I used a prompt from somewhere or other. I altered gender and tense. It was: " 'I'm trying, Adrian,' she said, because she didn't know what else to say."
Semi-AU, set in a time at some point not within Death Note's storyline.
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"I'm trying, Adrian," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say.
Light looks at him, eyes crinkled. There are wrinkles beneath those sphere's – they've got tight creases from a lifetime of sleeping eight hours a day in spite of his husband's best attempts to turn him into an insomniac, and those make it harder to distinguish the craters that are forming between his eyebrows. He's not Adrian. Adrian is dead.
L is staring back with huge wide eyes, the left foggy blue with cataracts, the finger in his mouth slowly denting from his teeth's pressure. The looseness of his skin can't keep up anymore. There's a tiny dark space between his lips, into which he's placed his finger.
"Love," Light says. He puts his hand on L's shoulder. It's bloated and feels horribly capable of deflating, like a balloon.
Slowly, L slithers away from his touch. "Adrian, I'm trying, but there's nothing I can do."
Something in his voice is warbling.
Light reaches out again and pulls L fast to his chest. He's fat. It's strange to see him like this, when he's spent the first sixty years of his life eating whatever he wanted and burning it off just by breathing, but somewhere along the line his metabolism slowed down and now all the candies and chocolates stay in his body.
His stomach squishes against Light's and it's like the walls of the organs are collapsing inwards, all the flesh moving like breakable jelly. As if, should he press too hard, Light will bore a hole straight through L.
Light tucks his neck just on top of L's shoulder, so that he can feel the murmur of coarse white hair scraping the inside of his ear.
"I'm trying," L insists. His words shake. Shiver. His heart is beating quickly.
The hand is caught around Light's head, now, twisted oddly so that L can keep biting the fingertip. Light knows arthritis makes the joints in his hurt, the strange way he's holding it, but L doesn't move his hand.
Slowly, Light shifts backwards and takes L's finger out of his mouth. He looks at it. It's twisted and swollen and red. It feels like a plastic thing. It's strange that skin can be so wrinkled and smooth at the same time. When L makes a low, protesting whine in the back of his throat, Light replaces it with his own index finger.
L's lips are soft. His tongue is wet and his teeth are hard. He quiets down and licks Light's finger, maybe thinking it's his own, maybe just okay with the attention. The inadequate token of comfort. L quivers.
"Impressive," Light lies. "I know, you're trying, you're doing impressively well.
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End.
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