So, fate has decided to cross the tangled threads of our small lives in this beautiful tapestry that is the universe. In the end, you'll forget me, and I you. But for now, breathe. If that's all you remember from me, I want it to be that I gave you the advice the little voice we all have gives us. Breathe.
Welcome to Low Light.
0o0o0o
Humans are drawn to light as much as they run from darkness. It is a fundamental part of their nature. So it should only be right that the man should feel this insatiable urge to trap and pin down this Elysium-borne creature that dispelled the darkness until it promised that it wouldn't run away anymore, wouldn't leave him to the shadows of his fearful mind.
But the creature would always escape. He always told himself he would run after his prize, that this time, he would finally be able to leave his awful prison created by the taboos that had been placed upon him early in life. But he was petrified. He was terrified of the creature, and the sensations that would ravage him when it was near.
He desired the creature, craved it, wanted it so badly it hurt. But he had to bear the torture. The creature could never be his. It seemed there was no worse agony than forcing himself to stay away, day after day, cursing himself to hide from the creature.
Light Yagami.
Before him, L had been living his whole life in the darkness. Light dispelled his shadows. And that made him more than human in L's eyes; something precious and beautiful. Because if you're scared of the dark, you reach for the light.
He was nothing before Light. Just a delusional man solving crimes that caught his eye. With him, L was alive for the first time.
He was his Light, but he wanted him to stop backing away. He wanted to trap him, catch him, force him to stay, because he didn't know how much longer he could handle him leaving and taking his life away with him.
He must know. L saw the way Light looked at him. If Light didn't know what L felt, he wouldn't look at him like that. Light surely knows full well what he'd taken, and he is too cruel to allow the detective to become whole again.
We all carry a torch for our first love. And this flame would burn inside him long after Light had left him for the last time; it will blaze, eating him up until it eventually consumes him all.
And maybe in the final guttering of his fire, he will be released from this hell.
0o0o0o0
Is it possible to fix the world with a few names scribbled on a piece of paper? Or is the world too rotten, the kind of decay that holds it's shape on the outside but eats away the inside to hollowness, leaving a brittle, shiny shell that crumbles away if it's touched past a glance.
All humans seem to be shells with nothing on the inside, only facades of crumbling dust and lies, blown about by the winds of fate. And if the wind blows too hard or in the wrong directions, then the husk surrounding every human shreds like tissue paper and leaves them exposed to the uncaring gales.
Right now, the winds seemed to be turning from breezes to hurricanes; he was trapped, being thrown around until he didn't know which way was up, trying to keep a blank face. It was disorienting and painful, and he didn't know whether the next breath would be his last.
But it was also exhilarating, being caught so completely and utterly. Pinned between giving up and fighting again, or being commanded by fate. In secret places, dark and alone, Light wanted to be commanded, to be controlled, to be taken and claimed, for someone to control his every action.
Someone was already doing that. L made sure he couldn't have an unguarded thought, a free moment. It felt confined and yet so different, so exhilarating. It was the thrill of the chase, of being in such close quarters to his worst enemy and greatest friend simultaneously, of feeling chained to a wall.
He wanted L to stop with the foreplay, with the word games, to tie him up until he screamed and begged with the pain for mercy. And L wouldn't give it to him. He would just tighten Light's chains and wait for the next round.
L was sadistic in his own way, and Light wanted him to be exactly like that, a beast who wouldn't understand human pleas for leniency. He might even enjoy Light's pleading.
It was a dangerous thought-if anyone found out-but Light nurtured it in the dark with images and feeling, and it grew, wrapping around him until it sank beneath his skin and became him; there was no barrier between the growth of thought and the young man called Light. It had consumed him strangely. L was all he could think about now.
Maybe one day, Light would step back and look at the thing he'd spawned and wonder what happened, but for now, he was just focused on not letting the detective see what he was thinking.
0o0o0o
If Light rubbed the pad of his finger on the fabric of the couch hard enough, would the skin split open? He imagined blood welling from a ragged break, bright and glaring, pooling along the creases in his palm. Dripping through his fingers to the floor.
L watched Light and wondered again what the brunette thought about. Did their thoughts run the same? Did Light think about circumstance and the roles of everyone he knew, you are my friend, you are my enemy? Unlikely. Light seemed loathe to call anybody his 'friend'.
The sound of pages turning whispered through the room. L had become an expert at turning pages while focusing on the outside world. It allowed him to project an air of distracted unavailability as well as soaking away awkward silence.
'L, I need to ask something,' Light suddenly said, nearly standing up. L pretended to finish his page-with maddening slowness, or so it seemed to Light-and nodded as a bare invitation to speak.
'Do you think any of us are going to survive this?' Light asked quietly.
L moved his head to watch Light.
'This being the Kira Case, I do not.' L looked at his computer, a sudden weight, even though he rationally knew it couldn't have changed mass. His Task Force; they didn't deserve to be killed. Nobody had. If he could just figure out what was happening.
'Not even you, L?' Light asked. The detective tried to figure out what possessed Light to ask. The young man, if he was Kira, certainly would have wanted the answer, but he was always so careful before.
'Especially me.'
Light took a deep breath. Maybe to calm himself, maybe to work up the courage to ask what he wanted; maybe just to savor the feeling of his chest moving.
'L, how much longer is the Kira Case going to go on?'
'Until I or Kira dies,' L murmured, almost peacefully, but Light clearly heard the drained undertones and the implications those few words held, I or Kira, telling him that no matter how strong the obsession, they were rivals first and foremost. That L still suspected him.
Light almost considered saying something, something dangerous that L wouldn't forget. Just because the detective would remember.
Was that what would bring him down? Trying to be remembered, to be noticed, to make L care about anything; because the way he seemed to have given up infuriated Light. The young man wanted his rival to give a damn about something, anything, for once.
Why don't you care, Light wanted to scream. Isn't there anything in this world you still have feelings for, or are you such an empty shell that you can't even bring yourself to have an emotion for that?
0o0o0o
L knew the look on Light's face, his face that showed emotions to the depth of his soul one second, then became a blank page of nothingness the next. It said-no, shouted-that he still cared, cared so much it hurt in the burrowing way that remained, burrs always stuck just below your skin.
That was where they were different. L had given up on everything, because he didn't see a final point. It could be summed up in the question he'd asked Watari when he was very little.
'Why does anyone do anything to stay alive when they're just going to die?'
The elderly detective had looked at him with a lifetime of tired weariness.
'Because it's in their nature, L. Humans force themselves to live and care because it hurts, and if they cannot feel pain, humans fear they do not exist.'
Those words had reverberated in L's head since that day long ago, in the old orphanage, with Watari's eyes infinitely sad. L hadn't understood the sadness then. Now, he did. Watari had wanted the young detective to have at least a few more years without the weight of the world on his shoulders. But L had taken the burden gratefully; and now he protected it in his own way. Regardless, now, he had to. If Kira won, he wouldn't have a world to hold.
L had felt enough pain for a thousand lifetimes. He looked at Light and wanted to ask if Light had ever been alone. The kind of alone that bored through your mind in the darkness, digging holes that filled with thick water.
'I'm going to bed,' he said abruptly. Light seemed like he was going to protest for a second, but appeared to think better of it and nodded.
Their breathing filled the room, too quiet and too loud at the same time. L listened to the steady inhale-exhale-inhale from the other side of the bed. Light seemed asleep. He would turn his head to confirm, but he was terrified of waking the young man up and therefore ruining this oddly precious moment where he'd finally gotten the right balance between imagination and physical closeness.
As quietly as he could, L slid his hand below the covers and saw Light in his mind's eye, with that look, that look that told that he wanted to be hunted, stalked, claimed...pinned below L, eyes clear of deceit and the Kira Case and everything except the pleasure L was giving him.
0o0o0o
It was dark, and L was asleep, and every time Light moved his hand, his heartbeat accelerated in pace. L was so close. This was dangerous. Light was chained to his rival, in bed with him, and having a fantasy that came oh-so-close to spilling from his lips.
If L had known what Light had imagined him as, what would the momentary expression that would cross his face be? Anger? Shock? Disgust?
Light shook those thoughts away and focused more on his vision, of the raven's pale skin pressed against his, lips on his neck; until Light's hands and whispers became L's, and he was no longer alone.
There was a certain kind of euphoria that came from waking up to someone else's quiet, muffled moaning, and L took a moment to savour that feeling. But any sort of appreciation dulled after a while, and L, ever-bored, ever-needing something to pull him from the stupor of life L, turned around to watch Light. If the detective had slept facing Light, he realized, nothing would have happened. But circumstance intervened, and so L was faced with a flushed and sweaty Light, hand moving steadily.
Circumstance is a fickle thing. If it throws two humans together, then, almost without fail, one will break. But these two; these two humans with belief strong enough to blind and an insaitable taste for a god's power. When they collided, they chipped and cracked each other, but neither broke. They wouldn't let themselves, but more importantly, could never allow each other.
0o0o0o
And as the chapter ends, I leave you. Our threads have crossed, and now they shall spin away and back into infinity again, as they must. Maybe we'll see each other again? But for now, goodbye; I'll miss you.
:: Taking a moment to become intensely aware of how gravity affects every particle of your body
-LyingMonsters, the one who thinks about threads and eggshells