warnings: all of the usual and, uh, dub-con. and minor violence.
notes: Because apparently I have some sort of narrative kink for fucking with the timeline, let me make a note of the fact that the first scene of this chapter does not follow the last scene of previous chapter and actually takes place between the third and fourth scenes of last chapter (aka, it's the missing phone call with B.) The second scene of this chapter, on the other hand, does return to our regularly scheduled programming.
/it should not be this complicated but it is, gah.
Thank you to everyone who is reading/reviewing/passively glancing at this fic. It means the world. (and if you're a guest or have PMs turned off, know that I was dying to reply to your reviews and am heartily appreciative of them.)
chapter five - forgive us our trespasses
"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains."
- William Shakespeare,A Midsummer Night's Dream
Light has been asleep for almost three hours when the call comes in, the sixth one that week.
L looks at the flares of the pale city light against his skin, slanting through the window to ripple across his body, painting him in stripes. He keeps his eyes locked calmly on Light's outline, muted as it is in the dark, as he does something very stupid and answers the phone. He tells Watari to get some sleep as he transfers the call over to his cell, and knows that he will, even though he is worried, even though he knows as well as L that this is very far from a good idea.
But L is not a child any longer and the world is full of bad people, many of which he has faced at one point or another. There is no reason for him to hide from the proverbial monster under his proverbial bed.
He deliberates over it for only a moment before fishing out the key and unlocking the chain, quickly slipping the cuff off of his wrist and wrapping it around the headboard, leaving plenty of slack for Light to sleep comfortably. He won't be long, and even if he is, it doesn't matter. Light's not a threat as he currently is - couldn't possibly be - and he repeats this to himself as he moves quietly across the room and out into the hallway, deftly shutting the door behind him and then leaning back against it, taking a heavy breath.
He uncurls his fingers from where they're clenched around the phone, trying to steady himself. He is not afraid. He is not afraid.
"What do you want?" he says flatly into the receiver, bracing himself for the harsh, languorously mad giggle in response. He is not left long in waiting.
B's voice slips in like something smooth and dirty and terrifying in its familiarity. It's a voice L hears sometimes when he hasn't slept for days and days, when there is some puzzle that he is unable to solve. What would Beyond do? he'll ask, and then detest himself for the urge. It's been months since they've spoken, and the last time had been so brief that L barely remembers it. He hadn't let himself stay on the line long enough to hear anything but the answer to his question, a yes or a no.
"Do you know anything about Kira?" he'd asked. It had been a long shot - the longest of shots - but it had been early in the case and something about the way Kira killed, something about names had pinged B sharply onto his radar. A long shot, but he'd tried.
"Come to California. Come see me and I'll tell you."
He'd remembered the taunt in that voice, the promise, from years and years ago. There is always a quality to B's voice that makes him sound as if he knows so many mysteries, knows the answers to all the questions that L asks himself quietly in the night. L has always, always hated him, but he's always let him speak. Even if the things he says are cruel and degrading and wrong, wrong, wrong. Especially then, maybe.
Fuck you, L had wanted to say, but instead he'd just hung up and not tried again. He'd assured himself that B hadn't known a thing, was just playing a game. B's always playing games. There's nothing he likes better.
He starts with one now. "What are you wearing?" he asks, breathing heavily over the line like a seasoned pervert. L wouldn't be surprised if he started licking the phone. It's a farce, of course, a joke at L's expense. That's one of the games they play: stalker and victim, villain and hero, bad guy and good guy. B performs all of his roles to a tee; L can barely navigate his.
He simply rolls his eyes at the current display. If there had ever been a point when sex could be used to make him nervous, it's long since passed. Overexposure tends to have that effect.
"What do you think?" he says dully. B knows what he wears and has worn every day for years and years now. He knows because, for many of those years, he'd worn the same.
The laugh on the other end of the line is only half-real and its familiarity is jarring.
"Boring," B says, like they're on a game show or something and L isn't performing adequately. He's always been like that, always loved a performance. "When did you get so boring, Law - "
L doesn't let him get further than that.
"B, don't," he snaps, letting the natural strain of authority bleed into his voice. "You don't use that name. Not on this line. Not ever."
He doesn't have time for this - Light could wake up at any moment and, although there's no particular security risk to that, it feels to L like something that shouldn't happen. He doesn't want him anywhere near his name, near B and everything that he knows.
L thinks, not for the first time, that he would have been better off just killing Beyond and being done with it.
"I was going to say L," B simpers, voice trilling over the line like a jingle.
L wonders if it's the same voice he uses on the orderlies to get phone privileges often enough to constantly hound Watari's answering machine. It's been a while, but he used to call all the time, like a school boy trying to get a date or something, always, "L, what did you think of last month's conference on neuroscience?" or "I've been considering the Oort cloud…" or "I miss your tendons, I want to rip you tendons, please, please please, come and visit."
B can play very charming and reasonable when he wants to - can play any role, though L's is his favorite - but he so rarely makes the effort, preferring to get what he wants through blunt force trauma and crawling mind games. Simple manipulation is beneath him. L thinks that if B ever met Kira, he'd probably look very much down on him - possibly almost as down as Light would look on him - but no, L's not going to think about that. L's not going to think about Light at all, because when he does he gets a pit in his stomach that aches and twists with every stray thought. It says something very bad about the state of his affairs if concentrating on B makes him feel even the slightest bit better.
He remembers a time when thinking about B made him want to curl up and decay slowly in the far corners of dusty, shadowed rooms. Remembers when he'd done just that.
"Don't call me that either," L says after a moment. "Use Ryuzaki." He knows that will garner no good response, but he says it anyway.
"Oh?" B hisses through the phone, and he sounds even tinnier than usual over the wires. A thin, metallic whisper. "Maybe you should call me Ryuzaki, too. You call me and I call you. If it goes on long enough, we might not know ourselves from each other." He giggles and it's absolutely mad. "It'd get awfully confusing, wouldn't it?"
"No," L says.
"It would for me," B says.
"Maybe you're not as sharp as you used to be. A place like that, it could rot your mind," L says.
L says, B says. That's how all of their conversations go, back and forth, round and round - circular and never-ending and maddening. L sometimes wonders if B's plan all along has been to drive L just as insane as himself. He sometimes wonders if it's working.
"It's not so bad here, as it goes," B tells him, and he's lying, of course - US mental facilities are notoriously terrible, and L had made sure that the one that B was put into had a particularly brutal reputation - "apart from the food and the general sense of creeping desiccation. It's just that there's nothing to do. I've even been banned from art therapy."
"That's what happens when you put someone's eye out with a crayon," L says lightly, as if it's to be expected. And it is. "Yes, they contacted me about that."
B makes an annoyed, ruffled sound, and L would think he was waving a causal hand through the air if he didn't know that B is almost consistently either straightjacketed or at least handcuff to something. "It was a colored pencil," he says, "and he's allegedly going to make a full recovery so I don't know what all the fuss is about. People are always fussing about these sorts of things and I never know why."
Liar.
He'd learned how to lie from L. B had always known how to act, how to play pretend, but he'd learned how to lie by watching L, always watching L.
"You know why," L says softly. B has many, many faults, but not understanding things has never been one of them. "You just like to watch things - hurt."
He mean to say die, watch things die, but he says hurt instead and it rocks something wild and long buried inside of him. Apart from the general uselessness of it, speaking to B always makes him feel sick and weak, as if he's just come down with some awful, incurable sickness. Speaking to B makes him want to see B, and that's something he cannot do.
"Why did you call, Beyond?" L says, trying to get this over with.
"There are patterns on my walls," B says, very quickly and quietly and not answering L's question at all. "I thought it was all white, but it's not. There are patterns," he repeats, insistent, like he suddenly needs to make L understand something. "I can see your face, the shapes of your eyes. I can see you in everything. You follow me." The rasps are mounting. "You think I follow you, but it's the other way around. You follow me, L."
L feels sick. He wants to hang up, but he doesn't want to go back into a world where he'll be chained to Light Yagami and B will keep calling - stuck between a rock and hard place. He doesn't want to be in this world, on this case. He thinks about England, about the small flat he sometimes rents in London - not on Baker Street, though he'd had Watari try for the sake of symbolism - tucked into a little corner where no one would think to look. He wants to run away, in some quiet, inexpressible way that he will never, ever act on. He wants to run.
"Why did you call?" he repeats softly, too softly and not at all in the stern, no-nonsense tone he means to use. "You wouldn't tell me a thing before. What's so important now?"
His head is still pressed against the door and for a moment he thinks he hears a noise from behind it, a clink of metal shifting against metal - no, no - but it stops as soon as it starts and he lets his breath out, listens to the words that are filtering, static and messy, over the line.
"You wouldn't come in person," B tell him, like he's forgotten. "I would have told you what you wanted to know if you'd only come in person. I still would now." He sounds for half a second like the six-year-old boy that L met all those years ago on a sharp, bright winter morning - that boy, small and desperate and frail in an almost unreal sort of way. "A little monster," Roger had said to Watari, under his breath. L had heard him anyway. So had B, probably.
"Nonsense," Watari had replied. L remembers watching the frost gather on his mustache and thinking it must be very inconvenient to be grown up. "He's brilliant."
L had decided some years ago - in the very late hours of the night, on one case or another that he could have solved with his head cut off - that all the most important events in his life have happened in winter. He'd been brought to Wammy's in the winter and B had come a few years after, during one particularly cold February. The bells, too, during the snowstorm.
He'd first started investigating Light Yagami last December.
And no, he's not thinking about that -
Except that he is. He always is.
"It doesn't matter anymore," L says, after too long a pause. "I don't need your help, and I doubt that I ever did." He can hear Aiber down the hall, humming a French pop song to himself. He hopes he doesn't come this way, and resolves to fire him or something if he does. "I'm almost through with the case, anyway."
B does something that sounds suspiciously like biting the phone, rattling the speakers with a hysterical chomping noise and an even more hysterical laugh. "Caught Kira, huh? I'm surprised it's taken you so long. You'd have caught him faster if you'd have only come." He laughs again. "I could have told you. I can still tell you."
No. He's lying, he's lying, he's -
"Come on. Come, come, come. I promise it's good. It's brilliant. Lawl -"
"B," L snaps, cutting the word in half, not letting him finish. He'll have to be put down if he says L's real name and they both know it. B is not worth the risk, not at a time like this. Light doesn't know about him, about one of the few people alive who knows L's real name, and L doesn't intend to let him find out. "I'm hanging up," he says. "Don't call again. I won't answer."
He will find out, though. Not now, maybe, but he'll have to remember himself at some point. Remember Kira. And when then happens, it's only a matter of time -
"Yes you will," B says, the laugh still strung through his voice.
L jabs his finger so hard in the end call button that it will probably bruise.
He takes a long breath, firming up his resolve. If B does anything that is not completely horrible, it's this, the perspective. He reminds L, in some ways, who he is and what he is here for. What he needs to do. And L needs to do it now, has been putting it off for too long, and for what? Because he doesn't want this to end? Everything ends, and most things badly. Best case scenario, he gets out of this situation alive. In that case, Light's chances of survival are minimal. He has to face that, to be okay with that.
He stands very slowly, phone clutched rigidly between his fingers, and turns back to the door, bracing himself to go in and fuck Kira.
two hours later.
He feels liquid and hazy when Light presses him to the bed, flattening him like a rag doll, a weak thing incapable of controlling its own movements. "You knew what I was doing," L repeats, even though he doesn't want to. His thighs still ache from the earlier fucking and his throat is dried sharply from the alcohol. Light smells very good.
"Shut up," he says.
"You know what this is. It's a criminal investigation," L continues, unfazed.
"L, shut up." His hands are on L's throat then, but L doesn't shut up.
"You're a murderer," he says, then pauses. "Probably." He trips over the word somewhat, feeling at once very pathetic and like Light is far more pathetic than he could ever be. He opens his eyes, staring up at that pretty face, skin gold in the dim lamplight and flushed with a lovely sort of hurt. Light looks beautiful even when about to choke him. L puts his hand up, ghosting his fingers against Light's cheek like he wants to touch it, but can't quite make himself. Light's grip loosens on his neck.
"If it helps," L says, leaning up to whisper in his ear, but ending closer to the dent between his neck and jaw, "I do like you better than most of them."
Light shudders slightly against him, body going taut and fragile where it presses to L's chest, thighs wrapping his hips in an airtight, bruising hold and for a moment L thinks that Light really is going to choke him, just kill him here and now and forgo all the needless drama of their regard for one another. Abruptly, though, Light lets go, hands loosening so quickly, like L is a germ he wants to wash himself clean of.
Then he hauls back and punches L in the face.
L doesn't often watch movies, and when he does it's always either case research - as it had been for the Hollywood serial stranglings a few years back - or old detective noir - Hitchcock and The Thin Man the like - but one of the multitudes of discrepancies, he's noticed, between reality and film, is the punch to the face. In films, it's treated like a tap, a minor scrape, a small set-back; reality is not so generous. When punched right, and punched hard, it hurts tremendously, ricocheting through the facial bones and causing a heady, jarring nausea to rise in the temples. L has been punched in the face many, many times in his line of work and, on the list of physical impairments he has been subjected to at one time or another, it perhaps ranks fairly low, but that still does not make it something particularly enjoyable to experience while lying in bed with a handsome 18-year-old boy in his lap.
Especially when said boy is the one inflicting the injury.
After he hits him, Light just balances there, breathing heavily and looking somewhat surprised, and somewhat expectant. L's cheekbone throbs.
"Are you - quite done?" he says after a moment. He slurs the words slightly and winces more at that than the punch itself. This is really, really not his night. Though, from the look on Light's face, it's no one's.
He leans forward, brow quirked prettily - and he looks so young that it might be sweet if L's mind wasn't fuzzy with alcohol and the vestiges of sharp pain - and... sniffs him.
"Are you drunk?" he says, sounding more aghast than he might if L had murdered a bus full of schoolchildren. Light Yagami is, of course, far too responsible to drink, even with friends, and certainly not near heavily enough to impair his speech.
L rolls his eyes. "Tipsy," he corrects.
L thinks Light might hit him again, and has half a mind to hit him back, because really, there's only so much he can be expected to put up with. There had been a man once, a truly awful man - ringleader of a sex trade racket in Eastern Europe - who had beaten L so badly the one time that they'd fucked that he'd been in the hospital for the next few days, but it had gotten him what he'd needed. He'd figured out the weaknesses, which pressure points to hit, and he'd hit them all, taking down the whole operation. The man is still in the Belorussian prison where L had left him.
He's reminded of that encounter, just for a second - the silver rings and the silk sheets and the faintly humorous face the man would make when he came, jaw grit and eyes rolled back, funny in the way that things are instead of just being ugly. L doesn't remember his name.
But Light doesn't hit him again, doesn't lay a hand on him, and the difference is what really makes the damning impression. Light's head tilts slightly and he does something that, for all his precise calculations, L had not foreseen.
He laughs.
It is not a Light laugh, neither dignified nor put-on nor stifled behind a hand. It is loud and uproarious, an Aiber sort of laugh - if he has to put a name to it - head dipping back, body rocking over L's with the pangs of his amusement.
L just watches him, not knowing how to react and half-waiting for it to abruptly cut off and reveal some sort of hidden, disastrous plan, but - it doesn't. In fact, it seems quite genuine. L just keeps watching. Light is normally beautiful, but now he is very, very beautiful. He looks like a child, like a person, even - if that's the word L wants - careless in his humanity, an unstudied picture of amusement.
"Tipsy," he repeats back to L, like he can't quite wrap his mind around it. L watches the expression shift on his face, shrinking until the smile is only a dry reflection of what it had been a moment ago, sobered now with something sharp and sad. One of his hands comes up, abruptly, to cup the side of L's face, fingers curling lightly against the place where he'd hit him only a moment before. L wonders if he'll bruise, wonders if Light would like him to.
He feels a warm forehead against his own then, and a ghost of breath fluttering over his skin in feathered waves.
"Do you care about me at all?" Light asks quietly, smile completely gone now. He looks very aware, and very small.
Careful, L thinks, because Light has played this card before, is taking every opportunity to sell himself as the heartbroken victim in the situation, either the vilify L or to justify it to himself. L's not sure which, but it doesn't matter either way. As long as L doesn't tell the truth, as long as he doesn't show skin, show his weak points, it should be alright.
"Does it matter?" he whispers into Light's hair. It tickles his cheek, smells like sweat and conditioner. It's unsettling in its familiarity, almost a comfort to the senses. "If you are Kira, then I'll have to stop you, probably kill you. And if you're not, then you and I will never see one another again after it's proven."
He says it dully, like he's listing off unimportant facts that might be of interest, like he doesn't care at all. And that's the point, isn't it? To make Light care, but for L not care about him. That's always the plan - make them care. Not in some cushy romance-novel way where L becomes the redeeming force in the life of a hardened criminal, makes them see the error of their ways - that's completely unrealistic, and fairly dull besides. No, it's not about changing them - his suspects, his victims, in a way - it's about shifting their world just the slightest bit, about inserting himself as a variable that was never accounted for, and never could be. The police? Of course. A great, world-renowned detective? If the crime rates high enough, it's to be expected. But a skinny, pathetic man in beat-up sneakers and heavy eyes who is there suddenly, who is a factor? No matter if they hate him, no matter if they beat him senseless, he always has someeffect.
Some do care - Aiber; a woman in the tropics with a two-year-old daughter who had been terribly fond of L; a boy on the streets of New York City who'd sworn until the end that they were best friends - some care in the way that could maybe fit into a pretty love story, somehow. L just hopes like hell that Light isn't one of them, because Kira is different.
"I'm not - " Light starts, perfunctorily - denying, denying, always denying - but he doesn't sound like he believes it and L doesn't let him finish.
"Just because you don't remember - " he begins, sitting up so that Light's rocked slightly in his lap. Those fine, golden hands go to his shoulders, digging in deep and L wishes it was one of those times when he didn't have to go for the guts, because otherwise they could just kiss now, press close and let their bodies fight it out, instead of their minds.
But they've been using their weaker weapons for too long, so when Light grabs him by the hair and grits, "Shut up about my memories," L doesn't shove him off the way he should. "Shut up, okay. Just shut up. I wish you wouldn't speak. I wish you would never speak." He's talking fast, almost to himself, and his breath is a warm whistle in L's ear. "I could just fuck you," he says, and no, no, not this again, they can't keep doing this, "just fuck you over and over again and you would never speak and it would be perfect."
They're supposed to be making progress and this is not progress and Light is shoving his shirt up, fingers rough on his skin and hips digging in and fuck, once had been enough, hadn't it? Why can't once be enough?
"Light," L gasps, shoving him off with something nearing full power, and Light trips up a bit, but he regains his balance easily, bearing down on L again like some kind of unpalatable god looking for its sacrifice, for its due. And L is on the alter, L has put himself on the alter, and Kira is claiming something that isn't really his to claim.
It's just a game, right?
"What?" Light nearly moans against his jaw, fingers tearing roughly at the buttons of his borrowed shirt, trying to strip L as quickly as possible. It isn't at all like last time. "Don't pretend - " he says, seemingly struggling with his actions, and there's a flash of guilt across his face, but he shoves it down. "You came to me." L's not sure if he's talking about earlier tonight or the first time they'd kissed or maybe the first time they'd met, way back at commencement, the beginning of the game. A necessary sacrifice. "You wanted it," Light growls at him. "Don't you want to solve the case, L?"
"Ryu - " L starts to bite back, correcting because it's the only thing he can really think to do, but Light cuts him off with a kiss, teeth digging into his lips and tongue jamming into his mouth.
Everything moves very slowly, or else very quickly, and L half-wonders - in the back of his mind, in the small, secret place where one thinks about these sorts of things - if Light will rape him. If, should L fight and keep fighting just a little bit, but not hard enough to truly stop him, if Light will go through with it.
Maybe it would be interesting to find out, maybe it would give him a lot of useful information on the state of Kira's mind, on the reality of his morals. It would hurt, of course, would fuck things up right good, but it might be interesting. And if it's interesting, if it's for the cause, then L should do it, right? Anything for justice, Watari had said.
"Isn't this the only way to solve the case?" Light is gasping into his ear, a bitter whirlwind of torrid, mind-sparking words. "Surely good old fashioned deductive work can't be the answer. No, it has to be sex. It's just the case, right?"
Just the case, L thinks, agreeing. Just a necessary sacrifice.
"It's just a game," Light gasps, practically humping L now in a desperate fervor of something like arousal-stricken self-loathing. He sounds really terrible, sounds gutted, sounds sad.
And L thinks that he doesn't want him to be sad. L thinks, fuck necessary sacrifices.
He shoves Light back just enough to yank back his arm, gathering power, and slams his fist into Light's pretty face. An eye for an eye, my friend. He doesn't want Light to be sad, but he does want to hurt him. L is tired of ripping himself open and showing his seams. L wants to rip someone else.
Light is knocked back and L follows him, switching their positions with a trembling ease, landing them diagonally across the bed with several limbs hanging out over open air and more than a few bitten-off fuck's and what's between them. Light falls like a mannequin, like he's been waiting for this, waiting for so long for L to turn the tables, take the wheel, pull the rug out - choose your favorite euphemism for control. L is sure that he's supposed to be in control, and the realization that he hasn't been for quite some time rocks through him like a blow to the gut.
He shoves Light's arms back above his head, kicking his legs apart to kneel between them.
"Fine," he grits against Light's lips, not quite sure what he's agreeing to. "Fine."
"What are you doing?" Light gasps back, because L has always played it quiet, always given himself up instead of taking, because that is how the game is played. That is what L has always done and would do, if he had any sense left at the moment. "That's not playing fair."
L knows he's right, but decides then and there that, despite his pretensions otherwise, he hates the game. He is tired. He is 24 years old and he is tired of everything that he has ever been.
"When have you ever known me to do that?" he asks, pressing in so close he's sure that he'll choke the air right out of Light. Maybe he'd liked that, maybe they'd both just love that so well. It's the right thing to do, in the grand scheme, putting an end to Kira here and now. But L doesn't want an end to Kira and doesn't think he truly ever has.
He slides the sweatpants easily off of Light's hips, holding his chest down with one hand and stripping him with the other. Light tries, weakly, to shove him off, but his heart's not in it, and L barely has to exert any effort to keep him still as he reaches over to the nightstand, shoving the drawer open with a rough grab and pulling out the bare necessities. The plastic of the condom wrapper makes a soft sound when it hits the bed and Light winces beneath him. He looks terrified, staring up at L with eyes wide enough to match his own, but he's stopped fighting.
L doesn't even have to hold him down when his fingers slip inside, when Light's jaw grits and he makes a pained animal sound, like a dying beast, one hand digging half-moon circles into L's arm. It's his first time this way, L's sure, and some other night he would be gentle, would be kind in a way that he can drudge out of himself when he needs to. He would put on a perfect show. This night, however, his fingers move too quickly and his eyes are hard with something that jags in him like hate, like disgust, and when he shoves inside - body balanced and quivering over Light with the effort of holding himself up - he doesn't even meets his gaze, doesn't even glance at his face. He buries himself in Light's body, shoves his forehead against the tense arc of his shoulder, eye's shut tight and jaw clamped down on itself.
Light groans like he's been shot and it's not gentle and it's not kind and it's nothing really, a terrible, mind-splitting moment that L is going to blot out later, the way he does with the parts of himself that he doesn't want to look at.
He suspects Light will hate him after this and prays to a god that he doesn't believe in that he will, because that would make this all so easy. Kira can be the good guy, the hero to his own cause, and L will be the villain, the big bad wolf, stealing innocence and breaking things - hearts, minds, pretty little teenage bodies - and that will make everything easy. He can imagine the taskforce's reaction, the look on the chief's face, the look on Light's. Look what he did to me, he'd say, undoing his belt, showing them the bruises on his hips. Look what the great detective L did to me.
And L would let him. L would keep his clothes on - not show them the purple fingermarks across his chest, the healing indentations of teeth on his thigh where Light had drawn blood - and wouldn't say a word. Kira could get off the chain, could go free. Kira could destroy the world and at this point, shaking and blinded and on the edge of orgasm, L thinks he could let him.
He comes with a muffled grunt against Light's neck.
Light doesn't come at all, but he's harder than L had expected him to be, pressed between their stomachs. L lies there breathing heavily, pathetically, on top of him, limbs frozen and afraid to move. Afraid to look Light in the eyes.
After a moment, he feels a hand in his hair, stroking and calming him the way nothing ever has before.
Since his early childhood, L has cried only once that he can remember. Watari had watched him, not saying a word, and had held Roger back when he had made a move to do something. B had followed him to his room, pockets full of wet pebbles from the stream that still flows through Wammy's grounds and thrown rocks at him until he'd stopped. L recalls that day with perfect clarity. He'd shoved B out of a second story window and hadn't gotten in trouble. B had just been sent to his room with the nurse and told not to bother L.
L doesn't cry now, but he thinks he feels the way that people do when they're about to. Like there's something thick and horrible lodged in him and he's going to be violently ill.
Light's hand is so gentle against his scalp, and his voice is a quiet hiss of brokenness disguising itself as amusement when he says, "I always knew that submissive sweetheart thing was an act."
L doesn't move. He wishes Light would yell at him, would hit him, would give him more bruises. They could bruise each other, bleed each other, until it would all wash away, until L could feel things for Light other than the things he feels now - the thick, welling, grateful things that skate through his veins like an infection.
"One you fell for easily," he replies against Light's neck, but the words don't come out half as cruel or false as he means them to. Light just keeps stroking his hair.
Light is in pain, but it's a distant sort of pain, a quiet ache where L is still locked inside of him, chest rising and falling against his own. His back is sloped in a thin arch like some deformed little god of skin and bone and his wild black hair tickles softly along Light's jaw. It's almost funny - in a slightly unbelievable way, because he had been so angry when they'd first touched - but he feels like the strong one now. He had fucked L an hour or so earlier and it had made him weak, taken his control and covered up his eyes, dizzying him with the ruinous sort of affection that takes over lives. But L had just thrown him down and done it back to him, rough and unforgiving and without a trace of kindness, and Light now feels like the one with the power.
And he's never actually done this before with anyone else, this whole sex thing, but he's well-educated and in no way naive, and he thinks he's pretty sure that this isn't how it's supposed to work. He should hate L for the way he's treated him, the manipulation, the blunt force, the carelessness.
But L does care, he must, because he looks terrified right now, slumped as he is across Light's body. And if Light has learned anything from him in these past few months, it's terror - the creeping, constant fear of losing himself in another person's hands and mouth and flat black eyes.
So, when L says, "One you fell for easily," in that helpless little voice that's trying to be strong, puffing the words out against Light's warm skin so that his breath tingles through him, making him roll his eyes with the sort of honest fondness that doesn't belong in this situation, he tries his best to sound at least minimally upset.
"I didn't fall for anything," he murmurs, fingers still carding through L's hair. "I played into it. Was I supposed to turn down having you spread out on your back and begging?"
L sits up then, and his hair flops into his eyes like a sheet, worn muscles shifting hypnotically under his skin. "It would have been the moral thing to do," he says, voice flat and empty. Light wants to kiss him, but stops himself, snorting instead.
"Where do you get off talking about morality?" he asks, looking down at the state of the two of them.
L has just fucked him, had barely even given him time to consent, and all logic tells Light that he should be seething about this, humiliated and angry, but he can't even locate the edge of the emotion in himself. He knows that even if L had given him days to deliberate over it, he would have said yes, would have given himself up for the taking. It's disgusting in its way, but Light is still hard and riding the high of some turbulent, beautiful feeling that lives deep within him.
L, for his part, has the decency to look suitably guilty, even as he grits his jaw and says, "I get off right here with you, thank you." He looks even guiltier after he says it.
Light brings a hand up to cup his face and L flinches as if he's been slapped, ducking out of reach. He rolls off of Light, slumping off to the side and pulling his bare legs up to his chest, naked but for the shirt of Light's that hangs half off his shoulders. Light reaches for him again, and this time L doesn't move in time, and thus ends up with a hand back in his hair and Light's tongue licking along the seam of his lips.
Light wants to fuck him again. It's only fair. Back and forth, trading places, over and over again; maybe they'll do this for the rest of forever, just fuck each other into oblivion until there's no such thing as the Kira case or the brilliant detective L.
L doesn't seem interested in this course of action, though, and shoves him away again, head shaking.
"I may not follow the prescribed rules for what is socially and lawfully acceptable," he says, picking up the thread of their pointless exchange, probably just for something to do, "which is a luxury of being L, but I understand them. And I understand when someone is hypocritically pretending to abide by them, while secretly plotting to kill their sexual partner."
Light feels something jolt inside of him, but he tries to shove the sickness down. Not this, not this, not again. He doesn't want to play the game, he is exhausted and he doesn't give a fuck about Kira, just wants to pin L down and fill him up, fill his mouth so he can't talk about the case or Kira or basic logic or all the other reasons why this will never, ever work out.
"Oh my god," he says, "can we not right now? You're more of a criminal than I could ever be." The words are not gentle, but he tries to keep his tone as non-threatening as possible, because L looks like some cornered zoological exhibit, backed to the edge of his cage, trying to duck out of sight of prying eyes. An animal, Light thinks, vaguely. For all his brilliance, for all the humanity that gives him his pride and his shame and his fantastic mind, he is just an animal. Collared, but wild still.
"That's an argument of moral subjectivity," L says, leaning unsubtly out of Light's reach, "not of guilt."
"L," Light sighs, because he doesn't want to talk about this. His thighs still ache from moments ago - when L had been inside him - and he's still slightly hard, and tired and confused, and wouldn't even mind using his hand to get himself off if afterwards he could wrap his fingers in L's hair and press his lips to his temple and keep his long, wild limbs locked close and quiet. Light wants to sleep and L, he thinks, needs to.
L stands, stepping off the bed and onto shaky legs, slumping there in Light's shirt and facing the door like it's some far away escape he'll never reach. Light thinks he's being a bit overdramatic and jangles the chain slightly to remind him of the situation.
"L," he says again.
"The fact is," L says, not turning to face Light, just letting the quiet sounds of his words muffle their way through the air, "you are Kira. Even if you don't know it now, you were. And I fully believe that you were the original, that you were the one in control."
He says it mechanically, like he's reading off lines, like it's just a speech that someone wrote for him and Light half expects for his to pop one of those quiet smiles into his voice and declare that it's all a joke. He doesn't. He stands there, back to Light, looking half-dead and half-dying. Light wants to stand up, wants to go behind him and kiss his neck and whisper calming things into his ears until he goes loose and pliant and stops talking, stop saying these horrible things.
Instead, he just uses the slack from the chain to pull L around by his arm so that they're facing one another again, and asks the question that's been burning through him since the start.
"Why?" he starts, then rephrases. "Or, no, how? How could you think that of me? Me, L. You know me."
It's like talking to a brick wall, to a computer screen - great, big monogram L staring back at him. Sometimes Light thinks L acts more like a letter than a human being. And the truth is that L does know him, better than anyone. It's horribly cliche, Light's sure, the things that he's saying and doing and feeling. He is just another lovestruck kid in a world of lovestruck kids, isn't he? A pathetic, meaningless exercise in human weakness. Intellectually, he knows this, but the worst part is that he can't even be bothered to care. What he feels for L, whatever it is - and he loathes to put a name to it, because what he chooses will only cement the cliche - but whatever it is, it dwarfs everything else.
L could accuse him of anything and Light would let them string him up for it, because it's L.
Sometimes I want to pretend the only thing that's ever happened to me is you. It's a lie, and L is such a liar, but Light doesn't care.
"Yes, Light. I know you," L agrees, almost solemn in his dull, emotionless way. "I know what you're capable of. I know that you're brilliant, and tenacious, and egotistical to a fault." He stands there before Light and it's almost like he's delivering a sentence. Light meets his eyes and doesn't waver. After a moment, L does. He looks at his feet, bare as always and likely cold, toes twitching in the thin night air. "I don't know why you always take accusations of being Kira as insults," he murmurs. "It's the highest compliment I could serve you."
Light feels vaguely like he's going to choke on his own throat. He'd asked the question, but he doesn't want the answer, not really. He doesn't want to hear this.
L continues anyway. "Very, very few people are on my level," he says. "Kira is one of them."
Quite suddenly, Light finds himself standing, too. "I'm one of them," he snaps, instantly ready to take his mounting irritation out on L.
Why can't things ever be easy? Light used to hate easy, despise it with a quiet vehemence, because it was everywhere. Everything had been far too easy, until he'd met L. Now it's so difficult he's not even sure he can navigate it, which is as unfamiliar a feeling as any that L has introduced him to.
"If you're Kira," L replies, maddeningly, still talking to his feet, "then yes, you are." His thick eyes jag up then, and the look in them is sharp and uncomfortable. "On the off-chance that you're not, then no, you're just a very intelligent boy, but you're not on my level."
Light knows that they've been through it all tonight, but in that moment, he really, really wants to start throwing punches again.
He tries to calm himself down, tries to amuse himself out of it. "And I'm the egotistical one?" he snorts.
L doesn't reply, doesn't meet his faked smile and Light's fists clench. He stands there, facing L head on, but instead of hitting him his hands just come up to massage his own temples. He's working on too little sleep and too much aggression, and fuck, he is really sore.
L watches him, calmly, and Light breathes out a long slow breath, shaking his head, as he says, "How could you want a murderer like Kira on your level? How could you feel a connection with him?" He tries to keep his voice flat.
Then L steps forward, awfully close, closer to him than either of them really wants to be to the other at this point, and says something that Light thinks he will remember for years. It is a speech, and it is horrible and Light rather hates him for it, but he thinks he'll remember it all the same.
L cocks his head, hair flopping into his face, and says:
"Light, being a murderer is how you get on my level. It's how you even qualify." He speaks quickly and quietly, not wasting time on emphasis or facial expression. "Genius alone isn't enough. Being L is a dirty job, and you don't come away from it with clean hands. You don't come away from it at all, in fact." He looks at the window behind Light. "I will live and die as a force of justice, I will serve my purpose and solve crimes and put criminals away. I will save the people that I can, and I will kill, and torture, and lie, and manipulate, and fuck when I have to. That's just my job."
He cocks his head to the other side, finger coming up to his lip. Light just stands there for several moments, unsure of how to respond, even though he knows exactly what the right words are.
After a long pause, he asks, not half as angrily as he means to, "Then what is the difference between you and Kira?" He just sounds tired to his own ears, as tired as L looks.
L's eyes swirl around facetiously, as if he's never even considered the question, even though Light's sure he's spent plenty of time doing just that.
"The difference?" he says. "I was here first. And I don't have magic powers. He's cheating, really, if you think about it in that way."
They stand there for a long moment and the L blinks, like he's reset or something and he looks down at himself and then back at Light, both of them barely clothed and thoroughly wrecked.
"Bastard," Light says, for lack of any better way to express how he's feeling.
"Are you alright?" L asks suddenly, ignoring the insult, like it's just occurred to him to ask. "You're not bleeding, are you? I can clean you up, if you like." He lifts his hand like he's going to touch Light, then pauses in midair and quickly drops it again.
Light supposes he's got plenty of experience cleaning up after a night of violent sex. Whore, he thinks, though not in a particularly reproachful way, as if he's testing the insult out in his mind, feeling it roll around on the edge of his tongue, wondering how it might taste to spit into L's face one of these nights - after, or during. He shakes it off, deciding he doesn't like it. There's no real point to calling names when he knows they won't have any effect.
L reaches for him again and Light knocks his hand away.
"I'm fine," he says, then quickly changes his mind, grabbing L by the wrist and pulling him close. L slumps his head down against Light's shoulder, more or less collapsing into him. In truth, he's probably the taller of the two, but he makes himself small and fragile for his job. He's just so, so good at his job. "I want to hurt you," Light tells him, although he doesn't know why. He won't do it.
"Go ahead," L mumbles into the curve of his neck, warm lips dragging ticklish patterns on Light's throat.
"No," Light says, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. "I shouldn't want it." L goes down with him and Light's not sure, when he says it, what he's really referring to. This, maybe. L, down on his knees, leaning between Light's legs to breath gentle sighs onto his hipbones.
"Yes, you should," L says, not looking up at him. He speaks to Light's middle, to the muscles that are just toned enough, the jut of the erection that he's been slowly losing. It will be morning soon. "You know where you stand, Light, and you know where I stand. You hurt me, I hurt you - rinse, repeat." He presses a kiss to Light's thigh. "It's as it should be. It's the detective story of the century."
"Or the love story," Light says to the top of L's head, before he can stop himself. The light is grey when it hits them with dipping shadows.
L shakes his head, still not looking up. "Detective story, Light. It has to be that." He kisses the other thigh. He's completely forgone the honorific by now.
"I lo - " Light starts, but he cuts off when L jerks so hard on the chain that they might both topple over.
"No, Light," L says, standing quickly.
He keeps saying his name, over and over. Light. Not Light-kun, not Kira, not anything but what he is. Light Yagami, 18 years old. Japan's top student. Brilliant.
"No," L repeats. He turns away, dragging Light after him, who goes with little protest. "It's almost six. We should shower."
Usually, a comment to that effect would lead to one of them behind the curtain and the other waiting in the bathroom, L on his laptop or Light flossing vigorously, but today they just stumble in together. L forgets to take his shirt off and so Light has to yank it off for him, letting it hang on the chain between them as the water falls in thick droplets, weighing them down and into one another. Halfway through soaping himself, L abruptly drops to his knees and sucks Light off, his usually teasing mouth giving all and asking for nothing today, maybe as a sort of apology for the half-aborted pleasure from the sex before. When he's done, when Light comes gasping against L, fingers digging deep into his scalp, wrenching his head close and unforgiving, Light drops weakly down onto the shower floor beside him, and they spend the rest of the morning there, pruning quietly as the water gets cooler and the sun rises higher.
They spend the next few days making up for all the time wasted outside of each other by fucking as often as possible.
By the end of the week, it's more routine than anything else as they fall back from one another, Light rolling off of L to collapse breathlessly on the carpet beside him, rumpling several documents and getting his foot caught in one of the computer wires as he goes. They've done most of the past few days' research in their room instead of down in the main office with the rest of the team, growing farther away from everyone else as they grow closer to each other.
L's not actually sure that close is the right word. Physically, yes, but they don't speak often, and if they do it's never with regard to anything of importance. Thrown together in an ecstasy of unhappiness, they are counting down the days within one another, with harsh breaths and rough hands and quiet in-jokes that no one else could properly appreciate. This will all end soon, and even though Light acts as if they're going to be an unstoppable detective team for the rest of forever, L knows that he knows that the truth is not so simple.
But for now, they do what they do best, and pretend.
Light is cleaning himself up when the knock comes, and freezes with his fingers on a shirt button, shooting L a slightly panicked look.
"Watari?" L calls, because it's rare for anyone else to ever come by the room.
The man who sticks his head in the door then, flashing a wide-mouthed grin at the two of them sprawled across the day's paperwork, is not, in fact, Watari. "Sorry to disappoint," Aiber says, sounding as far from sorry as one possibly can. He looks brighter than he had the other night and L assumes he's either drunk or on his way there. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
Light stands quickly, the flush of exertion morphing into one of embarrassment as he tuns around to do up his khaki's. "Of course not," he practically sneers over his shoulder.
L finds it slightly endearing.
"You are," he tells Aiber from his slump on the floor. The carpet is warm and rough on the back of his neck and he's more than a little annoyed that he won't be able to proceed with his previously formulated plan of lazily tracing patterns on Light's bare, sex-warm skin as he reads yesterday's Yotsuba report. "What is it, Aiber?"
Aiber smirks down at L with his languorous eyes, not being at all subtle as they trace the contours of L's bare stomach. "Your girl's back, Yagami," he says, without glancing at Light, who is now staring fixedly into the mirror, trying to right his hair. "And with quite a story, too."
Ah, that's decent news, at least. Misa had slipped Mogi's watch a few hours previous, so it's at least slightly comforting to know that she hasn't gone off on a killing spree, or else to make more awful commercials. L's offered to get her a better agent - half to keep a closer eye on her, half because her current representation has no business sense at all - but she'd just told him that he has terrible hair and that she never takes advice from people with terrible hair. He'd let it go after that.
"And she sent you up?" Light says, not a little scathingly, as he adjusts his collar. Not even two minutes and already he's picture perfect again.
Aiber leans casually against the doorframe as if this is his room and they're the ones intruding, eyes smirking their way up and down Light's outline.
"I volunteered," he says, shooting his glance back to L. "You know me. Always willing to lend a helping hand."
The leer melts warmly across his face, not wavering when L says, "So I recall," about as flatly as he would when reminded of last week's weather.
He assures Aiber that they'll be down in a few minutes - the need to re-dress themselves going unspoken but not unnoticed - but he doesn't actually leave until Light walks over and slams the door in his face with an infinitely polite smile that drops off of his face as soon as he turns back to L.
"He's useless," Light says, voice going peculiarly childish as he walks over to stand above L, looming like a great, golden statue and dragging him onto his feet with the chain. "Come on, you need to clean up." He pulls him into the bathroom, hands L some tissue and then, as naturally as if it were his own, begins to straighten out L's hair. It takes Light a few moments, so absorbed as he is in this insurmountable task, to notice that L is staring at him.
"What?" he says.
L wants to reach out a hand, wants to trace his jaw, wants to lie back down on the floor with him and stay there for days, but he does none of those things. He's afraid he's being terribly sentimental, and at any other time he'd look down on himself for it, but today, for some reason, it feels justified. Necessary, even.
"You are very dear to me, Light-kun," he says, leaning forward so that their foreheads are almost touching, but for the way that L's slump keeps him an inch or so lower.
Light looks ardently surprised for less than a second before he arranges his expression into one of vague interest. "Ha," he says, but it's forced, and he doesn't much pretend that it isn't.
"What?" L asks, but he knows what. Of course he knows.
Light's eyelashes flatten against his cheeks, and it's short - it's a momentary flash of nothing in particular - but it makes something twist itself thickly in L's chest and he has to shove the feeling to the back of himself in order to keep from saying the things that he truly wants to say.
Light opens his eyes then, smile aligning itself back on his face. "Oh, nothing," he half-laughs. "Just, if it had come from anyone else, I'd be insulted by such a pathetic confession." He takes the initiative that L won't touch and drags the back of his hand along L's cheek, a quiet, owning gesture. L has to steel himself not to lean into it too desperately. "From you, though, it's practically a proposal." The amused quirk of Light's eyes is completely genuine.
He's not lying. L's known it for weeks now, has figured that whatever bit of Kira is in him - and it is in him - is hiding deep for now, buried farther than even Light can reach. He is not lying and none of this has been a lie, not really. That should be comforting, but it isn't.
This will all go away soon.
"It's not," he says, tone more teasing than he means it to be.
"And thank god for that," Light laughs, taking the tissues from L's hands because he's going too slow, and reaching down between his legs to clean him up himself. It's a strangely casual gesture, for how intimate it should be. "My father will put up with a lot," he says, holding up his wrist to shake the chain as an example, "but he's going to draw the line somewhere."
L conjures up a brief image of the look of abject horror that would appear on the chief's face if L were ever to go to him and announce that he means to elope off to England with his only son. It is at once amusing and terrifying. And a bit sad, in its way, because L is not the life that Light is meant to have and, furthermore, surely not the life that he should want. But, behind all the jokes and teasing and pretenses of only casual regard, he truly does seem to want it. There's a part of L that rather wants it, too, but he puts that part in a drawer in his head and locks it tight.
He leans forward, pressing his lips haphazardly to edge of Light's mouth and then pulls away as quickly as he'd come. "Remember this moment, Light-kun," he says. "When I'm gone."
Light gets this look in his eye then, and of course, he understands, though he pretends - even to himself - that he doesn't.
"What?" he asks, trying to laugh it off as L buttons his jeans. "Where are you going?"
"I'm not sure yet," L says, throwing away the dirtied tissues and tugging on the chain to drag Light out of the bathroom after him. "Germany, perhaps," he says, as they exit the bedroom, making toward the elevator at the end of the long hall. "Maybe Sweden." He's always liked Scandinavia. "Maybe hell."
He drops the last one as casually as the rest, and if Light's steps stop for a moment and his face goes blank and he looks as if he's going to hit L or start yelling about not being Kira, then L pretends that he doesn't. It's gone in a flash, and then his steps start again and they're in the elevator in no time, smiling at one another like the world is their own private joke.
"I suppose I'll meet you there," Light says, checking his watch to see how much time they've wasted. "Hell, I mean. Not the other places, they're far too cold."
Light hates snow, L thinks. Light is an 18-year-old genius with beautiful hair and a charming smile and he hates snow and dislikes house pets and can recite all of Dante's Inferno in the original Italian. He takes his tea without sugar and doesn't like orange flavor and thinks that drinking is irresponsible and makes his bed every morning with expert precision. He has never travelled outside of Japan and he says he doesn't want to. He is going to join the NPA after university. He'll probably be running it within ten years. He is brilliant.
He is also a mass murderer.
This will all go away soon, L thinks.
It's a bit ridiculous - but also, perhaps, inevitable - that model and teen magazine sensation, Misa Amane, is the one to catch Kira. Or, the third Kira, anyway. And catch might not be the right word, but she's got a confession and she's got what they need to set up a trap for Kysokue Higuchi, so ultimately, it might as well be.
"This is quite brilliant work, Misa-san," L tells her, flatly, as he has Watari download the recording into the system.
He's not as shocked as he could be, seeing as she's already proven herself passably clever, but there's a certain forceful quality to Misa that's specific purpose seems to be to obscure anything in her resembling intellect. He's seen this kind of thing before, of course, especially from people that, all of their lives, have only been allowed to serve as decoration. Aiber calls that kind of thing Starlet Syndrome. Wedy calls it a personality disorder. L calls it a side effect of human existence.
Being a person is a terrible farce. Those who know how to navigate the farce are the most dangerous kinds of people, up to and including 90 pound pop idols. And, of course, idealistic teenage boys can also qualify.
"Thank you, Ryuzaki," Misa says, more quiet than usual.
She's absent, looks lost in thought, and L only wonders what she's thinking of for a moment before following her line of sight. Light is half across the room, as far as the chain will let him go, talking to his father and Matsuda about the plan, smiling easily and with all the appearance of perfect confidence in Kira's impending end.
"I'm sure Light-kun agrees," L says, less out of an urge to comfort Misa and more just to test her reaction.
She glances over abruptly, as if she'd forgotten he was there, then quickly pastes a loud smile across her face. "Yeah," she says brightly, eyes flicking back to her darling boyfriend, "I'm sure."
After a moment of forlorn silence that tries to present itself as bubbly happiness, L slides his packet of gummy candies over to her. She wrinkles her nose, but, after a few seconds of over-the-top deliberation, pops a few in her mouth. L doesn't feel bad for her, not really - she's certainly intelligent enough to realize that Light doesn't like her - but, well. He sympathizes, in his way.
"I'll get fat," Misa says, while continuing to eat his candy.
L shrugs. "Perhaps."
two weeks later.
His shoulder dislocates with a sickening shift under the skin, making his eyes roll back with that familiar thrill. Body twisting like a spineless thing, muscle contorting; it's glorious in its inhumanity.
They come a few minutes after the scheduled breakfast time, as is usual. The look on the first orderly's face is one part shock, one part resignation, because it's not as if he hasn't done this before - but that had just been for fun, a test, a little scare for the crowd. This is when all that practice pays off.
They'd put him in solitary again last week, locked him up tight in a white jacket in this white room, bright and smothering with its lack of shadows, of hiding places.
He hides in open space now, right in the direct line of sight from the door, and when Collins - it is Collins, the complete cunt, the lovely sadist; they always send him because he's the roughest, and nobody in administration has a problem withprisoner no. 9012398 getting into a few accidents - when Collins comes in, he barely has time for a glance at B bending his limbs out of the straight-jacket before he's bowled over, clutching his ribs and yelping as B steps over him, foot slamming into his back with a sickening crunch.
The other one, Gonzalez, backs up into the hall instead of trying to keep B inside, which, all in all, is probably the better idea. His hand goes to the walkie-talkie at his waist, though, and so of course his wrist has to break. His grunt of pain echoes through the long hall, but the only other people in this wing are locked up in white rooms of their own. They're on camera, of course, but B will be along just fine before Fat Ralph, who has early morning watch, notices the disturbance.
Collins is getting up, so B jams the walkie into his head, shoving him back into the room and closing the door. Then he turns back to Gonzalez, who's shock has morphed into terror. Don't they teach these kiddies anything about the criminal element before sending them to tend to the prisoners? B thinks not.
There's a panic button on the wall and Gonzalez is eyeing it, so B kneels down in front of him, brushing the man's hair out of his eyes with suddenly gentle hands. Horatio Gonzalez. The letters, the little floating red letters are so close that he kids himself that he could reach out and touch them. Can't, though. Can't ever. The numbers, though - the numbers are even closer.
A pale hand cups Gonzalez's cheek, and he leans in, speaking softly. "Horatio," he says, and the look in the man's dark eyes rocks back to shock, because that is not on his name tag. "Shhh, Horatio. Keep quiet, yes? It's a quiet day. A lovely Sunday. Did you miss church this morning, Horatio?"
Horatio Gonzalez doesn't respond, just stares at him. B gets impatient and slaps him, and that gets a quick, terrified nod. And then, "Don't, don't - " he stammers.
"Sorry," B shrugs, almost sheepishly, hands stroking the stubble on dear Gonzalez's face, "have to."
"Don't you only kill peoples with your - with the initials - "
B.B., B thinks. He's read the file. Good boy.
"Oh that," B sighs, rolling his eyes. "Is that what I'm going to go down in the history books for? Boring. That was just to get his attention." He leans up slightly, making to stand. Horatio tries to stand, too, and B kicks his legs out from under him. An alarm goes off somewhere. Prisoner on the loose. B smirks.
"Whose?" Gonzalez asks, in his quivering voice.
B's smirk doesn't drop. He bends down slightly and says, "Tell the big man I said hi, will you?" And then he snaps Horatio Gonzalez's neck.
They'll have a nice funeral, B thinks. White. A pretty white church on a pretty white morning like this. People always dress death up in lovely layers.
He makes it out of the facility in under ten minutes, even though they've been in lockdown for eight. The concrete digs into his bare feet and sirens echo a familiar tune in his head. His crisp white patient's uniform is too obvious, so he strips in an alley and trades his clothes to a drunken homeless man. He yawns, thinks about getting a coffee and finding a newspaper, but he doesn't have time to waste.
Lawliet needs him and Japan is a long way from California.
two weeks earlier.
There is a riotous sea under his skin when Light touches him, and it never quite goes away no matter how much they keep touching, or fucking, or talking each other in circles with the same tired accusations and flimsy defenses. Round and round, and L doesn't know when it will stop, only that when it does, one of them will have to die.
"You'll kill me someday, won't you?" he whispers into Light's hair.
This will all go away soon.
tbc.
end notes: In case it's not obvious (and it probably isn't because it's been a while) the last scene of this chapter is the same as the beginning of the very first scene of the very first chapter. Which is to say, we've come more or less full circle. But there are still a lot more circles left to get through, so.
There's a phrase in here that is not mine and does not belong to me, but I want to draw attention to it because it's awesome. "an ecstasy of unhappiness" is a quote from the incomparable Ms. Austen (from Sense and Sensibility, I think?) and it's one of my favorite descriptions of anything ever and I was kind of over to moon to have an opportunity to use it. So, there's that.
Stay tuned for next chapter, which may contain actual plot. ~gasp