warnings: complete and utter disregard for the canon timeline. I am playing fast and loose with the facts here, folks. beyond that, the usual: sex, swearing, excessive smoking, slow slowness. oh, and aiber/l! can't forget that.
notes: something you should all know about this fic, if you haven't realized it already, is that it ridiculous and and a complete experiment. I don't know if it will work out or if I'll end up putting my head through a wall before it's all done, and I assume that a lot of the content (aka, much self-involved wish fulfillment) won't work for anybody besides, well, me. that aside, thank you all for reading and especially for reviewing/favoriting/following/etc. it means an inexpressible amount.
things to pay attention to in this chapter: phone calls.
chapter three - hands.
"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
She's attractive, in a western woman sort of way, although she looks like she's missed a few decades, walked in straight out of a '60s spy movie or something. Wedy. He doubts that's her real name, is sure L wouldn't let anybody come within a fifty-foot radius of his favorite suspect without an alias or three. If L is consistent in any regard - which is becoming less and less likely - it's this one. He's committed to protecting the unsuspecting public. Either that, or he's keeping Light locked up in this place for his own perverse amusement. Which, actually, when Light thinks about it, is the more believable option.
"Light-kun," L says, voice low and even, and the words don't sound half as baiting as Light truly knows them to be. "Is something wrong?"
L had sent Wedy out onto the balcony to finish her cigarette - "A terrible habit," he'd said, like all those other bullshit niceties he pretends to believe for the sake of not seeming like a completely unethical lunatic - and it's just the two of them again. L's not fidgeting or acting any stranger than the usual, but he looks slightly off. Nervous, almost. Like the other shoe's about to drop, and he's waiting for it rather impatiently.
Light thinks about answering the question, but figures he's better off cutting around all of the usual word games - not that he doesn't like a good game, but he likes information a fair bit better.
"She's not a cop, is she?" He says it like he already knows the answer, watching the door Wedy had slipped out of. Other than some of the bedrooms, the building's got no windows, but it's got plenty of doors. Light's not allowed through most of them, though.
"How do you figure?" L drops sugar cubes in his tea, twirling his roller-chair back and forth with nervous energy.
He's been looking less tired lately. It's not like the bags under his eyes have at all decreased or his skin had really lost its sickly coloring, but there's just been something different the past few days. Last night he'd felt warm, a thing alive and with a pulse, skin pressing close against Light's as they'd set aside their research, distracting themselves with far more engaging pursuits. They haven't fucked yet, which feels ridiculous to Light, but then it hasn't even been all of three weeks - is that pathetic? - so he'll give it a few more days until he just throws L down on the nearest flat surface and has at it.
He doesn't quite look up to it today, though, drooping back into his usual unkempt and underfed appearance with a bonus bout of exhaustion on top, which somehow doesn't serve to make to him any less appealing. Light wonders what L would do if he shoved him down right now, just laid him out on the dull grey carpet and unbuttoned his jeans, stuck a hand down his pants and made him come. He wonders what this Wedy would say if she caught them at it and briefly takes great pleasure in the thought - the only thing a step up from having L would be letting L's little private workforce know that he's being had.
It's just a fantasy, of course, no one can actually find out - other than Watari, he supposes, because Watari sees and knows everything, and it can't be helped at this point - but the taskforce is better off, as they always are, left in the dark.
"Well," Light says, clearing his throat, "her clothes are too nice, for one."
L stabs a strawberry with his fork and shoves the whole thing in his mouth. "But Light-kun himself is quite the sharp dresser, is he not?" he asks around his chewing, and he's playing the idiot-savant facade again, which annoys Light to no end.
Hadn't they just made progress? They've been getting along lately and, despite the fact that L is varying levels of immoral, unethical, and blatantly cruel, Light is starting to grow rather fond of him. They have been making progress.
"I'm not a policeman yet, you know," Light counters, vaguely irritable, but trying not to let it show.
"Ah, yes," L says, "sometimes I forget. You do act so grown-up." He nibbles at the fork, teeth clanging against the metal, and Light grimaces.
And the worst part is, Light is mature for his age. He's lightyears ahead of his peers, and miles more intelligent than most people three times as old as he is, and if Light were less clever - or less used to L - he would take the compliment at face value. But, as it stands, he hears it for biting, flat-toned jab that it is, like L's just poking fun at him, condescending to treat him like an adult, when he's really just a child playing dress up in Daddy's clothes. It cuts deeper than it should and, not for the first time, makes Light wonder what had ever made him think that L was worth trying to get on with?
Probably the way his hips jut, point-sharp and white from the tops of his jeans, or the sounds he makes low in his throat when Light touches him just right. Intelligence aside, those are L's only good qualities.
Light smiles, and it feels more like a polite snarl.
"Does it make you feel better to pretend I'm not still a teenager?" he asks, lowering his voice, and it comes out kindly, like a vague inquiry about work.
And most days - not the last few, but before that - L would take that as the gauntlet being thrown down, and an invitation to one of their typical arguments, scathed and hidden under layers of false civility. He even looks like he's about to snipe something back at Light, a quick and dirty throw-down of wits at breakfast, but just as soon as the sentiment forms on his face, it's gone. Replaced by that familiar exhaustion.
"Not particularly," L says quietly, "no."
He continues to pick at the strawberries.
Any desire Light had had to quarrel deflates with that, and then he just feels like a bit of an ass. Which is completely unfair and not at all reflective of the situation. But he still feels guilty. L is working hard and Light is supposed to be helping him, not picking fights just for an excuse to prove himself. He feels inexplicably younger than he usually does around L and frowns, shifting to have a sip of his coffee. He doesn't like this, doesn't like caring so much about someone else's feelings. Not just in a general, good-will sort of way, but truly. Like L's exhaustion is making Light himself exhausted, like his happiness will be the only thing to cure them both. It's uncomfortable in its closeness; stifling, almost.
Light wants to touch L's sternum, wants to feel the thin bones underneath the skin. Instead he just looks back at the balcony door and says, "Who is she, L?"
L taps the fork against his desk and looks with him. "A specialist," he says.
Light doesn't like that answer, so he appeases his mind with glimpses of L's long fingers, L's limp hair and sharp nose. He looks intelligent more-so than handsome. L's face couldn't look the way it does without a fiercely clever mind behind it; it's something in the brow, something thick-set in the eyes. In the way that he glares and smiles and comes with barely a twitch of his features. He's too intelligent for expressions.
He's about to respond to L's far from adequate answer when Wedy's lip-smack voice precedes her from the balcony and does it for him.
"Well, don't sugarcoat it for him," she says, heels clicking her back into the room as she tucks a pack of expensive cigarettes into her purse.
"I value your input, Wedy," L says, completely falsely. "Now please go away."
Light would smirk at that if it wouldn't make him look terribly petty.
Wedy's neat, blonde eyebrows raise, but she doesn't look shocked by L's unprofessionalism, which is at least a small sign of experience.
"I just wanted to tell you that a car has pulled into the underground garage. A nice one," she says, glossy fingernails playing along the doorframe that she leans against, and L looks at her like he's just heard the punchline of a particularly bad joke and is waiting for her to take it back. "There's a little off-the-clock surveillance for you."
She picks up her glass, swirls the melting ice and puts herself in a chair. The words only mean something to Light as far as they mean something to L, and from they way he winces and gives his roller-chair a particularly violent turn, he's guessing that they mean something.
The man, when Watari lets him in, is large and blond and handsome, and looks to Light more or less like Wedy with a barrel chest and a cigar in his mouth. He claps Watari, who bares it gracefully, on the back like a dear old friend and shoots a wide, practiced smile at Wedy. "How's my girl?" he asks, and just smiles wider at her response - "I wouldn't know," - and that appears to be enough of a greeting for them.
He turns to L, moving through the room like a refined bulldozer, but L cuts him off before he can say a word.
"Light," he says, without looking at anybody in particular, Light included, "this is Aiber. Aiber, this is Light Yagami."
Aiber's eyebrows drift up toward his hairline as his eyes catch on the chain, and real amusement sparks on his face before it locks itself back up behind an affected grin.
"A pleasure."
His handshake is firm and Light instantly dislikes him. It's the bright eyes, the vague scent of alcohol, the way he motions with his cigar when he speaks. He's not even smoking the cigar. It's not even lit. His cologne is thick and his suit is flashy and he's maybe the campiest thing Light has ever seen in person. And he keeps looking at L, in a way that no one should ever look at L, least of all in a professional setting while he's physically chained to another person.
Light puts on his best smile and greets him cordially. He feels L stiffen next to him, probably because L knows this voice, knows this smile. He knows all the fakest parts of Light, just like he seems to be learning the real ones.
"And what do you do for L, Yagami?" Aiber asks, like he already knows the answer, like there's innuendo wrapped up in there somewhere, and Light's brain is quickly dissecting it, running through the gestures and words and calculated, easy smile.
He sits back down in the chair next to L's, arms crossing casually across his chest, and says, "The same thing you used to, I'd assume," with a lifted brow and a clever twitch to his smirk.
It's plainly obvious - if Light takes a proper stock of the situation, the interactions, the look in Aiber's eye - that L has slept with him. Probably with Wedy, too, from the way she seems to take the comment with little more than a demure sip of her gin.
Aiber, on the other hand, laughs uproariously. It's an obnoxious laugh, too loud for the situation, and Light hopes L gets bored of this comedy routine soon and sends the idiot packing. He's no idea what he could possibly do for the case, and doesn't want to find out what he could do for L. Light wants out of here, back to bed, back to the sheets and L's boney knees digging into his side and his warm, uneven breath ghosting against his face.
"Come now," Aiber says, with a heavy-handed smirk, "you're not a conman, too, are you?"
Wedy clinks the ice around in her glass. "I do believe the boy was talking about the other thing, Aiber," she says.
"Oh?" His face is almost comical when he flicks his eyes over to her, then back to leer at Light and L. "Surely that, of all things, goes without saying?"
"But you love to talk about it, anyway," Wedy says, checking her designer watch, evidently waiting for something. It doesn't take Light long to realize what.
L's teacup hits the desk with a heavy, conversation-stopping clang, his eyes going blank. There's no anger, no simmering displeasure like when Light says something vaguely disparaging about his investigatory techniques - such as they are - and L gets moody, words biting and carelessly cruel. He's just cold.
"Aiber, Wedy," he says, voice low but commanding, enunciating each of their names thoroughly. "Stop it." He doesn't look at either of them in particular, eyes focusing on some far off, hazy point in the back of the room that only he can see, and Light knows the tactic well. "You're here for the Kira case. You will talk about the Kira case, and you will talk about nothing else while under this roof. Outside of this building, you are free to talk about anything but the Kira case. Is that clear?"
He does look at the both of them then, meeting Aiber's smiling eyes and Wedy's sober sniff and prompting a nod from each of them. It's evident that they've heard this spiel before and don't think all that much of it.
"Compromise my security," L continues, "or any part of my investigation, and you will find yourselves both out of a job, and back in a cell." Watari appears then, out of nowhere, with some kind of enormous, gut-rotting desert and L's eyes switch straight over to that. "Now," he says, "who wants parfait?"
Predictably, no one wants parfait.
Less predictably, and not necessarily something Light would admit outright, listening to L tell the two of them off in that authoritative, no-nonsense tone has turned him on a bit. He wonders if L would mind terribly being dragged off for another "bathroom break," just a quick interlude to the morning, and then back to business. But then his mind backtracks over what L had actually said, and another thing clicks into place.
"You're criminals," he says.
Light can feel his jaw locking, his skin itching, and he doesn't know whether he should be shocked or not that L has brought this disreputable element into the investigation. Probably not. Nothing L does should ever surprise him, and if it ever does, Light should know that he's the one who's not playing right, because L isn't above - or below - anything. Sex with a suspect? Apparently that's tame for him, and his usual speed is more along the lines of sex with everyone.
Light wants to curl his lip at Aiber and Wedy, but resolves to be the bigger person about this, for the sake of the case if nothing else. L, on the other hand, appears to have no such moral stipulations.
"Feeling murderous?" he asks Light, immediately switching gears to lean in almost humorously close.
"Depends if you keep talking," Light shoots back, pulling out his long-suffering sigh and put-upon expression.
L's mouth quirks almost imperceptibly. His breath is cool from the parfait and he's chewing on a cherry stem and Light still can't decide whether it will be worth it to pin him down and fuck him on one of the headquarters desks. They have too many desks, Light thinks, too much space. It's wasteful and extravagant, another of L's laundry list of sins, and he can think of no better purpose better suited than the two of them, close and warm, with L's breath going weak, body pliant.
God, Light thinks about this way too much. It would be unhealthy if he hadn't already resolutely decided that it's definitely not. Light is an extremely healthy young man, and this kind of thing is normal for his age group. Sometimes Light will think of himself as more of an age group than he does as a human being, but it's been a long time since then. L's given him more of an identity than he's ever had before, just by standing by and accusing him constantly of crimes, by kissing him the way he does. Light can't decide whether he ought to thank him or hate him for it.
Aiber shoots a look at them and his smile, if possible, grows by a couple of watts. "You're supposed to be Kira?"
Light can hear the condescension in the question. You? A child, a boy, a student? Light doesn't know why, but it instills him with a sudden feeling of harsh, unquenchable pride. Yes, a part of him thinks, me. After the thought passes through, he pauses, but then it's gone, and all he's left with is to reassure himself that the only gratification he'd gotten from the sentiment was the fact that L deems him competent enough to suspect him of a crime of such magnitude. He's not sure he's ever thought of it like that before, but there it is. The other investigators had doubted that a student could be responsible for Kira's crimes - and he doesn't know how he knows that, assumes his father must have mentioned it at some point - but L hadn't. L never would.
It's preposterous, of course. Even if Light is intellectually capable of being Kira, he's not morally so, and that's where L has it wrong. L's so close to being right, but he's just so, so wrong.
Light returns Aiber's condescending look with a polite tilt of his head.
"'Supposed to' being the key phrase," he says, flat-out ignoring any insult Aiber might have intended, "and only in the world according to L."
"And what a beautiful world to live in," Aiber shoots back.
Light continues to disapprove of him with vehemence.
"Funny," Wedy says, and she's not looking at either of them, but dodging her glance lazily between her glass, her fingernails, and L, "but if you work with him long enough, you get to realize that the reputation isn't just talk. He really is always right." Her lipstick smacks as she speaks and Light's starting to vaguely hate her, too. "About these things, at least."
Everyone knows that, though. L is right about everything, L knows all, L is great and infallible. Light is the only one who knows better.
Maybe Wedy really hasn't fucked him, because if she has, she would have seen him as he truly is, small and imprecise and weak, riddled with ruinous humanity. Or maybe, just possibly, Light is the only one allowed that glimpse, the only one deemed important enough to get that close. Yes, that feels correct, that's surely the only explanation. Sex is sex, and people all over the world are having it, but Light is different, and so is L. They don't drag each other low with those grasping hands, they hold tight and they grip hard and they bite deep, and they haven't even fucked yet. They've barely gotten started, and already they're so above it. They're just so above everything.
Obviously, though, he can't say that to Wedy, so he gives her an expression of politeness and acute embarrassment, and says, "Then you see how that makes my position quite awkward."
Aiber snorts, and it's good-humored enough for Light not to trust it.
"I'll bet."
The innuendo really is getting crass, and Light barely restrains an eye-roll. L does it for him, like they're locked into the same thought process, scoffing as he pours himself another cup of tea.
"I've missed your brand of humor, Aiber," he says.
"Really?" Aiber's eyes light up in a leer.
L starts dropping in sugar cubes, and when they reach double-digits, Light stops counting. "No," he returns briskly. He tastes his tea, and then adds a few more. Wedy's glass clinks through the wide office, and they can hear Matsuda talking excitedly to someone in the outside hall, voice getting ever closer.
"They're very charming," is the first thing Light says when they're alone, back in the bedroom while everyone else is having lunch.
It's obvious to L who he's talking about. He's had the same fake smile glued to his face since this morning, and it's halfway between hilarious and sickening the way everyone so far has bought it.
"You hate them," L says immediately, without turning around. He doesn't need to look at him to know the expression has dropped off of Light's face, especially when he collapses into one of the chairs like the melodramatic farce that he is and huffs a laugh, like it's a joke between the two of them.
"Tell me you don't," he shoots back, and he has as much of a point as he doesn't, because once upon a long time ago - when L was just as young as Light, though not nearly so immature - he had hated Aiber and Wedy.
They'd been unprofessional, they'd laughed at his demands for respect, at his interrogations, at the thought that this boy was the great and powerful L. They'd both had eager hands when he'd dragged them into bed, though, and at the time, that had arguably been the worst part. Wedy and her manicured nails and her gin and the way she liked to show off her cynicism like a badge of honor. Aiber with his rentboys and his loud laughter and warm palms. "That's a boy," he'd said, the first time L had kissed him. Wedy had just smirked and told him he was too young for her, and then preceded to fuck him, anyway.
He shrugs, though, because he's not keen to tell any of that to Light, and wouldn't know how to explain the eventual affinity he'd gained for each of them, even if he did.
"They have their uses," is all he says, not intending the statement to be suggestive, but allowing for it anyway. Light will come to his own conclusions, no matter what's said.
Light snorts. "I'm sure they do."
There's a pause, and then the inevitable comes.
"What is this," Light asks, "a thing with you?" He stands up, seemingly bored of his dramatic collapse and now committed to rounding on L. "Did you investigate them? Were they your cases, your suspects?" He says the word like an accusation, even though Light is the one under suspicion. But then, he's always had the ability to make it feel like the other way around.
Sometimes, in the dead, long night while Light sleeps and L stares at the ceiling, he can't remember if he had chained himself to Light or if it was the other way around. He feels locked up, like there's a leash around him. Like Light had slipped in when he wasn't looking and L's not sure how to get him out.
He stiffens when Light's fingers meet his back, trailing up the arch of his spine with a cruel sort of delicacy. L doesn't answer any of his questions. Light's a smart boy. He doesn't need him to.
"What is wrong with you?" he asks, in that quiet tone that he like so much. That sympathetic, lover-boy voice that goes up an octave. It shouldn't be so easy, but it is, to tell when Light is lying. "I'm not just being insulting, I'm actually asking. Has that been the idea from the start, to fuck the truth out of me?"
L stands there, Light's hand splayed across his back, and doesn't know what to say to that. Sex has been an integral part of his investigatory tactics for a long time. He was 17 the first time he dragged a suspect into bed. He's still not sure whether Watari had watched on the security cameras or not, but he'd known after the fact. He'd just nodded his usual approving nod and told L that he was doing good work. Anything for justice.
"I suppose I'm meant to be above that sort of thing, aren't I?" he asks the crisp white expanse of the bed. The sheets have been made, because Light is anal about these sorts of things.
He's expecting it, but the warm press of lips on the back of his neck still makes him twitch with the shock of the touch.
They've been getting closer by the day, and it's come to a point that if they're not truly friends, they might as well let themselves believe they are. Friendship has nothing to do with the way Light's touching him - running his clever hands down L's sides, along his ribs; mouth curving up to press against his ear, the underside of his jaw - but L thinks of it anyway. He thinks of the several hours of sleep he's gotten this week, and waking up to Light looking at him in a way Light doesn't look at anyone.
Light is diluted, though, at least currently. He's not himself. The thought is an ache as much as it is a relief. Soon this will all go away.
"Come on, then," Light whispers in his ear, "I might as well get my money's worth." It might be romantic if it weren't so horribly crass.
"This isn't very upstanding of you, Light-kun," L says, leaning back into the touch.
They touch one another too much and it's ridiculous. L hates being touched - at least in theory - but his hips press back as Light's press forward, and he's just decided to go ahead with this, to risk the possibilities of Aiber's suggestive comments and Wedy's raised eyebrows - for the sake of the investigation, of course - when Light tugs him around by the shoulders, spinning him so that they can kiss properly.
It's a gutting, gasping press, like they've lost something inside one another and are set on using their tongues to get it out - which is a comparison as ill-favored as it is true. They really have no good reason, beyond simple hormones, to be this ravenous, but after hazy days and quiet comfort, that sizzle and burn seems essential. Maybe Wedy and Aiber were a necessary wake-up call, a taste of the realities that L has been ignoring in favor of Light's hands and eyelashes and thighs, and the rest of him, too. L tells himself that it's all part of the plan, but as good of a liar as he is, he's not good enough to fool himself.
Light's mouth tastes like unsweetened tea and his fingers dig into L's scalp as they kiss and it's all quite terrible, really.
"They don't know you," he says against L's lips. "They don't know a thing about you."
It's probably jealousy, but it doesn't sound like it. Light's desperation, the sort he's showing now, is born out of his own floundering reality more than it is outside forces. L should know, he works hard enough trying to loosen the infrastructure of Light's mind. He wonders if that's Kira creeping in the back door, or if Kira's been at the helm all along.
"The thing is, Light-kun," he shoots back, tugging himself out of Light's grip, "neither do you."
"Tell me something, then," Light demands. As if it's owed to him. As if all of L's past and history, his innermost thoughts, should be up for grabs by default.
"There isn't really anything to tell," L says, turning away.
Light scoffs, wiping at his lips. "You're lying. You're always lying."
"Just one more way in which we're devastatingly similar," L says. He slumps into the chair that Light had vacated and the chain is tugged taut between them. "It's terrible, really. We might be good together, if you hadn't killed thousands of people. But then, if you were just the decent, upstanding young man that you pretend to be, we never would have met." He tilts his head to the side, lolling there like none of it means a thing.
Light pinches the bridge of his nose, fighting off the aggravation.
"Stop it. Let's not have this argument again, okay? I just - "
"Want sex?" L asks, but it's not really a question, and not really the answer, either. It goes without saying. Light wants to fuck him and L ought to fuck him, because that's how he does his best investigations, but there's a sort of invented roadblock between where they are now and where sex will put them.
L never goes into investigations intending to fuck his suspects, but it's 60/40 in favor of it ending up that way anyway, and he's learned to anticipate his own on-the-fly strategies. It becomes less about facts and data and crime scenes and more about bodies and skin and quiet words. The difference here is that most of his suspects don't know that they're his suspects, don't know that he's L, and they don't spend half as much time with him as Light has. Kira is a different case, a different animal altogether, and leaving him alone for a moment is not an option.
Wedy and Aiber really don't know him as well as Light does, which only really bothers him in so far as it would puff up Light's ego tremendously if he were to find out, and he really doesn't need any more of that.
L is used to giving things away to his cases. We all make sacrifices for justice, Watari has said to him once when he was a child, and even at that age he'd taken it to heart. He thinks there must have been more of him, once upon a time, but the hands and the mouths have picked him apart, every case taking its own tiny piece, and he'd let them be taken. For justice. And because, at the time, he hadn't mattered to himself at all in the grand scheme.
Looking back on it, he just feels diminished, like he'd want the lost parts back if could figure out what to do with them.
"Yes," Light says. Yes, he wants sex. He is a teenage boy and he is a construction of a person, but a person nonetheless, and his hormones make far more sense to him than L's half-assed identity crisis.
"Not now, Light," L says.
Maybe he'll keep saying that until he catches Light out. More likely, he won't be able to catch him without the sex, without that one deep look inside.
Light rolls his eyes, looks like he'd expected as much, but doesn't push the issue. They play Go instead, and have lunch, and L tells him about a case in Hong Kong where a woman killed eleven different men with the same pair of high-heeled shoes, and Light listens to him, riveted.
In the small, minimalist kitchen, on the breakfast table, with L's hands pinned above his head and Light spread out on top of him, pressing down with a gentle, burning friction as he thrusts shallowly. L's hips writhe beneath him, shoving up helplessly, and Light takes pity and fucks him harder.
In the shower, both of them cramped together in the narrow space - and why do they still bathe separately; it's ridiculous, if Light truly thinks about it - slick with soap and sliding wet against water-warm skin, L gasping and pulling at his hair, desperate for it.
In the main room, in the dead of night, locked together on the floor, sweat cooling between them from the air-conditioning vents low on the wall beside them, the hum of the monitors playing a steady, lulling background noise, almost a sort of mood music - because what's more L than computers and machines, inhumanity so human in its frailty - and Light would pin him, and Light would fuck him, and it would be glorious, the end to all problems and the road to all solutions, and L's voice would break and his long, white fingers would curl into Light's shoulders and -
The stack of files lands dully on the desk in front of him, and Light can barely restrain himself from the full-on glare he'd like to level at Mogi. Next to him, L smirks into his tea, and Light has a place to reroute his annoyance.
He narrows his eyes as he smiles politely, the sneer evident as nothing more than a ghost of sentiment that he's sure L can see.
L doesn't say as much, of course, just continues to suck on today's obscenity and asks, "Distracted, Light-kun?"
"Just thinking about the case, Ryuzaki," he says, so pleasant it's like razor burn, tight with an uncomfortable heat that disguises itself so easily under the cordial tilt of his head.
If the game had been on pause before, the arrival of Aiber and Wedy had shifted everything into an intensive, competitive gear, and it's been all they can do for the past few weeks to keep their hands off of each other, to keep their mouths closed against the clever, barbed things they want to say.
It's unhealthy, perhaps, and not something Light would dream of participating in without provocation, but it still makes something flush-warm shift low in his stomach, makes everything quick and fanciful, almost like he really is Kira, like he really is L's sworn enemy. It's the same as the fantasies he indulges during their work hours - filthy, but acceptable in their obscenity because he clearly recognizes them as such. There's a difference between thinking, what if? and actually killing thousands of people, same as there is between thinking, constantly and with commendable variety, about fucking L, and actually doing so.
They still haven't gotten down to it, although it's not all due to L's ornery pretenses at modesty, so much as their two newest house guests. Apparently, the only things Aiber likes more than pretending to smoke his cigar and talking about his exploits as a conman are making very thinly-veiled sexual innuendos in front of the task force and playing with L's hair. It's extremely unsettling. They'll be at the computer and L will be talking and Aiber will just lean over his shoulder, speaking very close to his ear and twining his fingers into the short strands at the base of his neck, like petting a dog or something.
And L, even though it's obvious that he notices, never once stops him, or makes any comment to the effect of, "Get the fuck off of me, you impudent log," as Light thinks he really should.
"Forgive me for saying so," L says, eyeing him in a way that might be sly if L would commit to actually making an expression, "but, considering that you are the case, that seems uncharacteristically self-absorbed."
And when he says, "uncharacteristically," it's obvious from the cadence of his voice that what he means is the exact opposite. Then he licks some frosting from his fingers, and it's vile. So vile that Light wants nothing more for everyone else on planet Earth to disappear so that no one else ever has to see how vile L can be.
Also, so that they can finally fuck in peace.
"That man is a kleptomaniac," Aiber says, appearing from somewhere in a puff of bitter smoke to stand behind L and Light, hands crossed casually across his chest as he stares up at the screen. "And that one has had sex with his cousin," he adds, nodding to a different Yotsuba member.
He's been doing this sort of thing for most of the past week, poking his shiny, blond head in just long enough to deliver some useless bit of information that they either already know or don't care about, before ducking out again to go lounge somewhere and drink bourbon. Light doesn't understand why L doesn't fire him immediately, but he hasn't said a thing, because that's not the way the game's played.
So, as much as he wants to call bullshit at this latest declaration - because, honestly - he turns his smile from L, letting it go slightly more forced, and says, "And how did you come to those very relevant conclusions, Aiber-san?" in the least combative voice he can manage.
The side of Aiber's mouth jerks up, and he uncrosses his arms, laying his large palms on the desk beside Light and leaning over to say, "I'm a conman," like it ought to explain everything. Light raises an eyebrow expectantly, and Aiber does something that looks suspiciously like an eye-roll. "I read people well," he elaborates, straightening up. "It's part of the job."
Light's expression is exceedingly pleasant when he says, "I was under the impression the job of a conman was to make things up. To lie. About everything." He shrugs, unconcernedly, all dimples and eyelashes and everything that everyone always admires about him, coiled in a taunt just clever enough to avoid being obvious in its goading. "When you think about it," he tells Aiber, idly, "it's quite a simple profession, really."
"Only if lying comes easy to you," L says, leaning his unkempt head over into Light's very personal space, muffling the words around his spoon, and Light might even enjoy the jab - in some twisted way that he's sure he'd learned from L - but for the way it obstructs the pleasure he knows he would have gotten in watching Aiber flounder to come up with a suitable reply.
Light gives a quiet laugh.
"I'm sure I don't know anyone like that," he says, eyeing L, awful hypocrite that he is.
L pulls the spoon from his lips with a wet pop and Light thinks of his hands in L's hair, of the sharp jut of his chin digging into Light's thigh.
"Light-kun," he says, eyes wide and dumb and almost charming, in an inscrutable, foul sort of way, "I do believe you're lying to me."
"Do you?" Light simpers back.
They're really quite lovely sometimes. If L wasn't a near-borderline personality obsessed with arresting him, Light might suggest they do something drastic, like live happily ever after.
"Cute," Aiber says, but he looks annoyed, and Light feels smug for more than a few reasons.
"Yes, Light is very charming," L mumbles. "You two should start a club."
Light doesn't much like what L's implying there, but Aiber just hitches an eyebrow before wandering off. Light, following L's lead, glances back to the screen. The Yotsuba group have moved on from the Kira business, and are currently arguing about stocks, which L doesn't seem impressed by in the least. Light likes stocks, and even he finds it fairly dull. Aizawa is slumped a few seats away, looking as if he's putting serious consideration into hanging himself with his tie. Light only hopes he has the good sense to do it after he's filed today's research report.
Light glances at the smaller security screens, watching Aiber move from the hallway into his private rooms and not sure whether to spend a few minutes feeling ardently superior or just go back to work. L is watching him watch, of course, and the knowledge tingles something sharp and fluttery under his skin.
"You despise him," L says, offhandedly, head tilted like when he's play-acting.
"Of course not," Light says, by default, but hopes it's obvious from his tone of voice that what he really means is, yes, I do. "But at least Wedy actually does her job," he adds.
And she doesn't hang around half as much, a fact that gains her a considerable amount of favor with Light. As a rule, the less he has to see of people, the more he likes them.
"Aiber will do his, when he's needed," L says, but he's distant. Light hates whatever he's thinking about then for no reason other than that he doesn't know what it is.
"Can't you keep him somewhere else until then?" he asks, making it sound like more of a joke than it is. "A cell, maybe? Or a kennel."
"Manners, Light-kun," L says, berating him so fondly that Light thinks he actual sees the edge of a smile in his eyes.
And, this isn't like their old games, not really. They're still playing, but not very determinedly, and not necessarily against one another. If anything, it's a tease, flirting with disaster, but not actually looking for it. Light thinks that it must be, in part, because of Matsuda. Matsuda who, as usual, blundered things so effectively that he'd actually had to fake his own death. Aiber had made himself useful for once by lying around on the ground, Misa had actually conjured up some legitimate acting skills to put to use, and by some confluence of events that had involved L and Light in paramedic uniforms - and subsequent blow jobs, still in uniform, after the fact - everyone had managed to stay alive and the taskforce had ended up with a whole network of Wedy's surveillance cameras in the Yotsuba meeting room.
Even though Light's sure L still hasn't dropped his suspicions, or even set them aside, the new leads have been keeping them busy enough not to get into spats over Light's likelihood of being Kira, resulting in something like a marginally competitive but mutually respectful truce between them. It would be virtually ideal if Aiber weren't skulking around in the picture.
So, maybe last week he would have said something politely distant in response to L's baiting, setting it aside, being the bigger person, but it's been all fun and games between them lately, so he just hitches the side of his mouth and says, "Bite me, L," in a low, clever tone that he means to shoot up L's spine and under the seams of his clothes, the way words sometimes do with them.
"Ryuzaki," L corrects, as usual, but it's not particularly reproving, and if his mouth would curve up just a little and his eyes would light a little brighter, he could almost be grinning
"Ryuzaki," Light repeats. He wants to kiss him. The task force is all around them and Light's father is across the room, brow stern as he shuffles through files, and he'll never do it, not really, but he wants to kiss him.
"Ryuzaki." Watari's voice crackles civilly over the intercom. "There's a call on your secondary line."
L's brow, or what Light can see of it through the thick tangle of his hair, creases slightly, and he looks vaguely annoyed.
"Not now, Watari," he answers back into the microphone. All of the calls regarding the Kira case go to the primary line, so Light assumes, as L probably does, that it's not particularly important. Maybe L should answer, anyway, maybe they both have things to be doing, but there's a lightness between them just then, something foreign and new and bright, and it feels like enough to just sit there, shooting clever sideways glances at each other as another day of slow progress passes them by.
Light's in the shower when Aiber comes in. He's wearing a salmon pink suit and it should look terrible, but it doesn't. In the same way that all of Aiber's awful lines and over-the-top acting should never work on anyone, but he still manages to con them out of billions without lifting much more than a finger. It's something in the eyes, in the genuine jag of his smile. L had spent months trying to pin-point it down exactly, back when Aiber had still been his case, and had never really come out one hundred percent certain. It hadn't mattered, after the fact. L had solved the case and Aiber had been behind his bars, a weapon ripe for further use.
L glances up from where he's hunched on the counter, not letting a thing show on his face. He doesn't need to ask why Aiber's here, never has, so he just quirks his eyebrows and says, "Lost?"
Aiber smirks his usual smirk, and L remembers why he had been one of the easier cases. He's clever, but easy to engage with and L had dived right in as soon as he'd seen him, had known he was behind it in that way he often does, and hadn't hesitated to drag him to justice by the roots of his blond hair. Aiber had never seemed to hold that against him, and doesn't now.
His fingers are pleasantly warm when they slide along L's jaw, shutting his laptop and pushing it aside, and he leans in close to press his stubbled cheek to L's smooth one, breath whispering soft against his lips before they push forward to meet L's. He tastes sharply of alcohol and it makes L sick with familiar disgust, because it's always been disgusting with Aiber. He's got terrible ways of twisting things up so it always feels sleazier and funnier and dirtier with him than it maybe really is. The hand that slide's down L's chest to cup him roughly through his jeans falls neatly in line with all of L's memories, of all the other times they've done this, and it hurts quietly like nostalgic things do.
L's been expecting this from the start, and isn't overly interested in fighting it, in shoving him back and insisting that he's not interested, because in all honesty, he'd probably still rather fuck Aiber than Light. The devil you know, and all that.
He kisses back only tentatively, but Aiber doesn't need it to be anything more, grabbing his face with one hand and groping him roughly with the other. It still feels safer than Light's soft hands and kind smile ever have, because that smile isn't really kind, it's just playing kind, and Aiber may be a professional liar, but it's just his job. He doesn't take it home with him, doesn't sleep with false things ready on his tongue. He drags L so close he thinks he might fall off the counter, but Light is still showering, still hasn't noticed a thing, and maybe L can fall and that will be okay.
Aiber shoves him back against the mirror, but not hard, not looking to bruise, just putting enough room between them to speak.
He nods at the handcuff around L's wrist. "Lose the kid," he says.
He's so warm and he smells cheap, is cheap, and L is almost amused to remember how terrified he'd been of him once. He shakes his head and says, "You've really got to stop being in love with me, Aiber."
Aiber laughs, expectedly. He laughs at everything. "Don't be so egotistical," he says. "It's unattractive." He steps back a little then, taking his hand off of L's face, but not letting up on his crotch. His eyes are so bright. L had almost forgotten. "You look like shit, actually."
"You're shocked?" L asks. Maybe he should be uncomfortable, but he isn't. Aiber's liquor breath is familiar, same as his grabby hands and overbearing laugh and the way he tells stories, speaking very slowly and with a quiet smile. He takes his coffee with two sugars and he doesn't like tea. He has terrible taste in music.
"Last time I saw you, you looked better," Aiber says, shrugging.
"That was Coil."
"Coil is you."
"Semantics."
The original Eraldo Coil had actually been very handsome. L hadn't fucked him, but he had sucked off Denueve - who had been older and with much worse hair - during the detective wars, and had nearly choked on his cock at the time, but it had helped him get the code, so it had been worth it.
When L had actually worked Aiber's case, he'd done so as L, but subsequently it had been much more usual for him to call in Aiber's particular brand of expertise for Coil's cases.
"It was so fucking hot down in Argentina," Aiber breathes against his neck, fingers tapping an off-tempo beat onto his thigh, "that you didn't wear your shirt half the time, and you were always sucking down one of those girly fruit drinks." He tongues L's ear. "You looked good."
Argentina had been a particularly difficult case. A string of political murders with heavy religious symbolism and a lot of arterial spray. L had bought a villa and lived in it for three months with no more furniture than a few futons. He had stuck case photos all over the walls and Watari had had to repaint before they moved out to get rid of his scrawling sharpie notes on every available surface. He'd sent Aiber out to schmooze politicians, but he'd always shown up at the villa on his off hours, drinking heavily and letting L bounce his unending, contradicting streams of thought off of him, and when the thoughts had started coming too quickly for his mouth, and his hands had shaken from too much caffeine, Aiber had lain him down on one of the futons and fucked him calm and quiet again.
That had been two years ago, and then the case had wrapped up and they hadn't spoken to each other again until L had had Watari call him in two weeks ago.
That's how it is with him, usually. L has sex the way other people go bowling, casually and only when he can think of nothing else to do, and then he'll let months or years pass in-between because it fits nowhere into his daily life. It's been pointed out to him - by several people and in many different and creative ways - that this is in no way healthy, that fucking just to pull back the skin and see the gooey insides is really not a good reason to fuck. But L does not do things because they are good or kind or reasonable, he does them because this is what he does.
He's justice, maybe. Or maybe not. It doesn't matter terribly either way.
He looks at Light's pretty, pretty outline through the shower curtain, assumes he can't hear them because he'd be out here already if he could, dripping wet and childishly possessive, because even though he thinks that he understands L, he doesn't. Doesn't even have enough information to form a proper hypothesis, even with that sparkling mind of his.
He looks back to Aiber, nodding his head towards the shower. "I'm not going to fuck you," he says, lowly. "I have to fuck him."
"You can't do both?" Aiber asks with a smirk, but of course he knows the answer.
The thing about Aiber is that he actually knows a lot about L, factually, but he's not half as clever as Light, and not a quarter so much as L, and he doesn't know what to properly do with the information. L likes Aiber - sometimes, but not all of the time - because he's smart enough to smile smug, like he knows things, but not smart enough to actually know anything.
"I don't have time for you, Aiber," he says, but he doesn't push him away.
Aiber rolls his eyes, huffing long-sufferingly and letting his hand curve lazily around L's hip. "You're no fun anymore," he says. "Wedy's the same. She nearly broke my wrist yesterday."
"You shouldn't have grabbed her there," L says, and if he were the type to smile, he might do it now.
There's something like boyish nostalgia for him mixed in with Aiber and Wedy, and even watching her twist his arm around his back after he'd groped her had inspired a certain amount of fondness in L. He feels for them what the average person might feel for the neighborhood children they'd grown up with, maybe because the children he'd actually grown up with had been brutally psychopathic from their infancy.
"She liked it," Aiber says, waving it off, and maybe it's true. Wedy only breaks bones if she's really fond of you. Or if someone - usually L - is paying her to.
Aiber's hand runs up along his hip, coasting up the sharp indentation right below his ribs. There's a pressure point somewhere there and if Aiber knew how he could jab his thumb and cause L an unimaginable, gut-wrenching pain in in his lower abdomen. He's felt it before, more than a few times. From his youth he'd been trained to withstand almost any form of torture, from the physical to the psychological and all intermediate practices, and if Aiber dug his thumb in now at just the right angle it would hurt like hell, but L's relatively certain he could suffer it without making a single sound of distress. The thought coasts somewhere in him, and even though he's in virtually no danger, it's something of a comfort.
Aiber's palms are just sloping up the concave of his back when the shower curtain slides aside.
Light is standing there, Light is naked, and Light does not look pleased. Light rarely looks pleased, of course, unless he's just come or sometimes when he's perceived some sort of victory over L. He smiles constantly, a pleasant drudge of the face, but L's quite certain he's rarely, if ever, seen him look happy.
"Am I interrupting something?" he asks, in that cool, clipped voice that he usually reserves for L alone. His eyes are locked on Aiber's hand up L's shirt, nostrils flared and looking vaguely disgusted. L rather hopes he is.
"Hey," Aiber smarms, eyeing Light up and down, because he is naked and dripping and beautiful. "Looking sharp, Kira."
Light's face twists with tight politeness as he pulls a towel off the rack to wipe himself down, purposefully letting the material fall haphazardly, covering nothing up. It's classic posturing, displaying his lack of bodily shame like a badge of honor. L thinks it's almost cute in its infantilism.
"If you don't mind," Light says, wrapping the towel around his waist, "I'd rather you didn't call me that." There's no denial, no sharp defenses, as if he feels no need to dignify Aiber's words by getting offended.
Water droplets fall from his hair and skate down his chest, and L watches them. Light is so good-looking that sometimes he doesn't seem real. Sometimes, in the early days - before they had truly met and L was still working the case off of surveillance and suspect profiles - he'd been sure that he wasn't. That Light Yagami was a person he'd created in his head, because he'd wanted a perfect criminal.
It seems very silly and distant now. Light is not perfect, and not even just because of the mass murder. He is childish and moody and self-absorbed, everything that L is, but in a neat suit and pretty skin. He is far from perfect. He is ugly, in his way.
"I need to get dressed," he says, walking past them without glancing at Aiber, and pulling L after him like a dog on a leash. "Come on, L."
L goes, giving Aiber a shrug, because he'd more or less signed up to be this dog. He is Light's right now, in the same way that he had been Aiber's or Wedy's or the woman in Hong Kong's and the man in Tulsa's. It's just until the job is done, until case his closed, and then he will go back to being his own, alone and quiet and safe again, if only for a little while.
Light wants to hit him, wants to pin him to something solid and tear him apart and make him hurt and cower and beg, because Aiber is not allowed to touch him that way. It seems immoral, like there should be a law somewhere forbidding anyone from putting their hand up L's shirt, unless they pass a set of standardized tests in order to measure their qualifications. Maybe then, if they're brilliant, if they're good enough the way that Light is better than enough, maybe then they can be near him. But only then, and they'd have to pay taxes for it, too.
It's unreasonable, he knows it's unreasonable, he's not completely out of his mind, after all. A day ago, or an hour even, he would have looked down on himself for feeling this way.
As soon as Aiber and Wedy arrived and made their history with L obvious, Light had absorbed the knowledge that L had fucked them - that L goes around fucking everyone - the way he'd take any new information. It's just a fact, a personality quirk, further evidence of L's striking lack of morality, and that had been the end of it, because Light isn't petty enough for jealousy. Light has never been jealous of anyone in his life and he sees no reason why he should be, with the way he looks, the way he is, the way that everyone treats him the way you would treat some supernatural being who's come down from heaven to delight you with its presence.
L has never looked at him like that and Light has a very graphic fantasy of strangling him with one of his dress shirts as he slams the door of the closet shut behind them. L, unfazed, slumps against a rack of blazers.
"You're dripping on the slacks, Light-kun," he says, finger plucking at his lip, eyes wide and dull.
Light hates him so much right then it burns through him like a fever and he gets a sickening satisfaction from yanking the chain forward to make L stumble into him.
Light is still completely naked and L is fully clothed, but that doesn't really seem like an issue at this point. The towel drops from his waist and the water still clinging to his hair lands in thick droplets between them, soaking tiny spots into L's shirt, and it physically hurts when he kisses him, but Light doesn't care.
"You're disgusting," he says into L's hair, breath already ragged and cock hardening and pressed into the crotch of L's jeans. He speaks against a patch of skin between L's ear and jaw, lips teasing over it with reckless severity. His palm slides down L's back with bruising pressure, pressing so close they might as well be sharing the same space. "Is there anyone you'd say no to?" he grits into L's ear, his other hand snaking down to grab him roughly.
L's face stays blank, but he goes still in Light's grip just before something like a grin splits his eyes, though his mouth doesn't move. "You're jealous," he says softly, being almost gentle.
"Shut-up," Light bites back, hips pressing tight and close and merciless, demanding L's immediate white flag of surrender. And L will give it to him, L will give him anything because that is the game, because for some reason he's convinced himself that offering himself up like a sacrifice to someone he believes is Kira is a good idea. Because he is ridiculous and disgusting and wrong, wrong, wrong, and Light is going to kill him someday.
His hips snap forward and his tongue shoves against L's and he wants to get as close as he can, crawl under the skin and live there. The material of L's jeans is rough against his length and he can't seem to get enough friction, even when he shoves L into one of the clothing racks, pushing in between the clean white shirts and identical pairs of jeans. It smells like cotton and detergent and his cock throbs and his head rolls and L lets himself be pushed and pressed and maneuvered into whatever state Light likes, clothed legs spread and head leant back against the wall. He's so calm he could be dead, should be dead and Light will make him, Light will kill him.
He comes pathetically quickly with that thought chasing through his head, and he doesn't understand it and he doesn't like it, except for the fact that something in him really, really likes it.
"You're disgusting," he whispers again, just so L understands.
L who is holding him up and stroking his hair and only slightly hard in the jeans that Light has just spilled all over. He feels small and sick and horrified with himself, and he flashes back to that image from early on, that image that burned itself into him like a brand so that it's hard for him to blink some days without seeing it on the backs of his eyelids. L on his back and hurting and begging and completely at Light's mercy. It should make him sick instead of dizzy with arousal, but it usually does a bit of both.
Light stumbles back and L stares at him like he's something curious and strange that he would like to put in a box and study. Light still kind of wants to hit him. He looks down at himself, disheveled and shiny with water and sweat, looks over at L, clothes stained with come, and can't help curling his lip.
"I need another shower," he says.
They take it together and it's the first time they've ever done it like this, for some reason. Light decides that he doesn't like it, because L keeps looking at him and petting his hair and touching his skin with kind hands, and it's so frustrating and patronizing that it's not long before Light's pressing him face-first to the tile wall and jerking him off like there's some unavenged mortal feud between his hand and L's dick.
They're late for that morning's taskforce meeting and Aiber just smirks and Wedy clinks the ice in her glass and L makes some half-scathing comment in a clueless voice about Light's beauty care regiment and avoids answering several phone calls. Light fantasizes graphically about burning the entire building to the ground while vehemently insisting to himself that he isn't.
He gets no work done.
three weeks later.
One of the first things that strikes Light when he gets his memories back is this: Despite the past few months, the urge to kill L has not gone away.
The other things that strike Light are these: L has beautiful hands. L has beautiful fingers and eyelids and vertebrae and shoulders and ankles and teeth. L is beautiful, somehow. L is his favorite person out of all the people he has ever met in his life. L had not lied about the snowstorm and Light had secretly known it all along. L should be tested for STDs. L should pose for figure drawing classes. L is a terrible person. L has beautiful hips. When Light kills L, it is not going to be with the Death Note.
tbc.
end notes: okay, okay, so let's talk about this chapter for a second, yes? although there is an overarching plot, and a rather unoriginal one at that, a lot of what's going on in these early chapters was greatly inspired by a kink meme prompt (ha, I know!) along the lines of "Light thinks he's special because L is willing to have sex with a suspect, but as it turns out, L fucks all of his suspects. Cue Aiber, Wedy, B, etc." so, um, I wasn't kidding when I said that L fucks everybody for justice. next chapter, be on the look-out for major l/light fic cliche number two: beyond birthday.
much love to you all for reading.