Quiet things
0o0o0o
There is a hand stroking his forehead, gently pushing his ragged bangs out of his eyes, pulling him from the depths. Light leans into it. Lawliet…
(This is how they used to be, and if the only way he can find it is in a fever sleep, so be it)
(Even if L will not be here when he wakes up)
Light allows the hand to continue, and allows himself to fall asleep. If he doesn't open his eyes right then and there to the absence of L, he'll never know if it was a dream or not.
When he does wake up, his family is in the room, and the sight pushes L out of his mind for a precious short while.
0o0o0o
A long time ago, L teased Light about poetry.
(The words come back to him as he drives recklessly; what if the poison has done its work, what if you were asleep when it happened, what if he's already dead)
L pulls over in front of the hospital and scribbles a final line overtop the printed sheets after a moment of hesitation. He slides the papers into his pocket.
0o0o0o
'I need to see him,' L pleads. The nurse looks uncomfortable.
'I think it's family only right now...' She trails off, fidgeting with her scrubs. L can see her sizing him up, thinking of Light, coming to the conclusion that there is no way they're related and that his frantic words are not the words of mere friends. L takes the chance.
'I'm his boyfriend,' L says. It's a desperate shot, but he is, indeed, desperate. The nurse's eyes narrow, then soften marginally.
'I guess I can't...Third door on the right,' she mutters. 'Just knock-his family's there, and they should let you in.'
L doesn't bother knocking. He twists the handle sharply and steps inside, ignoring the confused gazes of the people who must be his father and mother and the shocked look of Sayu. He's looking for Light, but his first reaction to the body in the bed is that is not Light.
It's too thin, too pale, too stiff and rigid against the sterile sheets, and it is too quiet to ever be Light Yagami.
But it stirs against the pillows when he comes in, and opens its eyes-Light's eyes-and smiles like a challenge. His eyes are conflicted, every muscle tense.
'Lawliet. I was wondering when you'd come back.'
Six hours and Light has been reduced to a shell. L feels sick. His voice is the same under the drugs and the pain, and it still captivates him like it has always done.
He would do anything that voice commanded, and so he does not refer to Light by that name even in his thoughts.
(His voice that is soon to be silenced)
L crouches.
'Your only instruction was not to call you-that, you never said to leave.'
'I'm glad I didn't,' Light murmurs. 'You would have obeyed. What did you do when you ran away, Lawliet?'
'I continued your poetry.'
Light smiles, and for a second they are back to before.
Then it fades.
'Sayu, could you…?' Light asks, staring at the blankets instead of meeting his father's eye. L feels like he should draw away, that he's gone too far, too quickly (haven't they always?).
'Light,' his father starts, 'can you-'
'Dad.' His father falls silent. 'Fifteen minutes. Please. Then I'll explain everything.'
The door closes behind them with a final click, and Light breathes out, a shuddering sob.
'You came back,' he whispers reverently, gazing up at L like he's trying to memorize every detail of his face. L crouches immediately, wanting but not daring to run his fingers over this fragile shell, see how much has been taken already. It has been months since they were this close, and L breathes in his scent again. It has been far, far too long.
They have always been apart for too long.
'Of course I did.' L cups his face, strokes his thumb along Light's sweaty forehead. Light closes his eyes and presses into it, his expression pained. 'And you-you held on.'
'Of course I did.'
They sit like that for precious seconds before Light opens his eyes.
'You said you continued my poetry.'
'That was an accident,' L admits.
'Of course they were. May I see them?'
L pulls out the papers. 'They-I wrote after-I wrote a lot, and I don't think it's really poetry. I don't know words like you. But I wrote what happened in a few months a year ago after I met an infuriating boy with beautiful words, and I printed them out and brought them to you. Here.'
'I...I can't.'
'What do you mean you can't?'
'You've done your research, L,' Light says, smiling slightly. 'You know that I can't move-that I'm paralyzed.'
L turns away and presses a fist to his lips but the cry of no no that can't be happening still escapes, a defeated, broken sound.
It's going too fast, the poison is eating him up too fast, he's going to disappear and L will still be feeling numb from the word Kira when his body is long past cool.
He has never known what they are fast enough.
'Can you read them to me?' Light asks, pulling him from the haze. 'Please.'
'Of course-they're...our story, really. Of how I met someone in a little store nobody else goes to,' L says, staring down at the words, trying to remember how he wrote them. It seemed the only logical thing to do in a world tearing apart at the seams-to record what used to be before you broke it.
L understands the poetry and pictures all over Light's blog now. It is nothing more or less than trying to capture a picture of the stars.
Light fixates on the words, like he wants to drown in them. He mouths the shapes, testing the story of little convenience stores and challenges. The beginning, the before, a year ago.
'Our story…' Light repeats. 'You wrote us.'
'I wrote us,' L agrees, and with a throat full of glass, starts reading.
0o0o0o
It seems like barely seconds before his parents knock at the door again, and L takes too long before remembering that he's the one who must let them in.
'I'll...explain,' Light reassures him. 'But it might be best if you…'
'I know.' L barely manages to stop himself from adding that name this time. Light closes his eyes. A smile twists on his face.
'Tell me, Lawliet, do you know what it's like to feel completely and utterly helpless?'
'No.'
'Good.' Light's eyes are unfathomable. 'Let them in, please.'
Light's father eyes him as he steps cautiously inside, and L can't help but feel a sarcastic smile pull at his mouth when he does.
Light, who acted like he knew everything. Light, who acted like L played by his rules. Light who didn't tell his parents enough, who only ever spoke too late too little.
They are monstrous kin indeed.
L slips out behind Sayu, who looks at him almost accusingly, you are too much of a coward to stay.
And he is, he really is, but the way Light catches his gaze right before the door closes makes him not care.
0o0o0o
'Who is he?' Soichiro Yagami asks quietly. 'I...won't ask who he is to you.'
Light stares at the way the door closes and tries to hold that glance back in his mind.
'A year ago, I told you about someone who talked about the Kira Case,' Light begins. 'His name was-is L.'
'His middle name is Ryuzaki,' Sayu interjects. Light looks over and his sister nods.
'L...Lawliet,' his mother ventures cautiously. She doesn't say it quite right.
'Lawliet,' Light corrects softly. 'L-a-w-l-i-e-t.' He pauses, remembers how many times he's repeated that name. 'L Ryuzaki Lawliet.'
'Whatever his name is, I would like to know when-' his father breaks off and shakes his head, eyes conflicted. 'Light, I should not be having this conversation with you while you're…'
'Dying?' Light finishes, mouth quirking.
0o0o0o
His family files out with tense faces, and L closes the botulinum toxin article again without getting past the first word. The nurse from before glances at him when he gets up.
'Visiting hours are over,' she reminds.
'Five minutes,' L asks. She presses her lips together and abruptly walks away, which L decides to take as permission.
Light smiles when he enters.
'Read some more,' he implores. L crouches down again and tries to bring the story-their story-to life in a way that only Light ever could. The old words pain him in the way that healed scars do, as does the living reminder of who they used to be.
He tells about the chase and the meetings and them as rivals. He tells about their hill and their stars and his breath hitches when he tells about their kiss and the one night.
L is almost glad when a doctor comes in and snaps at L to get out, mere lines before that not-a-year-ago night. He does not want to retell his lies.
So he hurries out but not before promising to Light a last few words.
'You have to hold on. Because-' it is too cruel to say because I need you (though L does need him, not like anyone needs a break from running but like a junkie needs his next fix) '-because you need to keep breathing. Because our story isn't over.' He pulls out his battered blue pen and presses it gently against Light's chest, right where his uneven drawstrings would-should-be. 'You need to write the last line. Promise me you will.'
'L…'
'No. No arguments,' L whispers. 'Promise.'
Light closes his eyes and breathes a laugh; it says that's insanity underneath the pity and the pain. L's words have never fooled anybody, but if Light spoke them instead…
(If Light told their story it would be a fairy tale instead of a tragedy)
'If I promise, you have to bring me something.'
'Anything,' L says recklessly.
'I want to see the stars again.'
L nods, throat thick. Light's smile is a bare skeleton of what if used to-should be.
'Then I promise, L Lawliet.'
0o0o0o
Light is asleep when L comes in the next day, and L just sits and stares numbly. It seems impossible that this once used to be the boy who laughed wildly, hair tangled, atop their hill. It seems like a single touch from L would break him now.
His watch feels suddenly heavy. Seventeen hours and above is the breaking point, it has been thirty hours since Light found him and who knows how many since the poison started its deadly work. That body could be...
'Light. Wake up,' L whispers. Light doesn't stir, and a sudden cold hand crushes all the breath from him.
'Light,' he insists, maybe a bit hysterical now. 'Light.'
Light's eyes crack open and the breath whooshes back into L's lungs.
'You're alive.'
'I promised,' Light manages after a long silence. It's a croak of a voice. L pushes down the panic and fumbles for the blurry pictures in his pocket.
'I brought you the stars.' He almost offers them before pressing his lips together and showing the photographs, one by one, to the shadow of Light in the sterile bed.
'You forgot…' Light struggles, mouthing silently for a second, terror flashing in his eyes. 'August.'
'I know, I know. Shh,' L soothes frantically. 'I-I can read to you. Just...close your eyes and listen.'
L's voice breaks more than it heals back together when he tells about how he lied. Light is very still next to him. He stops before they reach where they are now, because from his lies onwards the pages are all written in blue ink, barely a sentence ahead of his voice. He carefully replaces the pen back on Light's chest.
'Why did you stop?'
'I needed incentive for you to keep breathing,' L murmurs. His eyes sting. Light's mouth twitches.
'I have other incentives, Lawliet.'
'I'll tell you the ending next time,' L says. They don't talk about what that implies, that there will not be a next time after that. Instead, Light asks if L can prop up the city pictures so he can see them. L does. Then, Light offhandedly mentions that L's eyes are red, and his hair smells almost...metallic, and that he was never like that before. L almost laughs at that and silently promises, and he imagines that Light hears.
When Light's family comes in, L is already at home. The recycling is full.
0o0o0o
As soon as L sees him, he knows. Tomorrow; the word hangs between them, separating the living from the dead. Tomorrow, Light's heart will be still, and they both know it.
Light gives him a faint smile, and that curve of his mouth shatters him. L collapses to his knees and touches him for the first time in what feels like months, and it is to barely run his fingers over the shadows under Light's eyes and crack all over inside.
(He just lies there like he's already dead)
Sometimes, L read, the poison comes in through injections. Sometimes, it comes in through the air, and it is too cruel to think that his rule, his rule that sounded so stupid barely a year ago and is so important now, was what killed him.
'Stupid,' L repeats bitterly. 'You're so stupid, Light Yagami. With all of your textbook problems, stupid, stupid, stupid.'
(He still loves him)
'Letting all of it happen, yes,' Light says. His voice is a reedy tremor, L must lean close to even catch his breaths now. 'I'm an idiot, and I always have been, so you'll take that into account when I ask, of course?'
(A year and L still loves him)
'Ask what?'
'Come closer,' Light urges, until L is pressed flush against his side. He sighs. 'That's better.'
'What are you going to ask, Light?'
Light smiles softly; he must be mad to love him, love him still. Utterly, utterly mad, just as mad as he is. 'L Lawliet, will you marry me?'
Oh, he still loves him, L decides, and kisses Light, pulls him closer and realizes that they still remember how to kiss one another.
'Tell me,' Light gasps when they break apart, helpless with fury at not being able to move, not being able to touch L everywhere and be touched in return, 'tell me that you still love me.'
'I love you,' L says instantly. 'I love you, Light Yagami.'
(They told him the poison wasn't deadly until it reached his lungs and suffocated him)
(Because all of Kira's victims stop breathing eventually, and so do the ones he never even thinks of)
If the way he stopped breathing was here, with L's arms around him and his chest full to bursting, it was more than enough.
He was just a boy with brown eyes and botulinum running through his veins, just someone who had fallen in love with someone who was everything.
'I love you,' he whispers back, fingers aching to be tangled tight in that raven hair. Their kiss is gentle and soft and long. 'I love you and I will forever, just wait until the next time I will be able to show you…'
Eventually, L slows and Light groans in frustration, wants to tell him to kiss him again, kiss him breathless again.
'Will you?'
'Yes, you-you...undefinable, perfect person,' L nearly shouts. 'Yes, I want to marry you. Right here in this room, laws and everything be damned.'
'Then write me a ring,' Light breathes. L takes the pen and writes on Light's hand in cramped letters around his wasted-away finger Do not regret. Light looks at it and smiles. 'Now you. Write Just keep breathing.'
L does. The pen tickles against his skin. And that's it, he thinks, sitting back, stunned. There is always going to be a red string between them now. There always has been.
'And now...now read me the end of our story.'
L does.
0o0o0o
When L comes in the next day, their story is over. Light is silent in the bed, his chest moving faintly. He barely manages to open his eyes when L comes in.
This is why Light asked. Because he knew his heart was counting down the beats until his lungs stopped working.
Otherwise, how long would they have chased (would Light ever have asked if he wasn't in the hospital bed)?
L leans his head back and tries to keep the sound in his throat, but it escapes. After all this time, Light still knows how to hurt him best. Innocently, beautifully. That is, indeed, the role of a rival.
Death waits in the room with them. After all the misses, after everything that happened, after yesterday. Light has taken his last chance and spent it on everything and nothing.
The understanding is identical and weaves itself into the bitter laugh Light coughs out when the doctors nearby retreat to watch.
'Do you remember...when I asked if...if you knew what it was to feel completely and utterly helpless, Lawliet?'
L wordlessly nods.
'Good.' Light seems exhausted. 'I didn't think I'd ever...reach the last page. Can you...read to me? Again? The part where you realized.' He breathes out slowly, struggles for every gasp. 'I...want to remember...exactly.'
L unfolds the papers and tries to smooth out the crumpled edges with shaking hands before reading the part where he realized he was in love again in a halting voice. Light closes his eyes and listens like he's falling into the words.
L tells about how a boy he met in a little store showed up at his work and pulled him into a dirty alley to tell him he was dying, and how he wrote that boy a story because he couldn't say the words himself, and how much he missed him already.
He tells about how that boy asked something he could never refuse. He tells about how that boy whispered 'I love you'. He tells about how he loved that boy. L tells about the rain, most of all.
The whole time, L can only think of Light's shuddering breaths next to him, praying that the next one arrives. Always, always.
'You're crying,' Light murmurs. L raises a hand to his face and it comes away wet.
'I don't want to lose you,' he admits softly. Light's mouth quirks, maybe a smile.
'Listen to me, Lawliet. I have come to-to accept things in this mad world, and one of them is that none of us will ever not regret or keep breathing forever. Another is that promises are worthwhile. And the third is that I can't and I never will promise that I'll be breathing tomorrow. All I can promise is that I'll love you and that I'm breathing now.'
L thinks he's choking, Light is choking, oh God, he can't breathe, was it his words that killed him? L can't see him anymore in the mess of shouting doctors, the poison has caught up with them as they run away.
0o0o0o
His family is here, the doctors are waiting. L is allowed to touch him again, and he takes his hand, the one with ink, and pleads with Light to open his eyes.
'Breathe with me.'
Light's chest stutters, quick, as fast as a sparrow's. In-out.
'Breathe with me,' L begs again, tries to match Light's pace. Again, a flutter.
He cannot give up these pointless, useless words as much as Light couldn't give up his textbook problems. Whether Light's breathing ceases or not cares nothing for whether or not L asked him to. And that is what it is to feel completely and utterly helpless.
'Breathe with me.'
L counts, one, two, three, up to forty. He will breathe for Light if his-if he cannot, stand on their hill in the rain and stare up at the real stars when the cloudburst passes, look for Light in the oceans of the sky and know that he'll have learned how to not drown when L finds him.
'Breathe with me.'
0o0o0o
When Light wakes up, his eyes are dull and he is so terribly quiet. He makes no move to speak.
The poison is in his lungs.
L feels his own chest ache as if from a million million miles away, staring at textbook problems from space. Light's shell breathes softly, quietly.
His hands on Light's chest are automatic, there are no drawstrings to straighten. The pen is cold. He never was going to write their last line because he does not know how it ends.
And then Light gasps, and focuses on him with eyes that reflected the human-made stars once. His breathing is a death rattle.
'Law...liet.'
(His breathing; it's all white noise now.)
'One...last time,' Light whispers. 'Tell me.' L knows he does not mean I love you and he does not mean their story, he means that and L does not know if he is strong enough to do so.
'I thought I wasn't allowed,' he murmurs back, voice cracking against Light's forehead.
'I...I think we can...break a few of our rules now, can't we, L Lawliet?' Light manages a smile. His voice is so, so weak. L closes his eyes and tries to keep the memories in his throat down, down, so he can speak, so he can do this. For Light, if nothing else (Though they choke him).
'I'm sorry,' L whispers, 'angel.'
And now Light is quiet, too quiet, but L will not allow the word that will make him past quiet. And the doctors are shouting at him to leave, because he is not allowed to see how an angel dies.
L decides that quiet things are horrible.
0o0o0o
L stares at the city and decides to think that Light died the moment the August cloudburst starts, that the gods themselves are mourning him.
0o0o0o
When L walks outside of the little store, he breathes deeply, then again, then again.
The world smells different after it rains, after all, just a bit more light.
0o0o0o
are better than
:: Silence