Liebestraum
A/N: So I think from now on I should just think of bizarre/creepy places for the characters to fornicate, and then I shall be inspired to create fics that are part crack, part angst, and part hot stuff. There is considerably more foreplay in this than actual sex, though. Anyways, please read and review! I don't own Death Note (although apparently Tsugumi Ohba is a fake name and no one is 100% certain who he really is, so for all you know, Ohba-sensei could be a college freshman living in the United States and writing manga out of his/her dorm room…ok. Enough).
"Where are you going after class, Light?" Misa crooned. Light cringed away from his girlfriend, not that that helped matters; she just snuggled closer to his side.
"I don't know," Light cast about frantically for a place where Misa wouldn't follow, "probably the music building."
"Ooooh! Light is going to practice piano! Misa will meet you there so she can listen!"
"No, Misa," Light interjected. "You don't need to come with."
Misa, as always incapable of taking a hint, squealed on, "You play so beautifully that Misa wants to cry—"
"Exactly, Misa, I don't want you to cry. It makes me sad," Light tried.
"Oooh, Light, you love me so much that you would do anything to keep me from crying, right?"
"Yes, Misa, I love you." Almost the last nail in my coffin, Light thought wearily. "See you later."
"Wait!" Misa squealed. "Light needs Misa's new phone number! Light promised he would meet Misa for dinner! Light mustn't spend his Friday evenings holed up by himself! Misa will write it on Light's hand so he will always be able to see it! Just a moment!"
Finally, Misa was done scrawling on his skin, and he bid her farewell. He waited until she had skipped out of sight before sighing, letting his whole upper body crumple, and then straightened up and headed for class.
XXX
It wasn't that he hated Misa or his classes or his life in general. Light stood in the lobby of the music building, considering his situation. Misa could be cute, and she looked pretty on his arm at parties. Classes were somewhat interesting, though not nearly difficult enough: sociology was elementary and systems of government positively infantile, but both were required for Light's degree in criminology. He had friends and opportunities aplenty, but still, Light was dissatisfied.
He couldn't swallow the banality of it all: pop idols and night clubs, tests and lectures, police files and court transcripts. They all screamed at him: what you see is what you get, this is your life, take it because you can't leave it. The world insisted on force-feeding him entertainment and knowledge and work all in the same unambiguous spoonful.
Welcome to the rest of your life; it looks just the same as everything from before.
He turned his footsteps to the long, empty row of practice rooms in the basement of the hall, each equipped with a piano. Light often retreated here when the world grew unbearably worldly. With melodies complex enough to spark his intellect and so beautiful as to move him not to tears, but to joy, he found solace…
…and also solitude. Let it be said that Light was not so above the influence in physiological matters. The locked, windowless, soundproof rooms were perfect for, shall we say, exploration. Light had begun to suspect his own subconscious after he found himself constantly brushing off Misa's advances, and his fantasies confirmed them. But a world so welcoming to all vices and debaucheries was surprisingly homophobic, so Light kept his private sessions, well, private.
He stalked softly between the walls, taking his time choosing a room. There was no one to contend with. He stopped before one he had never used before. Its door was heavy and deep maple red in color, unlike the other bleached-white doors. He turned the knob and opened the door into a small room, strangely cold for all its coziness.
His gaze swept over the piano; he gaped. It was a stately baby grand Steinway with a faded black finish. Most of the other rooms only had uprights, rickety old pieces that couldn't match a true piano's depth of tone. However, the piano was closed, its heartstrings locked away from prying eyes; he could not even lift the headboard to raise the music stand.
A challenge, then: to see how much repertoire he had managed to memorize. Light settled himself down on the bench, a luxuriously plump cushioned seat, and began to play.
Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, the names fell from his fingers like prayers, for happiness, for completion, for something that he wanted but couldn't name. Light rested after a particularly technical toccata and pondered where to go next. An old piece, one he still remembered clearly, rose to the surface of his mind. He began the second of Liszt's "Liebestraume" (1) with a smile.
It was a song of desire, of love that he couldn't truly feel in the real world because there was no one who merited it. But this, here in the piano room, three floors below ground level, was not the real world. Light could fashion his own world here, a dream of love, built around his imagination and his music. He could play endlessly to a fictitious lover sitting beside him, a demigod of a young man, just as beautiful and capable as he, just as impossible to find in the world above.
He closed his eyes; the keys were like his own body under his hands, familiar with his touch. The music flowed on, bathing his frustrated mind and renewing him. All was unbridled bliss until…
…his hands suddenly fell still. His eyes snapped open. His ears met only silence. He could not remember the rest of the piece.
He could not have forgotten it. Rather, it was as if his memory had suddenly been shut off. He surely had the whole piece memorized before starting.
He played the measures before the break, starting and stopping, each time unable to continue after that suspended pause. What was he forgetting? And why? Why the silence?
After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Light pondered Aldous Huxley's wisdom for a moment and decided that the words held no meaning (2). The silence was somber, far too stifling to convey the electric desire he felt for a nonexistent lover.
Foiled, Light closed the cover on the keys and sat glaring bitterly at the piano. Just when he thought he could escape from the petty imperfections of the world, here was yet another: his own mind.
Well, I suppose my body at least will be up to par, he thought miserably. Unless this failing of my mind is so severe as to put me completely out of the mood…
The song had been arousing, its trills and tumbles meant to seduce and entice the listener, and when he was both tempter and tempted…the urge overcame any recent disappointments. Light was struck by a sudden indecorous notion: the piano had served him as an instrument of seduction. Why should it not be the very stage for his pleasure?
Light was by no means a straitlaced puritan, yet he could not restrain a delicate blush as he found himself flat on his back on the closed lid, stripped of his jeans, stroking himself hard through his boxers and moaning indiscriminately all the while. If only the world could see him now, Light Yagami with his legs spread on a piano, flushed and panting like a college girl in her first porno. He'd certainly bring home the prize for best movie set, and maybe even best soundtrack, he thought, the music in the air is simply splendid, reminds me…
…wait. Light sat up in a flash, arousal forgotten, as he heard the strains of Liszt echoing from the closed piano, starting at the part lost from his memory.
Light slipped off the piano, still maddeningly erect, and saw that the keys were moving up and down as the music flowed, as if invisible hands were depressing them. Or…Light's gaze flickered to the closed lid, as if someone was lifting the hammers from inside (3).
Light did not scream himself silly or attempt to flee; something told him that as in too many horror movies, the door would be locked. Instead, he listened raptly as the ending bars of the melody descended, and then, that which he had dreaded and anticipated began: a creak of hinges, a long, drawn-out squeak, and the front piece of the piano lid began to rise.
A pale hand supported it from beneath, long fingers splayed out for maximum distribution of the weight, and the lid fell with a resounding crack. The next section began to rise, and little by little, a figure came into view, a wraithlike body hunched from long years, clothed in plain cotton and denim. The pale hands fitted the stick into its nook, and wide, ringed eyes met Light's at last.
"'Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?'" the man in the piano said, as if he greeted people with Shakespearean lines every day (4).
Light was appropriately speechless.
"Well, I suppose those would be steel and copper strings in the case of the piano," the man corrected himself. He began to climb out, spindly limbs dropping to the floor with unnatural grace. "Whatever the case, I was surprised to hear you playing. Few venture here, and those who do are so hopelessly mediocre that I end up holding the hammers down so they'll think the piano's broken and stop."
Light finally found his voice. "What is your name? How long have you been here?"
"You may know me as L," the man replied evasively. "As to how long…hm. I don't remember what year it was when I last went outside. I do recall the last thing I ever read: it was something by one Nietzsche. He said that 'without music, life would be a mistake.'"
"Are you quite sure?" Light asked, running the numbers through his head. "That was from Twilight of the Idols, 1889 (5)."
"So it was. How long has it been since then?"
"115 years."
"Goodness, how slowly the time has passed." Light was uncomfortably aware of L's keen gaze on him, possibly getting up to speed on the latest in fashion and more probably ogling him with less than innocent intent, considering the nature of the activities Light had been engaging in.
"Well, then," L said with unwarranted cheer for the circumstances of their meeting, "shall we finish what has been started?"
"E-excuse me?" Light stammered. Light never stammered. "Just what are you suggesting?"
"Exactly what you are imagining," L said, lowering the piano lid to the shorter of its two props. It now rested at a slight angle to the horizontal. "You, me, the piano, Liebestraum."
Light flushed and swallowed with difficulty when he realized that his waning arousal was swelling with interest at the image of fornicating with this stranger on the ancient piano.
"I…cannot confess I am enticed by the idea of such an assignation," he forced out. He winced at the creepy yet alluring smile that split L's lips at his reluctance. Even to the centuries-old man, his maidenly, demure protestation must sound antiquated.
L moved rapidly, and with a rather painful smack to the head, Light reassumed the position he had been occupying on the piano lid earlier, slightly tilted, with L hovering above him.
"If I am not mistaken, this is just what you have been looking for." L smiled pleasantly down at him.
"You don't even know my name," Light hissed, yanking his hands from L's back, which he had automatically grasped for stabilization when he was thrown to the piano. He scrabbled for a hold on the smooth surface. "What makes you think you know what I want?"
"It is no arcane matter, Light. Your name is written on the back of your hand, along with a declaration of love and a series of numerical digits," L reported. He smirked as Light automatically checked his hand, as if he expected his body to not be his own and his skin not to bear the markings of some besotted ragtag. There it said, indeed: "Misa loves you, Light! 919-986-7263." (6)
"Clearly, you do not seek company, even that of those who attempt to stake their claim on your body," L said. "You possess exceptional musical talent, yet you do not thrive on the adoration of others, or you would be playing in the great concert halls of the country instead of behind closed doors."
"Yes, but that still doesn't mean I want to get all cozy with y—" Light was cut off by a sudden press of L's lips to his own, their union rough and demanding, as Light kissed back with more eagerness than his words belied.
"Less virginal prevaricating, more exhibitionist displays, please," L murmured against Light's neck when they broke apart. "Your little show told me everything I needed to know."
"But—" Light began.
"No." L moved down past Light's collarbone to his shirt, unthreading buttons from buttonholes with haste. "I would hate to indulge in such chauvinist terms as 'your body says you want it,' though it does," he continued as he nudged a knee between Light's thighs. "I do not fancy myself a rapist, after all. So do tell: do you truly not want me, in mind if not in body?"
Light's breath hitched, he couldn't know what answer to give, not when L was delicately tonguing his belly button, hair brushing his skin, hands roaming his torso, oh God…
"Or perhaps you'd rather go back to Misa?" L said her name with an exaggerated simper. "To a lovely, willing, female body with probably no response to good music."
He wasn't being fair, but he was L, and when he lived, he had no scruples about so-called justice. He couldn't be black-and-white about something that had never existed.
"Certainly she might let you make music with her body, but think: I would rather be making much sweeter strains with yours," L argued, reading the indecision in Light's wide eyes like quavering whole notes.
"God, L," Light said. "You don't have to resort to that cliché to seduce me. There are already too many songs and trash romance novels comparing music and lovemaking. Not to mention fanfiction."
"Fanfiction?" L asked curiously, momentarily distracted from his ventures south.
"…never mind," Light said quickly. "Skip the foreplay, please, we've done enough of that with the Liszt."
"Gladly," L acquiesced. When both their persons had been divested of clothes, L resumed traveling the planes of Light's body.
"Do you know the words of the original lied by Ludwig Uhland that inspired Liszt's second Liebestraum?" L asked Light's straining cock.
Light barely had enough wits about him to process the question, wishing for nothing but L to lean forward and relieve him of this insatiable desire. L, however, was clearly not going to let this pass.
"The German would be Greek to you, but the most passable English translation goes thus:
I had been dead
Before love's wonder;
I was buried
Into its arms;
I was resuscitated
by its kisses;
I saw heaven
in its eyes."
Light shivered at the feeling of L's breath on his cock. He barely heard L's recitation of the poem. "L," he said unsteadily, "if you are not inside of me within the time it takes to play the first twelve measures of the song, I will…"
"Yes?" L prompted.
"I will…refuse to come back in the near future to play for you," Light threatened, knowing it was futile. How could he not return, now that he'd had a taste of love's true wonder?
"What fear you inspire in me," L said, rubbing his nose again Light's inner thighs. "I would rather die than miss you."
L used both his thumbs to stretch Light; pulling them apart even as Light hissed at the burn of the intrusion. The rest of his fingers cradled Light's backside, and he bent his head to tongue in between.
"Oh god…" Light gasped, falling back on his elbows. "L…"
L's inquisitive tongue pushed further in, stretching and relaxing, until he judged it sufficient. He withdrew and positioned himself over Light, who opened his eyes and gazed up in breathless anticipation.
"Does the term la petite mort mean anything to you, Light? It is probably not one you would have picked up in school."
More pre-coital cross-examination, Light groaned internally. "No, sexual terminology in any Western language was not included in the curriculum, and I had better things to do than familiarize myself with such jargon outside of class."
"So I thought. La petite mort is simply a euphemism for orgasm." L abruptly pushed in, drawing a surprised gasp from Light.
"Very relevant, given the situation," Light gritted out, eyes clenched shut, resisting the sudden pain. "But do you think this discussion could wait?"
"I suppose it could."
"Thank you."
Some agonizing moments later, Light opened his eyes. "You can move now," he said hoarsely.
L nodded, rather solicitously, Light thought, and began to thrust in.
Their coupling was brief; Light had been sustaining considerable excitement for quite a while now and could hardly stave off his release now that he had given himself over to L, an enigma beyond any of his own lurid imaginings.
"L, I'm going to—"
"Yes," L answered. "Yes, Light."
Crescendo and sforzando; they rose together, fell together, and crested into resounding silence.
XXX
It was a long while before Light attempted to sit up, cringing at the feeling of his sweat-slicked back peeling off the piano. L pulled him down again.
"Is there somewhere you need to be?"
"Somewhere I don't want to be at the moment."
"I hope I don't flatter myself in guessing that where you want to be is right here?"
"Yeah. I mean, I want to be. Right here."
They lay thus for a few minutes, then…"L?"
"Yes?"
"Who are you, really?"
L blinked at the question. He had been expecting it much earlier, if at all.
"If you would rather not share because of something like 'familiarity breeds contempt,' I understand (7). There's a reason I've never brought anyone down here with me. Humans can only deal with so much before they give up out of pure ignorance. Most people haven't had the experience of being contently alone with classical music for hours at a time." Light looked faintly disappointed.
"Well, I have," L said matter-of-factly. "And I have no objection to us becoming very familiar."
"Without the contempt, you mean."
"Yes."
"So I can get up and leave now and expect you to still be here if I come back tomorrow."
"Yes."
"It's a date, then," Light sat up resolutely this time and began to get dressed.
XXX
"Light! You're finally here! Misa has been waiting for half an hour!" Misa screeched with considerable ire.
Light sighed as he sat down across from Misa and flicked through the menu. "Sorry Misa, um…"
He didn't have to even bother with an excuse; Misa's separation anxiety was immediately resolved upon seeing him, and she promptly launched into a detailed synopsis of her plans for the weekend.
It occurred to Light that he had pretty much promised to L that he would come back the next day, as such he would have to excuse himself from Misa's plans.
Light smiled internally. And so it begins…
A/N: Wow, it turned out much longer and more open-ended than I thought it would. The only thought I had when I began to write this was, "They must do it on the piano." Also, apologies if anyone is turned off by use of 3+ syllable words almost every other sentence. I know normal people don't talk like that, but it's just so fun to make L and Light be refined snobs with each other. In the same vein, please excuse the excessive use of quotes: I hope that's not coming off as me trying to look smart. I love music and angst, so it was too much for me to pass up the chance to combine those in the form of wise dead men's words and LxLight sexiness. Dunno if it worked…anyways. Thanks for reading :)
Notes:
1. Franz Liszt's "Liebestraume", which literally means 'love's dream' consists of three pieces for solo piano. From my cursory reading of Wikipedia, the second one is about passionate love, physical love—love in which you want to have sex. You can read more about it if you like. I mostly picked it for the words of the lied, the German art song that it was originally based on. (I quit piano eight years ago—this piece is quite beyond me.)
2. "After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music,"from Music at Night, by Aldous Huxley, 1931. And we only knew this guy for Brave New World.
3. If you look inside a piano, there are little felt-covered hammers underneath the strings. When you press a key, the hammer hits the string to produce the notes. However, if you reach into the piano and pull the hammer up, the key does not go down by itself. So I'm not sure how one could get the keys to play themselves from inside the piano. We'll just assume some kind of mechanism that does that has been invented.
4. "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?" from Much Ado about Nothing, by Shakespeare. Sheep's guts were used for violin strings at the time.
5. "Without music, life would be a mistake," from Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889. And we only knew this guy for the death of God.
6. Misa's phone number is actually the number of the taxi company I use to get to the airport from school. Please do not call them unless you are in the area and need a ride, in which case their rates are very good.
7. "Familiarity breeds contempt" has been around for so long that it's difficult to attribute. It was first documented in Publilius Syrus's Maxims, from the first century BC.