Ficlet Eleven: Broken
Warning: M-rated. Violence, sex, abuse. Light/L.
Author's Observation: So, it seems that I am secretly a filthy-minded little b-tch when: I can't sleep, and it's about three in the morning, and I have a physics test tomorrow. (Today.) Someone's gotta pay. On that note, although all of that is true except the three-in-the-morning part, bits of this have been floating around my head for ages. Especially the last piece of dialogue. I had to write that.
Disclaimer: No Death Note for Le'letha! (And if this is what I would do to it if I had it, no wonder no one's given it to me.) I did get Another Note for my birthday though—thanks much, Kokoro-kun!
ON WITH THE SHOW!
Light sits up and stretches luxuriously, raking sweat-soaked hair off his face as he does it. He uses the movement to cast a glance over his shoulder from where he sits on the edge of the bed.
"I admit," he says, slowly, taunting, "they're very good. I should have found them by now."
He does not expect a response. Instead, he inhales a breath of reeking, heated air and continues to speak his mind.
"If they knew you were still alive, would they come for you? I should try it and see. They're beginning to bother me."
Turning around fully, he runs gentle fingers across L's back and shoulders, skirting the scars he has left there before. Several long lines of fingernail scratches are open. They have left faint smudges of blood, joining other, older stains on the tangled sheets. He scratches his fingernails delicately against barely healed wounds, breaking them open again.
Fresh blood runs down L's pale skin. Light leans down to kiss an unmarked shoulder, and then licks it away. He does not stir.
"I don't want to kill them, L," Light breathes tenderly into his ear. Abruptly, he pushes L flat, roughly, and stares into dull, half-lidded eyes, looking for some sort of response.
There is none. L's eyes are cold, dead, empty.
"But I will," he promises. The hand not pinning the slender man to the bed strokes his cheek fondly as he thinks.
"It's such a waste, though, when I could use them better than you ever did."
The idea pleases him, so he kisses L, gently, insistently.
L kisses him back, hands left limp where they had fallen rising to twine into Light's hair. His eyes open, but there is no life in them. The response is automatic, thoughtless.
Light savors it. His touch is the only thing that will wake L from the stupor he has fallen into. He cannot say which he treasures more: the pleasure he takes from the kiss, the touches, the nights together, or from knowing that he has broken L Lawliet.
"If I have to catch them myself, Lawliet," Light purrs, his lips against L's own, "I will kill them."
Dark, hollow eyes stare straight through him as if he no longer exists.
Light whispers directly into L's ear, "Your children, L."
L is gone again, lost within the labyrinth he's hiding in. By now, Light doubts that he will ever return. He also believes that L hears some of what he says. So he tells him what has passed that day, or that week, depending, beyond the walls of L's cage. He has kept him informed of the hunt for the little menaces L was keeping in reserve, every step forward and setback. To Light's disgust, the two have come out about even.
"What do they want, L?" he asks idly, stretching out on the bed beside the other man. Slowly, L turns away from him, curling into a ball and exposing the scars on his bare back again. Stroking L's dark, matted hair, Light thinks out loud. "If they can't be caught, then they must be killed…or bribed."
L's halting breaths are too shallow. Light has to place his head against his blood-smirched back to hear it. So he does.
"Or seduced, I suppose." L's breathing does not change. His eyes do not flicker.
"Misa wanted power, and to be loved. Do they want me dead? You, returned? They don't even know you're alive."
Light finds understanding, at a distance, Mello and Near as frustrating as trying to understand L, as intimately as he knows him. Suddenly furious, he digs his nails into L's bare shoulder until a new set of gashes forms.
"Look at me, damn you!" Light snaps, pulling L back towards him. He kisses him fiercely, biting.
L responds to the kiss, but makes no move to lick away the blood from his torn lip.
Light wants to hurt him, badly. He wants to hold him, and be gentle. He wants L's children alive because he wants to know if they are anything like their master, and if so, exactly how.
Hurting him is easier, these days, but there is no pleasure in it.
Furious, Light pulls away, shoving away a stray sheet corner and rummaging for his clothes. L lays where he has fallen, expression empty.
Light knows full well that locks can be picked, but when he is not in this room, the door is bolted from the outside. Several times. Still, he must unlock the door from this side before he can leave.
"Light."
Shocked, Light stops in the doorway, turning around halfway while struggling not to let his mouth hang open. L has not spoken a word in months, made no discernable sound beyond helpless whimpers and cries of the lust that seems to be the only emotion he feels.
L is awake, aware of his surroundings, sitting up in bed; staring at Light, but actually seeing him. His eyes are rimmed with bruises, his cheeks hollow. A thin trickle of blood runs from one corner of his mouth. He is as pale as the dead, and as skinny. Ribs that Light has run his hands across a thousand times are prominent, visible.
The sheet, stained with blood and sweat and semen, falls about him like a shroud.
Light is aware that, despite his best efforts, he is gaping.
"You're killing me," L points out, his voice faint and failing.
His neat, clean fingers tighten on the doorframe. Something bites at his gut.
It's not guilt. It's hate.
"Die, then, for all I care," Light tells the broken remains of his lover, and slams the door.