Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. Or a shinigami for that matter. But I do have a pair of handcuffs...

Author's Note: Part one of a series of one-shot Death Note rambles revolving around certain letters of the alphabet...kudos if you can guess which ones I'm going to tackle, (or why a certain detective would prefer basil-scented soap)...

L

I can still smell you. Even after three days, I can still smell you. Caramel and coffee and basil soap cling to the computer station. That damned chair. The sheets of the bed. The others refuse to remove any of it. Even your cup remains where it fell, a blister of white against dark carpet. Irritating and persistent and still always there.

At night, the scent of your skin beside me is stronger for your absence. Your tiny army of olfactory ghosts is digging a foxhole in the box spring below me. I sleep now with the apprehension of assault.

I've never believed in ghosts. They are the by-product of superstition, the calling card of inferior religion. And the gods of death have never mentioned them.

So, when I say that you are still here, it isn't that I believe the soft prickle creeping over my scalp is the touch of black eyes. Or that it is your death-sweet breath waking me fevered and shaking at 3 am. I do not believe that fragment of white I struggle to capture in the corner of my eye is anything but the remembered glow of a criminal profile, or a page from The Notebook.

It is only that I haven't yet destroyed the afterimage you burned here. This place, the air, the carpet, every inch of tile and wallpaper, vibrates from the shock of you. The food cannot remember life before sugar. "L" still flickers on screensavers. Everyone entering the living room seems to slouch...

I dreamed of you last night: We lay back to back, your spine knuckling my ribs, the blankets pooled between our legs. Curled away from each other, defensive and touching only out of necessity. The normalcy of it nearly made me laugh.

In the dark, the chain binding us together sighed. You murmured, "Yagami-kun?" and I shifted and made a soft noise. "Did you know that eighty-one percent of people believe in the afterlife?"

I blinked against my pillow. "That seems inordinately high," I said.

You paused before pulling away from me. My skin tingled when we lost our meager contact. "Most religions embrace life after death."

"Most religions are facades."

"You aren't religious, Yagami-kun?"

"I never said that."

"What do you believe in, then?"

I sighed and turned over to find you staring at me, a hazy blur of white skin in moonlight, one arm beneath your head, one thumb between your teeth, your hair punching black triangles and trapezoids into your pillow. Like some exotic and beautiful creature perched above Humanity. I frowned. "I believe in justice," I said. "And shinigami. And yes, there is a god and he is above superstition and ridiculous belief systems. He isn't going to Heaven or Hell because they do not exist. When we die, we die. We rot. That's the only afterlife I believe in."

I had not anticipated the hurt in your eyes, the black softening and glistening slowly. You removed your thumb from your lips sighed. You wrapped long fingers over my shoulder and I could not breathe for the grief of your touch. "What a lonesome world you've chosen," you said and, very softly, kissed my mouth. Chaste. A first kiss. A blessing and a curse.

I opened my eyes and you were sliding away and I gripped the fingers on my shoulder and whispered, "Please, please, no..." I opened my mouth to call you back, but I all I had was a letter, a single, false sylabble. Because you never did trust me. Because you knew, in the end, I would love you and destroy you.

I woke alone and trembling, my pillow wet.

I do not believe in ghosts. But lying here, now, I can still smell you. And hear you and feel the weight of your body beside me.

And...

Dear god, my friend, I only wanted your name.

//reviews are always welcome//