.  He pulled himself up, not letting go of her hand and not looking away from her slender, hazel eyes.  "You are very kind."

Citizens continued to pass by them as they stood there as though shaking hands... long coats and fedoras and A-line skirts and all manner of mid-century attire moving past in greyscale with only the agent and the detective in color.  

**********

It's at this point that I'll just tell you... through a series of events that diverge from your timeline of Kira and the Death Note, L hired Naomi to be his private agent.  It is because of this that I am alive today to tell you this tale.  You see, it was Naomi who stood by L when he suspected Light of being Kira, and it was Naomi who ultimately exposed the Japanese teenager as the infamous killer.  The story of the Shinigami Notebook is much shorter in my universe, you see.  And it makes sense that yours is so much longer, given that Naomi was eliminated so early on in the case.  But here, she is alive and well, as is L... as am I.

And once Naomi teamed up with L, she never looked back.  They made a dynamic team, her investigating clues and chasing cigar-mouthed baddies and him observing her through the grimy glass panes of an abandoned building or from the interior of a cleverly-parked automobile with tinted windows.  At times, a payphone near her location would ring, and she'd pick it up and receive new instructions or a request for an update on her progress.

And after hours, they sat in the comfort of a luxury hotel, a fire snapping in a hearth beneath an intricately-carved mantlepiece.  Their coats and hats were hung together on a stand by the door, her leather shoulder holster along with them and bearing her .32 caliber Colt Official Police revolver.  A coffeemaker was almost always hissing in the corner with a fresh brew, and they spent their off-time talking and eating sweets and sharing bits of their lives, little-by-little evolving into what some might call friends with neither of them realizing the depth of the bond that was forming between them.  

It wasn't until Naomi was shot on the job that L was hit with the intensity of his feelings towards her.  And as he had narrowly escaped assassination by way of a tailpipe bomb, Naomi's first thought on opening her eyes in the hospital was of L.  It was only a flesh would, and so after being patched up, she left the clinic and stepped out into the drizzly, foggy night with an opened umbrella.  

"Naomi."

Her steps halted as her gaze swung over to a cloaked figure silhouetted with pocketed hands under a bleary streetlamp.  A smile relaxed her expression, and she changed direction to walk towards him, turning up her collar a little bit more against the cold and the mist.

When his face came into view below his drippy-brimmed hat, his countenance was wrought with vulnerability and feelings he didn't understand.  "Naomi..." he repeated, his eyes searching hers as she stepped close to him in order to share her umbrella.

"Hi," she said softly, her smile widening as she looked up at him, the umbrella enclosing them in a pocket of the universe that belonged only to the two of them.

"I thought... when I saw you get shot..."  L tipped his head to scratch it, off-setting his hat a little bit.

"I know."  Naomi swallowed her pounding heart.  "And when I saw that explosion, I--"  Her lips remained parted as they failed to utter any combination of words that could ever express the emotions of the day or this very moment.  Unable to articulate anything all, she exhaled the weight of her heart as she collapsed into arms that responded with the raw instinct to catch her.

L's eyes blinked as he held her close, his own heart beating rapidly now.  This was a hug, he realized later than anyone else would have, and his own embrace relaxed and tightened against her figure.  The sensation was new, as such affection was usually quickly spurned by him.  But this was nice, somehow...

Looking up at him then, Naomi let her fingers tentatively take hold of his coat lapels as her eyes said more than her words ever could.

And that's where he first kissed her, bending his head down and hardly even realizing what he was doing until his lips touched hers... there under the umbrella in the rain and the fog beneath the faint glow of a hazy streetlamp.

**********

It's still raining here too.  I guess rain is just a requisite in these stories.  Don't ask me why, I don't make the rules.

The light goes out on my desk with a quick tug on the gold string, and I reach for my coat.  After working the buttons and the tie belt, I pick up what's left of my chocolate bar and remove it from the wrapper with my teeth.  Once the silver paper is crumpled and discarded in the can beside my desk, I walk over to the wooden stand to retrieve my hat.  Taking it by the top, I tilt my head forward to don it against my untrimmed yellow hair.

The raindrops trail down the glass front of the window of the brick building as I shut the door with the peeling green paint, and the smooth blues music continues to mingle with the background static of the radio as I flip up my collar against the weather so allied with stories like mine.  Your own view pans out slowly as I trod down the wet sidewalk under vaporous lamplight, disappearing into the fog just as the scene fades to noir.