The Ghost Inside You
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: LxLight
Word Count: ~1400
Summary: In which Light must learn to cope with an undead roommate.
A/N: In a way, I consider this to be the happiest story I have ever written.
"The dead are gonna wake and sing
And roll their bones in the grass." — Andrew Bird
It is summer when L returns from his first death.
For two months, Tokyo is battered by heat that bubbles from the sidewalks like a geothermal force. Light's skin flakes from the chemical water of the university pool. He sits cross-legged beneath his ceiling fan and writes in the death note, pausing between names to peel strips from the back of his hand. Downstairs, his mother prepares a pitcher of blood oranges in ice water.
"You're quiet today," Light's mother says, bringing him a glass of dilute juice. The oranges had arrived in the kitchen yesterday, and left obscenely red pulp on the countertops and knives. Sayu's mouth and fingertips stain, and for an instant, Light had believed her lips were ringed with blood.
"Is there anything I can get you?" his mother says. This is a question she asks often, as if she has overlooked something essential to Light's survival. In the room across the hall, Sayu's television cycles through schizophrenic bits of conversation.
"Everything's fine," Light says.
L appears beneath his window an hour later.
Light is laying atop his sheets, thinking about what it'd been like to fuck L beneath the air vents in a Tokyo high rise. There is a dense electrical energy in his stomach. Sometimes, Light fears that if he thinks of L for too long, his organs will ignite and incinerate him.
"Light-kun," L calls from the lawn. He has been dead for eight months. There are mushrooms erupting from L's hair, and a trio of earthworms exploring the length of his forearm. Later, L will claim he clawed himself out of his coffin, but Light will never decide whether or not to believe him. After all, L is a liar with a flair for cinematic drama.
Light pushes aside his curtain and thinks, Oh. This is an interesting development.
"Light-kun," L continues, "Let me in or I will try your father's window next."
Light feels sparks in his lungs and wills himself not to combust.
"Let me put my shoes on," Light says, with a hand cupped over his mouth. The air around him feels warm and slow. Ryuk's shadow sweeps across the grass, obscuring L's bright face.
"For god's sake, Light, there's a dead person on your lawn. Show a bit of urgency."
"You took a long time to come back," Light says, after they have spent two days deftly ignoring each other. On his first night, L had stood for an hour beneath Light's showerhead and clogged the drain with hair and gravedust. Since then, L has seemed mostly preoccupied with reading Sayu's fashion magazines in the unused family room. Light discovers he is the only one who notices L's presence, despite the gnats that coalesce around him.
"I needed the sleep," L says. He is staring into the April issue of Eighteen while a mouse nibbles on his left toe. The vase of orange tulips to L's right only serves to make him look paler and more translucent. L smells like an overcooked microwave dinner. Light wonders if that is the smell of death.
"Why are you here? Isn't that what you're supposed to ask ghosts? Also, could you please stop spoiling the milk? My mother is about to have a nervous breakdown," Light says. L pulls his foot away from the mouse, but leaves behind a burned imprint in the area rug.
"I wish I knew. Unfinished business? Wrathful vengeance? I was genuinely hoping you had more expertise in this area. Also, did you know Hideki Ryuga is a Scorpio?"
"That's fascinating."
Light has a pen in his pocket. He wonders if he should lash out and jab it against L's forearm. Instead, Light presses his index finger against L's shoulder and discovers L feels like a sponge.
"Perhaps I just wanted to haunt you," L says finally, and swats Light's hand away. "I'm not doing this because I want to."
"You're doing this because you have to," Light says, and they stare at each other from opposite ends of the loveseat. The sunlight bleeds into L's skin, turning him gold and radiant.
Having a ghost, Light learns, is much like it's made out to be in the movies. L pulls the ink cartridges from Light's pens, and yanks out strands of Sayu's hair, and makes their tap water stink like a septic tank. Misa stops by between photoshoots and comments on the patches of cold air above Light's bed. When she kisses Light, he feels like he is pressing his mouth against an electrified fence.
"You should go. I have to work to do," Light says, after L knocks the lamp from Light's nightstand. There is blood streaming from Misa's left nostril, but she has not yet noticed. Her palm is cupped around Light's crotch, but he can focus only on L's silhouette, hovering over her shoulder.
"Call me later," she says.
L's face is calm and clear, but Light is terrified all the same.
"Perhaps you can get me some chains to rattle or a veil to wear over my head," L says. This is after they have learned that Light can feel L's fingers, like the snap of rubber band against his skin. It is very late and Light's family is asleep. L's hips are cold and sharp against his. "An actual costume, please, not just a sheet with eye holes cut out. That's what Watari used to do. I still resent him for it."
Light presses his index finger into the hollow beneath L's jaw. There is no pulse, but Light feels immense radiation colliding with his body. It is better than the rushed hand jobs he and L would share between bouts of paperwork at investigation headquarters. Sometimes, L watches Light write in the death note and it feels as though L is bearing down upon his heart, like a hand juicing an orange.
"Why are you here?" Light asks, while L maps the topography of Light's ribcage.
"Because you called me," L says.
"I didn't call you. You're dead. Just like I wanted you," Light says. L stacks his palms and presses them against Light's breastplate, as if attempting to reset Light's heart.
"Light-kun is such a good liar," L replies.
In the night, L speaks to Ryuk in the house's empty rooms.
The window fans form a series of currents that drive their voices along the hall, but they use a language Light cannot identify. It is guttural and ancient, like the background hum of a dream. Light lays awake and listens, attempting to catch a foreign pronunciation of his name in their conversation.
Sometimes, however, L speaks English.
These are the evenings when Sayu's cat hisses at blank spots on the wall and the cicadas outside wail like an unpracticed orchestra. Light catches his own shadow hiding beneath the writing desk.
"Go away, Beyond," L will whisper, "You're not supposed to be here."
"Will you always be with me?" Light asks, sometime after the school year starts and L trails him across the To-Oh campus, staring at girls in pleated skirts smoking cigarettes on the lawn. Crows snap at L's ears and fingertips.
"Oh, I hope so," L says, although his answer seems to be directed at Ryuk. "I can see the appeal now. Watching his descent into madness has some morbid charm, doesn't it?"
"I'm not descending into madness," Light says with less conviction than intended, because he is staring at a winged monstrosity and a ghost that he loves. Cool air has finally drifted into Tokyo from the mountain range, and the leaves overhead are orange and shivering. If Light squints, he can see a challenge tumbling towards him from the future, but cannot determine its form just yet.
L, at least, is very dead and very constant. Light blows warm air into his fists, but L does not seem to notice the cold. Light is beginning to suspect that L has been reconstructed from more ethereal materials; sunlight on wet grass, fire sweeping through brushwood, the resonant tone of bells in the rain.
"I don't think you'll leave," Light says, because sometimes in the night, L touches Light's hair and Light will dream of thunderstorms and climbing roses and the taste of frosted butter cake.
Much later, on the floor of a warehouse by the bay, Light will learn that he was right.
Fin.