flashover
Light's ribs hitched, eyes widening, and he froze.
Lawliet waited.
Slowly, carefully, Light turned his head to stare at him, eyes narrowing.
'You're serious.' The words fell from Light's tongue like ash.
'Yes,' said Lawliet, holding his gaze with sleepless eyes.
Light laughed, then, and looked away, grinning wryly into the omnipresent gloom; the shadows almost seemed to shrink away from him. 'I don't know what to do with that information.'
'Is it really so difficult to imagine that I might not have ulterior motives?' asked Lawliet, softly.
Light looked at him, expression dispassionate. 'Yes.'
Lawliet's gaze lowered. 'I'm tired, Light-kun.' His voice was quiet, and he seemed to curl tighter in on himself, hands sliding down his shins to curl around his ankles, clenching. 'I'm tired of feeling alone.'
Light stared at him.
For a while both of them were silent, and neither of them moved.
'I said that if it was friendship you wanted, I'd gladly give it to you,' murmured Light, finally, and his ribs contracted again. 'Very well, then.' He stood, turning to face Lawliet and offering his hand.
Lawliet looked at Light's hand, then up at his face.
Light wasn't smiling, but it would have been a lie if he had.
'My name is Light Yagami,' he said, 'and before I came to be known as Kira I was a childhood prodigy and teenage genius who didn't care about anything.'
Lawliet stood from his crouch and stepped off the rock. 'L Lawliet,' he said, shaking the offered hand. 'And when I wasn't solving cases I, too, didn't care about anything.'
Their handshake broke, and both of them tucked their hands back into their pockets.
'It's nice to finally officially meet you, Light,' Lawliet said, offering a childish smile, eyes black and fathomless.
A hint of an amused smile ghosted briefly over Light's lips. His eyes, while not quite alive, weren't quite dead, either.
'The pleasure is all mine, Lawliet.'
end.
an: flashover: (n.) "the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you've built up through decades of friction with the world" (Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows).