Welcome back to this smaller world in a universe of bigger ones.
Come, stay a while, or don't. I've carved out this tiny niche where someone can become someone else for however long it takes to read. Think of it as my gift to you.
Who knows? Maybe the niche will grow, maybe it won't. But for now, this is how it is.
Please, enjoy yourself.
0o0o0o
Was it wrong to enjoy breaking things to the point where they could never be repaired? Getting off on the fact that what you've put your hands to will never be the same?
I've broken the game, L thought, broken it in a way I never thought I would do. What have we done?
It had surely been a sin to debase themselves that way, but in that moment L couldn't force himself to care. It was filthy, it was absolutely addictive, and it had satisfied him. L regretted nothing about it, except maybe the cravings he knew he was going to experience later. Maybe not that much later.
He really is beautiful. A beautiful, dangerous, dark creature. Named Light.
L chuckled to himself at the irony. Like always, disturbances in the form of thoughts intruded, but he pushed them away and looked closer at Light, trying to imprint every detail of this oddly precious moment in his head. Light's tangled hair, the way his chest heaved with erratic breaths. And especially the lit-up nerve endings everywhere their skin touched, still entwined among the sheets.
It was sad. L had relieved one kind of pressure tonight and taken a heavier one onto his shoulders. Making love was supposed to be a tender meeting of body and soul, and here they were, mere seconds after finishing, back to pretending they didn't care about each other when all they wanted was the opposite.
L wanted to turn on Light and force him to tell the truth about what he was feeling for once, but he also wanted to curl into Light's chest and protect him and in turn be protected from all the darkness in the world.
He made a compromise. He'd forget about Light, about everything that happened that night, and be alone again, but without this scraped-raw feeling that surfaced whenever Light was around. It was so sharp and real, like it pierced the emotional armour L had taken on since the moment he became L the detective and not just L the human who hurt and cried and felt things like everybody else.
L the detective couldn't be distracted by that.
0o0o0o
Light, eyes closed, panting. Mind mercifully empty, because in the aftermath of the act there was nothing to think. What even would he put words to? With the nature, the emotions, the firestorm of retribution that was surely looming on tomorrow's horizon? There was too much to describe and the English language didn't have the capacity to hold it.
Because in the end, it was all a huge tangled web of words, with truth the way to play by the rules but lying an indisputable trump card, unless your opponent could cheat better than you.
The Kira Case was all sort of an elaborate game, wasn't it? With decisions that came back to haunt you as soon as you dropped your guard and assumed they wouldn't. A game that L ignored the rules to like it was his first time playing, when he was an expert.
I want to win. I need to win, because I can't let Light beat me.
L, still playing the game by the rules, even though he knew he could lie.
I need to win. I am justice, and this world needs me.
Light, trying to win because losing would kill him.
The silence stretched on, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. L rested his head on Light's chest, searching for the steady heartbeat under the rough breathing, and Light's hands were instantly drawn to the detective's feathery black hair.
Feathers. Black feathers, something with those dark feathers that perched like a raven…a memory that kept slipping away, full of errors and holes. Light reached for it too late and the fragment slipped through his fingers like sand.
As he searched, the memory grew fuzzier and fuzzier, until he was unsure it had even been feathers. Or even black, the same shade as L's hair. What had it been?
0o0o0o
Light's hands had stilled momentarily, but now they began to trace a pattern in L's hair. L turned, and Light's fingers instantly stopped, like he was embarrassed.
'Thank you,' L said. He wouldn't use the word 'love' tonight. Love had no part in this. Light paused almost incredulously, then laughed. The sound was rough and broken around the edges.
'For letting you use me?' he whispered. 'For making me realize that I'm never going to forget this, never going to stop hearing you and seeing you and feeling you inside my head?' With a growl, his hands tightened in L's hair to a point where it was almost painful. 'What did you do to me?'
L laughed, and Light wanted to shake him and make him answer, make the man tell him how to stop this obsession that had just grown to new levels.
I wish I could tell you, Light, but you've done the same to me.
0o0o0o
Sleep was less rest that night than waiting for the other to fall asleep. L slowly curled more and more into himself, burying his folded body under most of the blankets. Light stared at the wall and tried not to move his hand and hear the clinking of metal links.
The chain. It had been-what? Twelve hours? Fourteen, between the time they had bound themselves together and the time they had been tangled up in each other, bruised from bites and scratches, trying not to moan too loud?
What had happened, unbeknownst to them both, during those few hours? What had changed the from suspect and detective, nothing more but certainly nothing less, to obsessive lovers, and how, in so little time? Or even worse: if nothing had changed and they had been this way all along.
Light closed his eyes to the absolute darkness again and turned back to the writhing pit in his stomach. How did you force yourself to forget someone, especially when it was absolutely imperative to? Because dreaming about someone and having that dream fulfilled past your wildest expectations were two very different things to deal with.
L buried his face in the pillow and focused on the way his breathing felt against the fabric instead of the vivid feeling of Light, everything about Light, especially that tight heat. Tomorrow would be hell, and they'd be walking through it together.
Yes, angel, this is the price of falling.
So tell me: is it worth it? Is eternity despoiled worth the night?
0o0o0o
For a second when Light woke up, he thought it had all been a dream. Or a nightmare. He squeezed his eyes shut and held onto the unraveling hope, even though he could feel the ache set in every part of his body and the sting of bruises on his skin.
It didn't work. With a sigh, the young man opened his eyes. L lay curled in his arms, pale chest bare but in no way left unscathed by last night. With a kind of horrified fascination, Light bent closer to examine the marks littering L's ghostly skin.
Bruises look good on him.
Light tried to dislodge the thought, but the truth of it held. It looked like ink, purple and green and blue against porcelain skin, not faded yet and by the look of them, wouldn't for a long time. But for all their unearthly beauty, Light would do anything to see them disappear. L may have looked good with this bloody ink under his skin, but Light remembered what he looked like without them, and he would trade any day.
But for now, Light could enjoy them, especially since he had placed them.
Light straightened suddenly and groaned. Exactly how rough had they gotten last night? Hickeys was one thing, this nearly rib-bruising pain was another. Bracing himself, he looked down and felt dizzy. He looked claimed and used, with scratches on his sides and that deep-seated soreness somewhere further south. Surveying the aftermath was like cleaning up after a natural disaster. L was definitely a storm, all confusion and chaos with a still center that trapped you until it blew itself out.
L was a very light sleeper, and had been jostled awake while Light was examining his bruises, but he preferred to stay quiet and watch for the first while.
'Light?' he asked. Light started, eyes narrowing. After a long pause, he nodded.
'Ryuzaki,' the young man said, mouth set in a neutral line. L shook his head.
'Call me L. When we're...alone.' L held his breath for a second. 'That's what you called me last night, didn't you?' Light tensed, ignoring L's words.
'I'm going to go clean up.'
0o0o0o
Someone was talking, but all that mattered was the chain that slowly swung between the two chairs, the occupant of said other chair, and L's confused thoughts about the two things.
Chains were a symbol of captivity.
And right now, with the weight of metal around his wrist, that was all L felt. Trapped. All his thoughts pinned just below the surface, screaming and writhing, tangling up in each other until he couldn't distinguish between right or wrong, love or hate; Light or darkness. Love causes obsession causes madness.
Light...it wasn't enough for him to rob L of his heart. Light had to steal away his mind too. And the only thing L wanted him to take-his body-is the one Light wouldn't touch. Not again, anyways, which was all that mattered.
...instead he took other's lives.
Don't you? Kira?
Kira. Light. Light is Kira. He'd fallen in love with a murderer.
In love. From a one-night stand; from something. L had thought it over nonstop, and yes, something had changed in his feelings for Light, and that scared him. Light. Light being Kira and all the implications it brought to their…
Their what? They, together, were not anything. Last night had been a mistake.
Mistake or not, he couldn't ignore one thing. Light, statistically, was Kira. L, from what he could make out of the noise inside his head, was something more than detective to but something less than partner to Light. Although some would say they were lovers, L disagreed. That required something that was completely absent from last night.
Why didn't this bother him more? It must be because he didn't want to consider what the implications were. Too childish to take on the mantle of an adult, even though he should be able to.
'We'll both forget it in the morning.'
0o0o0o
Thank you.
My niche is here and now. Maybe it'll change over time. Maybe it won't.
:: Books, laying on their covers, with dog-eared corners and geometrical patterns in the bent and unbent pages
-LyingMonsters, the one who watches the blue between clouds as well as the clouds themselves