I seriously hate you all. Lol. I was honestly serious about leaving this to the wayside for awhile, but then you guys had to get all interested in it...

Damn it all to Hell! ;D

Anywho, here's the next chapter. Once again, I say the same; this is not top priority in my list of things to do, but if you're interested in it, let me know. I can already see other readers from my other stories coming up in arms about their 'favorite' stories not being updated, and quite frankly, I don't wish to hear it. -.-; There are always reasons for everything, young grasshoppers. ^.^; Really. I'm serious. Lol. Hope you enjoy, and don't forget... MR! is awesome.

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note (duh) or the movie, Moulin Rouge! (double duh). Also, I do not own the snippets taken from movie nor the songs used within this fan-fic, all which belong to their respective screenwriters and songwriters. Booyah. Lol

Title: When Dreaming Ends

Chapter Two: To Live Again

The first week had probably taken the most out of me, if truth be told.

Everyone had already managed to get very well acquainted with their parts by the time I had come along and grabbed up the part of Satine, and I was still barely managing to come to terms with the fact that I would be playing a person with breasts and a figure, let alone a… well, prostitute of all things.

I was not ignorant of the looks I garnered from both men and women alike, and that was without the addition of such frivolous decorations that were going to be hanging off of my frame. I intentionally kept myself closely withdrawn from others so as to avoid such things, but at times, it was too obvious for even me not to notice just how much my looks and personality seemed to affect people. Doing this would only amplify what I had attempted to smother after years of unbecoming trivialities, and I didn't know if my so-called 'pride' was worth all that.

After all, none of this was a part of my plan at all.

But I had already gotten myself involved in the mess of this so-called production, and more than anything, I wanted to prove to that writer that I could do whatever I put my mind to-

Even dress in drag and have people trail after me dressed like a woman selling herself on a nightly basis.

Amazingly enough, I did not find this way of thinking the least bit strange at the time.

Yet even though trying to keep up with the rapid motion of the production's pace was a bit bumpy for me at first, I think I got used to it quickly enough…

"Raito, you need to stand over here!"

"No, Raito, you have to sing the song with more emotion! She's professing her love for him, not trying to keep him away by boring him to death!"

"Raito, you have to sound more… girlish when you're being swooned! Remember, he's sweeping you off your feet! … … Darling, I said sweeping you off of your feet, not trampling over your toes."

"Oh dear, Raito wiggle your hips a bit when you're attempting to seduce Christian!"

"I think this would probably help if we had our Christian here…" A young dark-haired courtesan named Kiyomi muttered as the blonde Raito had performed with the day before, Misa, nodded as well.

Raito sighed as he dropped onto the stage floor and closed his eyes, the stress of just three and a half hours of steady work already getting to him, not even counting the half an hour spent arguing that he did not need to start off his first week getting in tuned with his part dressed in drag.

The young women pushing him into the hordes of dressing rooms had seemed a bit too enthusiastic for that.

"Well, who wants to stand in for our dearest Christian while our Satine gets into the hang of gender-bending?!" The women giggled simultaneously as the shrilly shout made by some unknown chorus girl that Raito did not want the opportunity of encountering echoed within the auditorium, making Raito flush in embarrassment.

"I still think he should have dressed the part…"

"Me too, me too!"

"What a cutie…"

"He would have been cuter as a she!"

"WE STILL NEED A CHRISTIAN, YOU GUYS!" Misa began to panic unnecessarily as Kiyomi patted her on the head, shaking her head with amusement. "Raito's never gonna get any better without someone to help him get into the moment! Right? Right?!"

"Uh…" Raito groaned as patted down his now sweat-soaked white-collared shirt and dark slacks, having long before shed his vest and shoes. "Can't I just take a quick break? I never realized how taxing a woman's role in a play was before…"

"Really?!"

"… … I meant emotionally, dearest. I've realized now through this part that you are all quite mad." Raito sarcastically muttered as he leaned up off the floor, balancing his weight on his elbows. "I need a five minute sitting period before I can go any further."

"Is that so?" The familiar voice lacking the emotion everyone else within the theatre seemed to have in abundance echoed within the auditorium, making Raito cringe within his own skin. "And here I thought you had a work ethic. Pardon me for assuming such a thing before actually working with you first…"

Holding back his grimace, Raito got up on shaky legs and brushed his drenched bangs away from his eyes as the seemingly perpetually slouched writer made his way to the center of the stage where Raito now stood. The dirty off-white priest-collared long-sleeved shirt along with his unusually baggy denim-like dungarees hung off the man's emaciated frame as if even his clothes did not want to touch any part of him, his off-set wide stormy-blue eyes wrung with dark circles as he set his gaze onto the unknowingly effeminate actor set in front of him.

"If you'll excuse my saying so," Raito snapped, his cordial reserve from the week before crumbling before everyone's very eyes, "but you have yet to say a thing to me for the last week, and yet now that I ask for a moment's rest, I'm the one without a work ethic? You haven't even put in your input as a writer of this script or director until now. So perhaps you should reserve your own judgment for yourself, sir."

L didn't seem to take any offense to Raito's voice filled with scorn and agitation, if the small smirk set on his face was any indication, but the younger man couldn't tell for sure.

"How cute," L brought up a thumb to his lips and gently nibbled on it, one of his confusing quirks that Raito had actually managed to get used to after awhile, "he's actually defending himself from the big bad writer whose work he's performing. Because that makes perfect sense…"

"I am only defending the amount of work I have put into my part thus far! It is not my fault that your supposed 'Christian' has neither the care nor concern to actually show up for rehearsals! I can only do so much without someone here to play off of!" Raito huffed, wiping a bit of sweat off of his cherry-stained cheeks.

"I suppose you are correct in some respects." The pasty-skinned author muttered before popping his thumb from out of his mouth and sighing to himself. "I believe that there is no other way. I shall play Christian for now until our dear narcoleptic friend is feeling a bit better."

At the confused look now inhabiting the boy's face, L held onto his cynical smile until he could no longer.

"… … Wait just one moment," Raito muttered, having read the script inside and out and not knowing whether to find this revelation appaulling or completely amusing, "Are you actually saying what I think you are?"

"It was a cruel twist of irony that made sure that my ideal leading man had Narcolepsy, though to tell you the truth, I was half-tempted to give him the part of the 'Narcoleptic Argentinean' once I found out about his ailment." Not wanting to laugh in front of his main employer, Raito blushed as he realized just what L was suggesting-

"Are you sure-"

"I wrote this play with my own hands; I could even play your part if I wanted to. So… are you ready, Mr. Yagami?"

Narrowing his eyes at the challenge issued, Raito nodded stiffly.

If Raito didn't know any better, however, he would have thought that L looked just a bit too content with the 'burden' of having to play his companion Christian…

Little did I know that after my first performance a week before, L had been awaiting for such a chance to be presented to him.

For you see, when L had wrote his script, it had been with one thing in mind…

As a man so empty of emotion, was it really so wrong to want to feel a bit of that passion he had written about? A testament, you see, that even a man such as himself could feel such deep set of feeling.

What I had not known at the time, singing as Christian and showing the light that everyone had continually had said lain within my eyes, that he had not seen the innocent young actor that everyone else had been floored by.

He had seen his ideal Satine.

And it was not a matter of coincidence that I would play the part he needed me to in front of his soon-to-be audience, all for him to enjoy.

"Wh-what scene shall we be playing, Mr. Lawliet?" Raito nervously plucked at a loose string hanging off the cuff of his shirt, the first five buttons now completely undone under the scorching heat of the stage lights and the light twittering of anxiety fluttering about within his stomach.

Slowly circling about the young actor completely taken off guard by his sudden silence, L kept the smile away from his face and voice as he dissected the boy limb by limb with his dark, oceanic gaze and tilted his head to the side with muted glee.

"… … I want you to sing by yourself, first. Sing whatever solo you would like as Satine first before I introduce Christian's part to you."

"But that's all I've been doing this week, other than working on my solo scenes!"

"No," L moved in closely within the boy's personal boundaries and placed his left hand on top of Raito's throat, "you have been singing as Raito trying to sing as Satine. I need you to become Satine; to inhabit her like you did Christian the first day you came here. Stop thinking of this as if trying to become something you cannot and simply sing with the passion I know is within you."

"I…"

Spinning the boy around and keeping his hand just under his ribs, where his diaphragm lay, L straightened himself up from the slouch Raito had grown to become comfortable with and met the boy eye to eye as the younger of the two peaked just over his shoulder and kept the writer's gaze. "You were taught how to sing by a teacher, yes?"

"Ye-yes, of course…"

"Then put those lessons to good use, boy." Letting his chin fall onto the teenage actor's sturdy shoulder, L let his hand tighten momentarily. "Now pick a song, and sing."

After pouring over the script and memorizing all of it in just under two days, Raito searched his inner catalogue and closed his eyes, letting his mouth fall on its own accord.

'Passion…'

The one emotion Raito had been missing for so long was now the one feeling that he needed more than anything in the world.

"I follow the night… can't stand the light."

'It's what I've been… searching for all along…'

"When will I begin to live again?"

Opening his eyes, Raito's molten hot-chocolate gaze scalded his fellow actors and extras who now stood enthralled, watching a small metamorphosis take place right in front of their very eyes.

"One day I'll fly away; Leave all this to yesterday. What more could your love do for me-" The hand still resting over his diaphragm tightened for just a moment-"When will love be through with me? Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends…"

"How wonderful life is now that you're in the world…" L's breath tickled his ear as the worlds, much more melodious than he would have expected, made him shiver with an emotion he could not name.

Pulling away from the older man, Raito felt a part of him soar along with the swell of piano music now accompanying him. "One day I'll fly away; Leave all this to yesterday. Why live life from dream to dream?"

Only to calm himself as he held himself back for a moment, voice quieting with emotion. "And dread the day when dreaming ends…"

"One day I'll fly away…" Sitting down at the edge of the stage meeting the large pit for the orchestra that would soon be playing there along with him, Raito missed the forlorn gaze the writer behind him was following him with, seeming to see something in the boy that Raito himself could not. "Fly, fly away..."

Raito barely heard the thunderous applause surrounding him as he looked at the crowd through the eyes of not himself, but of the character he was now inhabiting, Satine…

"That's it." L muttered, letting his bare feet take him to the young actor breathing the part that he knew he had been made for. "I think you've done exactly what I believed you could, Mr. Yagami."

Blinking at the sound of his name from L's lips, Raito turned his head and gazed at the man with flustered wide eyes.

"Th-thank you, sir." Quickly standing up, Raito brushed off the dust from his pants and shakily smiled.

"You must take in her voice as your own each time you practice, or else when the show begins, you may as well be playing her part in pieces. Don't take my work lightly, and I shall not take your talent at face-value." Ignoring the look of exasperated anger taking over the younger man's face, L beckoned the actor closer to his person. "Now, let's truly begin, shall we?"

"Uh…"

And boy, did he ever work me.

Honestly though, as I watched L play Christian, I couldn't help but as why he didn't just play the character himself with how much he put into his created persona's performance. It was much to how people around us kept mentioning with my own part as Satine; Raito would disappear, and his place, the person that L had created lain within his place.

All it took was one moment with L and a song about one's wish for freedom for me to truly see through the eyes of someone who was actually not all that different from myself. It made me wonder if this was what L meant about me being born to play Satine…

And if that was so, then was it so badly to not want anyone else play my Christian other than L himself…?

When I first thought this, I scoffed.

Why would that kind of idea enter my mind?

Even then, I was blind to my own wants.

"You do realize that you'll most likely have to grow your hair out, correct?"

"WHAT?!"

"… … I don't see the problem, it is already unbearably long for a young man such as yourself."

Raito grumbled as he tugged on his shoulder length locks, now past his neck and laying at the conjunction where his throat met his collarbone. "It wasn't exactly my choice. When you do not have the money necessary for a haircut, it tends to grow sir."

"Well, we shall use your long locks to our advantage and let them continue growing on their own accord. As we still have a good year until our first performance, I think all should be well…"

"Year?! But with the way you're working all the-"

"The construction will not be fully finished until a good month until our premiere night, and there is still some casting to finish up in terms of minor characters. And I am sure you've noticed the tiny gaps within the script, yes?"

"I didn't wish to say anything of it, thinking it was artistic liberties you were taking for the production, Mr. Lawliet."

"Well, there are still some things to be fleshed out, of course, along with a few songs I am still working on to add in within the script as time goes on." L shook his head as he thought of all the things that still needed to be completed within his 'baby'. "But that is to be done in due time. For now, I wish for you to begin ironing out your choreography for 'Sparkling Diamonds', and after we shall begin nailing down the song for that particular scene once the steps and stage work have been a bit more refined-"

Giving the man a fermented glare, Raito snapped back in offence. "I know the song-"

"But do you have the attitude for it, is what I wonder?" L snapped stepping off the stage and brushing off some left over crumbs no doubt from his late-afternoon snack. "You do realize what that song will entail? You may be cute, Mr. Yagami, but I doubt even you could pull out a set of feminine wiles from your sack of wild cards after only a week of rehearsals. Can you?"

"… … Maybe." Raito mumbled, completely and utterly exhausted after a full 13 hours of rehearsal. "I'll get started on it tomorrow, master."

"I think I like the sound of that from Raito's lips." The older man joked as the younger man struggled to keep up with him. "Master… I could get used to that."

"Well, please don't. I don't see how you can't be as tired as I am, either. You were doing just as much work as I was; if not, more." Ruffling the boy's hair with an uncaring hand, and ignoring the tempered expression playing on Raito's face as he did so, L shrugged indifferently to the claim.

"When you are doing something you love, the time you put into it seems like nothing compared to the time you find yourself far and away from it." Finding the comment deep enough to be considered in all seriousness (as the playwright beside him seemed to always make frivolous comments that seemed to mean more than what they really did), Raito gave a slight smile as he opened his mouth to say something-

Honestly, I'll never be able to tell you what it was that I had wanted to say to him.

Before he slipped on a left out prop, no doubt one of the girls doing as they rushed out for a late dinner just then being served, and nearly collapsed over his own legs rather unceremoniously.

But it was the first spark, no doubt, that would ignite a flame within me that I would not be able to smother for a long time thereafter.

Bracing himself for the ground below him that would be as unforgiving on his body as a whole day of constant rehearsal had been, Raito almost gasped as two thin but very strong hands grabbed onto his sides and kept him from falling down onto the hard cement floor.

Navy blue eyes caught his own fiery, but still very much muddled, gaze, bodies now closely entangled as the two men silently gulped.

"Oh… thank you…" Raito whispered against the man's neck, his legs still feeling unnaturally weary and stiff after hours of running around the stage and auditorium aisles. L let out a shaky breath against his neck, nodding stiffly in reply.

"No problem…" L mumbled against his chin, looking every bit as nervous as Raito felt. It was the first time that Raito had seen such a combination of torrid emotions overcome the usually apathetic writer, and he couldn't say it wasn't all too unwelcome.

Still intensely aware of the pair of slim hands holding onto his hips, Raito felt the distance closing in between them ever so slowly before L suddenly snapped his hands off from his body and took a careful step back. Breath finally returning to his lungs, Raito also backed away from the playwright, lips quivering with some sort of anticipation he did not understand nor want.

Yet…

'Was that…?'

I was oblivious to a lot, but to my own emotions, I tried to stay true.

With just one look into his eyes the first day I had met him, I knew a part of myself had gone and killed itself in an instant, but it was that near embrace a week later that made me realize just what I was potentially gaining in the process.

A burning sensation that one can only describe as a yearning-

But a yearning for what?

That was the question I needed answered!

What I didn't realize was that gradually, I was giving up my heart for his in return, and the next time we were truly alone would be when I finally came to realize it.

I was falling into the fiery pits of the Hell we all called love, and I couldn't stop myself even if I had tried.