Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note nor the Flowing Tears' song upon which this is semi-based and from which I stole the title and chapter titles.

Warning: Boy on boy kissin' and touchin'. So on and so forth in later chapters. (I swear, this will become deserving of the M-rating I gave it, eventually... Eventually...)

A/N: I don't know. I just don't know. Blame it on... um... uh... me, I guess.

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Thy Kingdom Gone
Chapter 6: Sanctimonium Part II

It was wrong. It was sickening. His mind was recoiling from it, but his body was pushing towards it, pressing against it, clinging to it. And, steadily, his mind was moving further and further away from the current situation, heading towards a dark, uninhabited corner of his consciousness and taking refuge there to wait out the building storm. And now, any form of sense and reason seemed so far, far away.

His hand had found its way under L's shirt and was moving slowly upward, taking its sweet time to savor the feeling of the pale man's milky skin underneath his fingertips. There was something slightly dumbfounding about the realization that that unblemished, alabaster flesh contained any warmth at all, let alone the nearly scalding heat that was currently searing his hand.

It was hot and smooth and pliant. It was his. He noted L's lack of resistance with glee, his lips curving into a sloppy smile while he continued to kiss him. He'd always known that the other man had wanted him. Always. Hadn't those eyes given him away long ago?

"Liiight..."

There was something winding up inside his body, some kind of coil twisting itself unbearably, painfully tight. Breaking their lips apart with an audible smack, he shifted his weight onto his knees, ripping L's shirt off as he raised himself up, throwing the useless garment onto the floor. A strange form of muted shock was reflected in the wide black eyes beneath him and he found that he loved that expression, wanted to see it intensify and expand.

And L was trying to sit up, a bony white hand pushing against his chest but he smacked it away and pushed the slender man back down.

"Light-kun! This isn't - "

Aggressively, the explosion of his pent up frustration driving his actions, he shoved three fingers into L's mouth, stifling the remainder of his words. He curled them over his tongue, moved them over his teeth and pushed them further back until he saw and felt the other man gag around his probing digits.

"What, L? I can't hear you..." He leaned in close, hovering barely an inch over the other's face. He could see it there - his eyes widening, that delicious shock expanding.

Not wanting to give it a chance to disappear, he slowly removed his fingers, letting them linger for a moment on L's thin lips, softly touching the trail of saliva that had leaked out of the corner of his mouth during his ministrations. L grunted and tried to move again, but Light shot forward, pining him down with one arm while his free hand worked on his jeans. Just as he got them unbuttoned, a pale hand clamped tightly over his throat, squeezing it agonizingly hard.

It had been a moment of madness, he would tell himself later. A moment of utter madness.

Then, just on time, the siren sounded, it's piercing noise blaring through the silence they had unknowingly created. Light recoiled from L, clutching at his throat when the other finally let go. Breathing in deeply, eyes traveling around the room blindly, he tried to place the unpleasant noise, tried not to think about why L was shirtless and sweaty and glaring, why his pants were riding dangerously low on his hips.

"Light-kun. You're supposed to keep your cell phone turned off when you're here."

He blinked, his hand moving slowly to his back pocket, where his fingers curled around the gently vibrating device.

"Oh. Sorry." He swallowed, looking at the flashing screen, trying to understand why his voice sounded so strange. "I-it's Misa. You know, she gets so mad if I don't answer..." He flipped the phone open, his mask sliding more and more into place with each intake of breath. "You understand right? I didn't think it'd be such a big deal..."

Yeah. Keep glaring...

"What is it, Misa?" he asked sweetly, smirking at the way L was frowning at him, his eyes peeking up at him through his messy bangs.

"Liiiiight!!!"

He grimaced, moving the phone away from his ear, her high-pitched shriek so loud that it carried through the entire room, L's eyebrows raising in suspicion when he heard it.

"What's wrong, Misa?" he asked, faking concern as only he could.

"Light, Light, I'm so sorry!" she cried, her voice weighed heavily with tears and despair.

"Misa..."

What had she said before? Something about calling him... He couldn't remember. His mind had been so clouded with L, he couldn't recall any of it.

"What is it, Light-kun? Is Misa alright?" L had scooted closer on the couch, his face looking up at him clearly, devoid of any of the emotions he'd been wearing just a few moments before.

"I don't know... Misa? What is it? What are you sorry for?"

L was leaning in, teeth worrying his bottom lip. Light pushed the speaker button and held the phone between them. A loud hiccup echoed through the room.

"Misa. L is here, too. Tell us what's wrong."

"He said..." she began, a soft crackle of static adding to the eeriness of her sorrowful voice. "H-he said that he'd only g-give me five minutes... so... I don't really have much time..." The last word was punctuated with a sharp intake of breath and followed by a few shaky sighs.

"What are you talking about, Misa? Who?"

There was a short pause before she sobbed, the cry coming out sharply as though she had been holding it in. "I... I'm so sorry!" she wailed, moaning and sniffling, her voice trembling.

"Misa! What's happening?!" he yelled sternly, trying to get an answer, trying to get a handle on the situation. After all the time he'd spent with her, he'd gotten used to Misa's childish outbursts and was able to recognize when they were trivial and ignorable, but there was something different about what he was hearing now, hunched over his phone with L by his side. He was listening to the voice of someone who was suffering, someone who was in utter despair.

"I'm sorry, Light... I love you so much..."

"Misa. Please..."

She drew in a breath and held it for a moment, causing the room to fall back into silence. When she spoke again, her voice was small and quivering and afraid. "I only have five minutes to talk to you... then... after that... he's going to kill me."

It was one of those times, if asked about later, he wouldn't have been able to recall his reaction. It was as though everything was gathering together and had come into such sharp focus by the time she had agonizingly murmured the last two words, only to disperse and move away, turning the entire room into a blur. The small noise that L made seemed loud, deafening almost. The phone seemed like it was a leaden weight. And then, with the violence of a whip crack, everything shifted back into focus and he stood, desperately trying to fill his lungs with oxygen he hadn't known he'd been missing.

"What?..." he hissed into the phone, pacing back and forth in front of the couch. He was vaguely aware of L looking frantically around the room, his hands poised in front of him as though trying to catch something floating in the air.

"I'm sorry... I just wanted to tell you that I love you..."

"Misa! This makes no sense! Who is going to kill you?! And why?!" It was absurd. The entire situation was absurd. He was turning it over in his head, trying to find a rhyme or reason to it, but nothing presented itself.

"A-Amane's life is being threatened..." he heard L murmur from the couch. "You should ask her location and we'll send the police immediately... She should have done that herself, rather than calling..."

"I'm sorr - "

"Misa, where are you?!"

"I don't know, Light... I don't know..."

"Who's doing this?!" he yelled again, surprising himself by the volume of his voice and the desperation that tinged it.

And then, two things happened simultaneously. Like an angel descending from heaven - it was the first and last time he would ever think of Rem as an angel - the gray shinigami appeared through the wall, her eyes blazing red. At the exact same moment, his phone vibrated, having received a text message. Glancing at Rem for a moment, his eyes squinting in confusion, he opened the message. It contained a picture of a man's face and a name.

And then he understood. He might have kissed Misa if she were there. He might have wrapped her in his arms and held her like the precious treasure she was.

Rem was behind him, staring. It was becoming an increasingly hard task not to break out in laughter. "Misa... You need to call the police."

She sobbed and he was struck by what a talented actress she was. "It's no good, Light. He's going to kill me anyway... I just wanted... I just wanted to hear your voice before... before..."

"Shinigami..." L murmured from the couch. It was a sight to behold how the usually quick-to-act detective had become so useless, so frozen.

He wanted to ask so badly. The words were ready to pour from his mouth and he nearly had to bite his tongue to stop them.

Rem, do you have good hearing or is this just fate? It is just another earthly consequence of God's will? Another step towards the fulfillment of prophecy?

Within a few seconds, he could hear the scratching of pen on paper. That is, if you could call it paper and if you could call it a pen. In the ensuing 40 seconds, Misa cried and professed her undying love. He tried to reassure her, asked questions, tried to get more information out of her.

"What are you doing, Shinigami?" L whispered, his eyes wide.

After he said that, Light turned around to face Rem, acting surprised to see her Death Note open in her hands. Since L couldn't see his face, he smiled at her, narrowed his eyes and looked up at her in defiance.

"Well, Light Yagami," she croaked in her husky, ghostly voice, giving him a pointed look of her own. "The rest is up to you." A chill went through the room and she turned into dust.

L jumped, his mouth falling open as he let out a strangled gasp. On the phone, Misa shrieked.

"H-he just came back in the room... and he just... he just fell over!"

"What do you mean? Is he hurt?" Light asked, staring at the pile of dust Rem had become as though he was shocked by it.

"I-I don't know... he's not moving..."

"Then you need to get out of there!" he yelled, finally tearing his gaze away from Rem's remains to look at L with a baffled expression. "Are you restrained? Can you move?"

"Yes... I can move..."

"Then you need to go, Misa. Just run!"

"O-okay!"

He looked up at the ceiling, letting a heavy sigh fall from his lips. "I can't believe this," he muttered to himself, shaking his head. "Misa... Call me back when you know where you are. I'll come get you." He closed his phone and curled his fist around it. When he looked back down, L was standing, hovering nervously beside him.

"Will she be okay?"

"I don't know... I hope so. I think the shinigami must've killed whoever was..."

"... Whoever was trying to kill her," L muttered, finishing his sentence, though it seemed more like he was talking to himself. His gaze was fixed on the floor, centered on the pile of dust that now occupied the space where Rem used to be standing. Moving forward, his arms outstretched, he crouched down in front of it, but with a vice-like grip on his shoulder Light pulled him back.

"Don't touch it!" he yelled into the detective's face. "You don't know what that stuff is! It might be dangerous!"

"Oh, I guess you're right, Light-kun..." He took a small step back and Light released him, his gaze instantly focusing on the few small red nail marks that he had unknowingly left on his still bare shoulder. "I will... call Watari, I suppose," L murmured before turning away and scuffling towards his computer.

With his pale back finally turned, Light swiftly crouched down and plucked the barely visible corner of Rem's Death Note out from the pile of her remains. Again, he wanted to ask someone whether it was just a coincidence that her note had fallen just so, practically concealed by her dust. Was it a coincidence that he was able to stop L before he saw it? Of course, he already knew the answer to these questions, but the urge to let them past his lips, to let them ring through the air, never seemed to go away.

It was fate. Preordained and destined.

He quickly and quietly slipped the thin book into the back of his pants and under his shirt. As L prattled on to Watari, he retrieved the other's shirt that had been laying crumpled up on the floor the entire time, seemingly forgotten by its owner. Approaching him from behind, he rested the garment over one of L's pale shoulders, tapping his skin gently with his fingers. And again, he found himself experiencing a moment of madness, a moment in which he lost himself, became a person he could not recognize - would not recognize.

L turned to face him. His eyes were clear for once, free of suspicion. They were open and reflective and he could see himself in them, looking down with an equally softened expression. L's mouth opened to speak, but whatever words they might've been, he never got to hear. It was strange how he suddenly found himself bending down, one hand moving to the other's neck while the other ran along his jaw, their lips pressed together in a kiss that was so drastically different from the one they shared before. It was gentle and slow and almost sweet. When L's initial reaction to tense up gradually faded and his slender body nearly melted into his hands, Light's mind wasn't filled with thoughts of dominance and power. The feeling of the other giving into him only made him want to melt right back, to fall headfirst into the enigma he'd been chasing for so long.

For just a moment, he forgot that he was Kira.

And then Watari said something over the speaker, L shied away from him, and he remembered. He watched L's back, now covered by his shirt, which he had pulled on hastily after they'd separated. Hunched over on the edge of the couch, in the exact spot where earlier they had come this close to having sex, had come so close to turning his nightmares into reality, the pale man was speaking calmly to Watari about what had just happened with Misa and Rem and what should be done now.

Light wasn't listening. He was only watching, staking a mental claim to what would soon be his. For now, L could talk in that lifeless voice like nothing had happened between them, but give it some time, and he would make him scream. He would make him scream and beg for him. In the end, he knew, L would be on his knees before him.

It was fate.

It may have been seconds or minutes. With his eyes trained on L, the passage of time didn't hold much meaning. It was like a jolt of electricity when his phone began to vibrate in his hand. At that moment, L may not have been his, but with another Death Note in his possession, another step had been taken towards paradise. And now... all he needed to worry about now was rescuing his precious angel.

For even the God that had been worshipped by humanity for countless centuries needed a few faithful attendants by his side, ready to fight against evil, ready to enforce His law. And always, ready and willing to die in His name.

Sanctimonium Part II - End

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Thanks for reading! Once again, sorry for the long wait. Inspiration has been an elusive prey lately. But... I'm feelin' good and am hoping to get this story back on track! Woo! *fist pump*

And, sorry if this story sounds really disjointed. I haven't actually read it all the way through, but I suspect it sounds that way. Actually, I haven't even read any chapter since I've written it.... Which is probably a bad thing... O.o

Anyway. Not much else to say... Review please! And thanks! ^_^