warnings: dub-con of the super dub-con-y variety. edging into non-con. also, erotic asphyxiation, violence, and a fair bit of masochism. sounds fun, right?
notes: Too much Moby-Dick? Yes, I thought so. Anyway, here, have some porn!
chapter seven - the means.
"I'd rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick: or, the White Whale.
Light tells him to take his clothes off and L sits there for a moment considering it, considering the fact that Kira is right here and Kira wants to fuck him and Kira really isn't as brilliant as he thinks he is.
"If it's all the same to you," L says, "I'd rather not, thanks."
He gets a harsh bark of condescending laughter in response and doesn't know why he'd expected anything more. It all feels very foreign somehow, as if Light Yagami's pretty face has been commandeered by someone else, someone who's using it to hide a particularly ugly truth. And it is ugly, isn't it? L looks at the pretty, pretty boy in front of him and sees nothing that he likes or even recognizes, just shapes that fit together to make a face, lines and curves for skin and muscle, but it's like a drawing, a statue: vacant.
He wants to put it in a box and go back to England, find a case that doesn't make him want to spit out his insides.
Light watches him, almost fondly, but there's a measure of cruelty in it, like watching a treasured dog chase its tail. "L," he says, breathing the word out like a smoke ring, thick and cloying, a pretension of seduction.
L hates the way it sounds. "You were going to tell me something yesterday," he says, just for something to do, a distraction.
He moves surreptitiously toward the opposite edge of the mattress, putting as much space between himself and Light as possible. He has a half-second flash of Light launching himself across the bed and kicking his legs apart, not asking for permission to fuck him long and deep and horrible. It would hurt, it would tear him in half, and a part of L thinks that it's what he wants most from this situation. There's a gnawing nothing in his gut and he wants Light to give him a reason to be angry, to hate, to want to destroy Kira once and for all.
As it is, he doesn't really care about the case anymore, just wants to get the fuck out of here.
So, a part of him - one that's growing fast - thinks, okay, hurt me. But the part of him in control of his mouth just thinks, distraction distraction distraction, anything to keep him away, so he says, "I want to know what you were going to tell me."
Light frowns, like he doesn't remember. L wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't. Everything that had been there before is gone.
Light just shrugs, following him across the bed. "It was probably to take your clothes off."
It's almost like L had written the script and blocked all the movements, because it goes just the way he'd imagine, Light grabbing his jaw in a rough hand to pull him into a kiss that tastes sharp and feels like nothing. L can't even muster enough emotion to feel sick.
"Light," he says, when he's shoved onto his back. Light doesn't grab his arm, goes straight for his leg, finger pads digging through his jeans, gripping to bruise and L groans with the feel of it. "Tell me - " he grits, sitting back up.
Light knocks him down. L sits back up just so that Light will do it again. Asks for answers just to hear Light deny them. He remembers this feeling, this empty, weightless, out-on-the-sea feeling where all of his thoughts devolve into the same thing and then it's just hurt me, hurt me, hurt me over and over again. Hurt me so that I have room to kill you.
"Tell me," he grunts.
Light grips his hair, tugs his head back, practically pulling out his scalp. "I don't remember," he says, voice hard.
L's eyes water. "Make something up," he says, as Light bears down on him, holding him to the mattress, hands going for his zipper. He strips him, grabs and knocks and maneuvers, tells him to shut-up. "I'm sure it'll be great. You're very articulate."
Light kisses him so hard he thinks it will bruise, crushing him into the cushions, practically suffocating him, hands going from his shoulders to his neck and jaw and lips and throat and this is Kira, this is Kira, and he could kill L and he should kill L and wouldn't that be just a riot? A brilliant fucking twist ending. Bam, gone, killed in bed. The world's greatest detective lets the world's greatest murderer fuck him to death. It's poetic in the way that L hates, such an unbearably stupid end to an unbearably stupid detective story.
Love story, Light had said, but that Light is gone and was a bit of an idiot, besides.
"You have a great vocabulary, too," L gasps, when Light takes a break from doing lewd, wet this to his mouth to bite at his neck, fingers twisting his nipples a little too hard to feel good, but just enough to make L's insides thrash around in his body, make him want to flood himself and drown with the wreckage. It's so pathetic and it's been so long and why does L always fall for the people most likely to kill him?
He's such a smart man and it's such an easy, easy answer, but he doesn't think it, doesn't -
"I'm going to fuck you," Light grits into his ear, biting at the lobe.
"I'm sure I didn't realize."
Light huffs a laugh, pinning L's hands above his head and L lets them be pinned. He tells himself he's only going along with it to buy himself time, to keep up the charade, but his head thrills with it, with being held down, with being in the grip of Death himself - even if Death is more used to gripping a pen. Truthfully, he doesn't know why Light's doing it. Maybe he thinks that L hasn't realized the change or maybe he really does like the way it feels or maybe -
"Maybe I'll kill you," Light says, shoving L's jeans off his hips and down his legs, stripping his fully and pulling back to look down at him, the half-sneer on his face obscured slightly by arousal. "Shame I'm not Kira."
L's head goes blurry with the words and he wishes that they could whittle everything down to just this, cut all the pretenses away and just be L and Kira, fucking and at each other's throats, but there's just so much, too much, too complex for L's hazy, lust-stricken mind to process and he wants Light to fuck him and he wants to die, maybe - just for a while. Just for a little while, like a dreamless sleep. He can close his eyes until the war is over and maybe it will all be better.
"You'd like me to do it, though, wouldn't you?" Light whispers, and it works like some very fucked up dirty talk. "You're so frail," - a hand down L's ribs, fingers at his wrists, - "I could snap you in half. Would you like that, L?"
And what does one say to that, really? Yes, please kill me or, no, I'd rather you didn't. He doesn't know the answer. He exists according to things he should say, the answers he ought to give - to win the game, to catch the crook - and he knows that's what Light is asking for now, a little spin back on the board, but he wonders, just wonders, what he would truly say if he had the option.
I don't know. World's greatest detective, one of the most brilliant minds of the century, and he can't even answer this simple question.
Light doesn't seem to care. L's shirt is off and Light is on him and he almost wants to go, to be out of his mind for this - and not because he doesn't like it, but because he likes it a bit too much. All the bad, wrong things are here for the taking and L wants them. He wants Light, Kira, whoever is here and touching him with quick, warm hands. He doesn't want to look at him or speak to him or think of the last three months, but he wants to be fucked by him.
"L," Light says, likes he's forgotten all about Ryuzaki, like there was never anything else.
"Kira," L breathes back. There never has been anything else.
Light stops, pulling back to look at him with eyes wide enough to challenge L's own. Then, slowly, his lip curls and his teeth show and maybe it's the gauntlet being thrown down and maybe it's not, but either way there's a bite in his voice when he says, "Oh, I see. That's what you want."
L doesn't know what that is, assumes that it probably is what he wants, but means to put in a bit of protest all the same, just to keep himself from dying - because, really, there's a difference between the metaphorical plea for death and the actual end of a life, the kill me, kill me of the mind is more of a poetical exclamation than a realistic one, an understandable expression of turmoil that may not apply properly to actual facts, but which communicates the sentiment nonetheless and -
And L feels a handcuff lock around his wrist with a familiar click.
He'd had the chain special ordered from a manufacturer in Russia who had asked very few questions about an industrial strength piece of bondage equipment being needed in a length of six feet, and so he knows it as well as he knows any tools of the trade, knows it's what's on him without even having to look. It's on the opposite wrist - it was usually on his left - and it feels foreign, despite him having had the thing on him more or less constantly for almost three months.
"Kinky, Light-kun," he says, narrowing his eyes.
Light cups his chin. He's sitting on L's thighs, crushing him to the bed, so L has to tilt his face up in order for their eyes to meet. It reeks of power imbalance and he's sure that Light is having a terribly fun time establishing such, puffing up his ego to imperishable heights. He strokes L's face and the touch tingles down his body and into his bloodstream and it's pathetic, really. He's hard and he's naked and he's half-chained to a bed by one of the most prolific mass murderers in history and he really has no intention of stopping it. He's been here before, put himself in the same sort of position, but he'd always had a plan, an endgame, and now -
Now Light is wrapping the chain around the headboard, the way he'd done to Light more than once before for security reasons, and latching the other handcuff around L's other wrist. He should fight, should stop this, should come up with some course of action. Should.
He should, but he doesn't, and Light just kisses him with too much tongue and plays his fingertips in soft circles over L's hips, warm breath tingling over his ear.
"I'm just doing what you want me to do," he whispers, then pauses for a minute or two to suck marks into the skin of L's neck, the material of his slacks brushing maddeningly over his body, and L can't stop his hips from jerking up slightly. "I'm always doing what you want me to do, aren't I?" Light says.
The look on his face says he's waiting for an answer, but as soon as L opens his mouth to give him one, Light wraps a firm hand around L's cock and gives him a long squeeze, sending L's eyes back in his head and the words far away from his tongue. He thinks he makes a terribly humiliating noise, but can't be bothered to care, either way.
He has a plan, he has a plan, this is all according to plan, he just needs to be allowed to think for a moment and then he can sort himself out. Light doesn't give him a moment, though, doesn't give him anything but several rough jerks and L meets his hand with every one because he wants to come, wants the fog over his head the be lifted, wants to wet his dry throat with clever words, but he can't, he can't and Light's not going to let him.
He takes some of the slack from the chain in his free hand, pulling it so that the cuffs dig deep into L's wrists and then loops the excess quickly around L's neck, wrapping it tight around his throat and cutting his air supply down to a scant sliver. Then he pulls even tighter, and it's gone.
L's mind fuzzes with a sharp, pleasantly horrible feeling and he might come and he might die and he can't seem to decide which one makes his arousal spark more.
He'd be on the bed, even paler than usual, chain still around his neck and on his wrists, his own come spilled on his stomach, dried on his thighs and his hips and the crisp, white bedsheets. They'd call the police - even if they probably wouldn't, Light imagines that they would - and they'd send down a crime scene photographer who would take pictures of body. The come and the sweat and the desperation in his dull, dead eyes. They'd go into files, into the system. Maybe they'd even make the papers.
He can see the headline: World's Greatest Detective Dead at 24 of Autoerotic Asphyxiation.
No one would suspect Light. Some would say that L had used the handcuff chain simply because it was handy. Others would whisper that there had been symbolism to it, that he had been thinking about Light, that he had choked himself on purpose because of his forbidden lust - or some equally ridiculous harlequin drivel about passion and suffering and pretentious things like that.
Light could do it, could kill him, could watch him die right now. The thought makes him so hard he can barely think straight, and he ends up sprawled across L's white-glass body, face tucked into his neck, hands curving up his ribs, trying to fight off the glorious mental images. He's probably leaving DNA all over him, probably ruining any chances of making a clean getaway, but there's a part of him that still wants to do it, could do it, would do it, but -
But he doesn't. Color floods into L's face as he loosens the chain - still exerting pressure, but not enough to kill him - and he coughs slightly, catching his breath, all glassy-eyed and completely pathetic. Light should kill him just to put him out of misery, but he has a week, a whole week of this to look forward to, and he's not going to throw that away so soon. He can kill L every night for seven days, if only in his head, and fuck him seven different ways and have him begging for it by the end, begging for mercy.
For justice.
Light groans, is going to come in his clothes if he's not careful, so he unbuttons his pants just enough to get some relief, grinding his hips forward into L's almost involuntarily, and fuck, it's so good.
Condoms, lube, he thinks. Can't leave behind evidence, much as he'd like to, much as he'd like for L to have to clean himself out and remember being fucked and used and destroyed, because Light is going to fuck and use and destroy him. L wants it, it's so obvious. He knows what he is, knows what he deserves, knows the monster ought to be slain by the prince in any good story.
L's legs open easy for him and Light shoves his fingers in a bit too roughly and L tries to sit up, but he's held down by the chain still around his neck - practically a collar, a bridle for the beast - and he gives a thin, keening noise that makes Light's eyes roll and his cock jerk. If he's not careful, L will end up killing himself, and wouldn't that be the best thing? L offering himself up, truly and fully, with every understanding of what he's doing. Complete surrender, a tithe to a new God.
Light's mind thrills and he grabs L's legs, pulling them open and shoves so close he could be in him in a second, the head of his cock pressed to the crease between L's legs, just barely exerting pressure. It's a tease, and L's face is flushed warm, a welcome change to his usual blank, white stoicism. Without his memories Light had been so wishy-washy and romantic that he'd let L have the upper-hand even when being penetrated, let him steer things, have it however he wanted. Now he's given no choice, no chance to even dare ask, not with his air supply so limited and his dick so hard, beginning to leak against his stomach.
Light shifts his hips, shoving L's legs open wider, and they spread with little resistance. Light sinks in easy and he wonders, for a moment, pressed so close to something so difficult to understand - genius that he is - whether or not he might have done it all wrong, and whether he might do it differently, were he allowed another go.
Then L makes a half-garbled groaning sound and Light wonders how tight he can get the chain around his throat without him passing out, and any hint of self-doubt gets washed away in a torrent of irrepressible arousal that swims through his head on a tidal wave.
"L," he says, because no other words will come and he has to say something, has to make him understand. "L."
This is right, this must be right, how things ought to be. Ryuk said that the Death Note had only landed in front of him by chance, but that's ridiculous, in the same way that it's impossible to believe that the world's greatest detective just happens to have black owl-eyes and gaunt ribs and pretty, crooked fingers, just happens to be the best Go player Light has ever met and able to quote all of Light's favorite lines of Shakespeare off the top of his head and argue metaphysics and suck cock like a pro. There are only so many people in the world, so many tiny, little insignificant people, and it's not as if Light believes in things like true love and destiny and the like, but he knows that chance can only account for so much, and no measurable force in the universe can account for L. There is no theorem that explains how the thin skin of his eyelids looks during the few hours that he sleeps, like the wing of a moth, fragile and easily-torn, nothing to explain why when he chokes and splutters with the chain around his neck, Light immediately loosens it, chest thudding with the idea that he could go away and be dead and gone.
Light has killed thousands of people and they have faded like nothing, but L is different. L is important in ways that other people don't know how to be, a piece of the puzzle, a character in the new New Testament. He is not here by chance, not gasping and rattling his chains and kicking his feet out under Light because of a set of random circumstances. It's meant to be, it's necessary.
L is necessary.
He's jerking under Light like a cornered animal and he has to hold him down, catching his legs and keeping them still, thrusting in closer and harder and with little self-control, thinks he hears a cry of something like pain, maybe should have used more lube, but he doesn't care, doesn't care, couldn't care if the room caught fire - and that scares him a little bit, the idea that he can't stop, but not enough to phase him, not enough to throw off his rhythm. His fingernails dig into L's hipbones and he lets out a strangled gasp against his neck and comes quietly inside of him.
He goes still. L has been still for a while, presumably to keep from choking himself to death. Light thinks about untying him but doesn't, head still pleasantly hazy.
It can't have been more than a few minutes, though he fades in and out, before Light's pocket starts buzzing where it's slung low on his hips. He grunts, sits up, and pulls out his phone. Misa, of course. He rolls his eyes. He'd ignore it if he could, but he needs to keep her happy if he wants things with L to go as planned, so he answers in his most pleasant and least winded voice.
"Hello?"
L is staring at him, glassy-eyed and blank, but his erection hasn't gone down and he's stopped struggling with the chains. He looks beaten and pathetic and rather like something Light would keep locked up in closet for the rest of forever if he could afford to.
"Light!" Misa squeals, the way she squeals about everything. He often wants to tell her that he'd be much more likely to fall in love with her if she would shut-up for five seconds at a time. "Where are you? What are you doing? Are you busy tomorrow? There's this new place across from my apartment and - "
"I'm just at headquarters, Misa. I'm finishing up some work." He looks L up and down as he says it, tries not to let his smirk show in his voice. "I don't have time to go out tomorrow, but why don't you come by? You can't come in, but we could see each other for a bit. I'm sure L wouldn't mind."
Misa squeals some more and Light tunes it out, using his free hand to swirl tiny patterns on the inside of one of L's pale thighs, tracing the muscles with the tips of his fingers. Eventually Misa squeals her way off the line and Light hangs up.
"Sorry about that," he says.
L just stares at him with those wide eyes, saying nothing. Light rolls his own, moving to climb back on top of him. He means to jerk him off and then let him free, maybe have a shower together, but he hates whatever quiet, unspoken thing is in L's face at the moment and wants to force it out. His fingers move across his thigh and instead of touching his cock, he ignores it completely, going back between his legs to slip inside, easy and slick. L's face does change then, draining even further of emotion, even as his pupils dilate and his breathing gets heavy again, and fuck, he loves this, doesn't he? Light is treating him like nothing, like an afterthought, like a whore - yes, as it turns out, he does like that word - and L is absolutely eating it up.
His legs slip further open of their own accord and Light fingers him deeper, not touching him anywhere else, not kissing his thin, chapped lips the way he's tempted to, just finger-fucking him with a look of vague interest on his face. He thinks about calling Misa back during, just because of how much it would humiliate L, but decides that it isn't worth it to have to listen to her shrieking again, and just twists his fingers and shoves them deep.
L comes without Light once touching his cock and his eyes don't close and his face barely changes, mouth opening a little wider and back arching and breath stuttering, but he doesn't moan or whimper or cry out the way Light loves to hear him do, just spills across his stomach and rattles the chains slightly. Light pulls his fingers out, wiping them on the bedsheets, and then goes to release him with a small click of the key, folding the chain up neatly and setting it back on the bed.
L doesn't move and doesn't speak and Light thinks the whole thing is rather tiring, so eventually just leans in and pecks him on the mouth. "I'm going to go have a shower," he says casually, standing to do up his trousers.
"In your own room?" L says quietly.
He's acting rather strange, but Light doesn't think much of it. "Yes, yes," he says, ruffling L's dark hair with one hand. "You should probably get some more sleep in the meantime." He flicks off the lamp as he goes out, soft steps padding against the carpeting. "Night."
L doesn't remember making the decision to get up but in the next moment he's standing in the middle of the room, so he must have. He moves to go turn the light back on, but instead picks up the lamp and hurls it across the room.
It hits the wall with a crash of glass and ceramic and L watches it fall to pieces. A fully functional piece of equipment - thanks to the much esteemed Edison, or rather more accurately, Tesla - one second, the next, rubble and scrap. Things become useless at a moment's notice, completely destroyed in the blink of an eye and no one really pays attention, no one sorts the wreckage. There are no men in white coats keeping track of all the lamps that break and what happens to the pieces, where they go, but human beings are always breaking things, absolutely destroying the things around them and where do all the lost, left over parts go? Into the landfill outside of New York City so big that it can be seen from space? Into the dirt?
L hates dirt. Roger used to put him in clean white tennis shoes and send him out to play with B and A on spring mornings. B used to take his shoes and socks off and crawl around in the mud, like a little beast. L had hated the tennis shoes, but he'd hated the dirt more. He'd started studying chemical decomposition before he could ride a bike, but he still didn't like the dirt. It had seemed very low and animal, beneath him. He'd been such a bright boy, everyone had said.
B used to throw mud-pies at him, staining his clean white shirts.
He looks down at himself, at the semen drying on his stomach and feels strangely distanced from it, like it's somebody else's semen on somebody else's stomach. He's done this clean-up routine so many times before, but he's sure he must have been somebody else all those other times, too.
The room is dark and he's broken the lamp, so he goes into the bathroom and flips on the fluorescents. They're bright and he squints up at them. He should take a quick shower and then go back to work, has so much to do. After all, Kira's not going to incarcerate himself. Not twice in a row. Instead he plugs up the tub and begins filling the bath.
He stands there, watching the water rise. There's a knock at the door that doesn't wait for an answer and then someone is coming into the room.
He's back, is L's first thought, and he can't properly understand why his instinctual reaction is to turn off the Light and pretend that he's not here. It's not him, though, not by the smell of the perfume, which is too flowery to be Light's cologne and not flowery enough to be Aiber's. Wedy's heels click on the tile when she reaches the bathroom.
"L," she says, coming around the doorway, "are you alive in there? I heard - "
She stops. Maybe it's because he's naked and maybe it's just something in his manner, because he feels hazy and half-together, like a lot of time had passed in between Light telling him to take his clothes off and Light kissing him goodnight.
"Watari," he says, without turning around. "Can you get me Watari."
If it were Aiber, he'd be yelling. He'd be demanding to know what "that little shit" has done now, would be cleaning L off and jerking him around with his large hands, and giving him heavy, imploring glances, and promises to break heads open if needed. L is glad that it's not Aiber. He would try to help, but he would only get in the way.
Wedy is more subtle. "Are you alright?" she says, walking further into the room. The click-click-click of her shoes is unbearable and L wishes she would take them off. She's referring, of course, to the state of him. One word from him and she'd have Light back here and bleeding from several orifices. She doesn't say it, but it doesn't need to be said.
L turns around, giving her the full view. She frowns, tries not to show whatever she's feeling in her face, and he tries not to see it.
"Don't give me that look," he says, with something that, if he put a little more into it, might be a smile. "You know I'm an old pro at this. I just need to change around a few of my strategies. Please bring me Watari."
She watches him for a second longer. "Yeah, okay."
Once she's gone, L turns the tap off. Without the rushing of the water loud in the background, the room seems very large and very silent. He's not used to bathing alone. He sinks down into the water, legs curled under his chin, and tries to think. It's very hot and he feels very dirty. He thinks that must have been Light's intention. He thinks, but - he doesn't know Light's intentions. He hadn't even known his own intentions, back there. To be or not to be - it had been one of those, anyway. He'd had a plan and he'd followed it to a point, but he'd been afraid, very afraid. He'd felt weak and small and conquered, which are things that he has never been, has no capacity to be. He's done this dozens of time, with dozens of people. He'd let them have their way, let them destroy him if they'd wanted to, but he'd always had a plan, and in the end, he'd always come up on top.
So then, he has to come out on top. Light can throw all the mud-pies he likes; L will catch them and re-serve.
When Watari comes in L is sitting curled up in the bath, bubbles surrounding him like an impenetrable fortress. He pulls up a chair and a little side table and sets out tea for two. L isn't thirsty. He watches the bubbles fizz out for a long moment.
"Do you think I'm pathetic?" he asks the echoing hollows of the room after a while, not looking up.
Watari's voice is kind and stern. "I think you're brilliant."
L snorts. "Are those two things really mutually exclusive?"
Watari doesn't answer, just stirs his tea and then mixes sugar into L's, since it seems as if he's not going to do it himself. "Have you eaten since Higuchi's capture?" he asks.
It's L's turn to ignore a question, and he just goes back to making towers and turrets out of the bubbles. Watari sighs and stands up, going back into the bedroom to pick up L's clothes and fold them neatly to take down to the laundry, then brings him a large, fluffy towel out of the linen closet and sets it down within his reach. They are both silent for a bit longer, L doing little to clean or groom himself - Light has been shampooing his hair for him of late - and trying to decide what he means to do about all of this.
He's not sure how much Watari knows or has guessed - there aren't camera's in this room, so he cant be certain of anything - but he hopes it's not much. Aside from being a lot of trouble, this whole situation is mostly just embarrassing. The idea that he can't handle himself, that some puffed-up little boy with a magical notebook can make him feel weak and small and out of control is disgusting. He is disgusted - with himself, with Light, with the way he'd kicked and fought, with how afraid he'd been, if only for one short moment.
L has had many things done to him for the sake of his investigations, but he'd gone through them with steely resolve, suffered the arrows and slings with dignity. He feels very young now. He feels 24. Or maybe like an anorexic 18-year-old.
Light had said that to him. God, he misses Light. L never misses anybody, but he misses Light.
"I need you to keep the taskforce occupied tomorrow morning, in my absence," he says finally, looking down at his hands. They're starting to prune.
Watari's mustache bristles and he nods shortly. He stands and, after a pause, says, "You're not going to kill the boy, are you?"
L pops bubbles with the tips of his fingers and smiles quite unkindly, feels unkind. "Oh no," he says. "I'd never dream of doing such a thing without you there." If Watari hears the bite in his voice, as he surely does, he makes no mention, nodding again with a narrow look in his eye, and leaving. He shuts the door behind him.
L stays in the bath long after the water goes cold.
Quillish takes L's comment about Matsuda being put in charge of the Death Note as a joke and locks it in one of the security vaults. Matsuda is, of course, very disappointed, but everyone else looks rather relieved. L is out of sorts and already working hard enough on one avenue of investigation; he hasn't time to take care of all of the loose ends. That's what Quillish is for. L looks after the world, but Quillish looks after L and always has done. Or, has at least since his late forties.
L is at once like a small child and a God, though he hates to be compared to either of those things. He is utterly fallible, but unrelenting. He can and has been knocked down plenty of times, but he always gets back up again with tougher skin and colder eyes. He is a blunt instrument honed into sharp metal and he can do absolutely anything. Quillish doesn't trust L as far as he can throw him, knows not to believe a word of what comes out of his mouth on a daily basis, but he has complete faith in him. Like a father would his son, or a man his God.
So he makes sure that no one on the investigation team goes near the basement levels or wonders where L and Light have got off to. He deletes the security footage seconds after it's recorded.
L will tell him all about it later. Or maybe he won't, but it doesn't truly matter. Quillish has a job to do.
He wakes with tape over his mouth.
He kicks out, legs going up and jerking around wildly, as someone cuffs his hands behind his back. The metal is cold and familiar on his wrists, but it's too short to be the chain. That's his first clue that it's not L. The second is the fact that someone's cursing at him in French. He knows that L speaks French - and English and German and Chinese and Spanish and Arabic and virtually everything else one could possibly speak - but he doesn't often use it without cause.
The third and most damning clue is blinking up at Aiber's smug face right before a blindfold is shoved over his eyes. He's jerked up from the bed and begins to kick again, but then he feels something cold pressed against his side and Wedy's smoke-stained voice casually saying, "You've got plenty of inessential limbs. Don't make me put a bullet in one."
He goes still, sense of self-preservation taking over, even as his mind skips through possible avenues of escape, running though all of his options, looking for a way out. She won't shoot him, not really. L wouldn't - this is L's doing, of course, and L wouldn't want him dead. Not like this, anyway. They march him quietly down a hall and then presumably into an elevator. He can just see out of the bottom of his blindfold and the floor tiles are unfamiliar, so he assumes they're in some part of the massive building that he hasn't yet been to.
"Do you have to wave that thing around?" Aiber grunts, presumably to Wedy, but she just hmmphs and mumbles that she needs a cigarette, gun still trained on Light.
The elevator dings and they take him down another hall and then left - he maps it all out in his head, just in case - and set him in a chair, securing him to it with another set of chains. L's really fond of overly elaborate interrogative bondage, isn't he? Absolutely fucked in the head. Light sits there, feet tapping, almost enthused by the situation. Then, out of nowhere, a heavy fist slams into his jaw, catching the edge of his mouth. He groans and it tastes like pennies.
The tape is ripped off.
"What the hell are you doing?" he chokes out, blood from his split lip dripping down onto his chin. He struggles, testing his bonds, but they hold as well as L's chains always have. He means to yell some sort of abuse, but he's caught in the stomach, the blow ricocheting through his gut and making him rock with sickness.
He's going to vomit, he's actually going to vomit.
"What - "
"Easy there, boy," Aiber says lowly, hand coming down to stay his shoulders. Then the blindfold is pulled off, though not with particular kindness, and Light blinks at the contrasting brightness. He's going to vomit.
Wedy is there, tapping an unlit cigarette against her lips. L is to her left, curled up in chair opposite Light and watching him without expression. He's dressed in his usual clothes, but over them he wears a heavy brown coat that looks like it was designed for someone twice his size. Aiber shoots a questioning glance at him and Light watches L nod soberly. Then he feels a sharp kick to shin and he can't help the grunt of pain that slips out, almost knocking over his chair in his fit to get as far away from Aiber as possible. His eyes water involuntarily and if he had his Death Note he'd kill them all right now. If he had his hands free he'd strangle L the way he ought to have yesterday, L who's just watching on, unfazed, as if he and Light are perfect strangers.
Another nod. Aiber hits him again.
Light lets out something that sounds suspiciously like a half-sob, but it's not real, it's not real. Let them think they're succeeding, let them think he's beaten, but he's not. He is God and L is -
"Stop." L's voice is very loud in the wide room, drowning out Light's heavy breaths. Aiber stops immediately. He had been grinning back in Light's bedroom, but he's not now. "Go," L says. Wedy walks out of the room without a pause, lighting her cigarette as she goes. After a moment and a long look at L, Aiber follows her.
L stares at Light and Light stares at L.
Light's jaw aches and his stomach turns and he doesn't understand why L is doing this to him. He narrows his eyes and spits out some blood, just daring L to lay a hand on him without his bodyguard around. L doesn't move.
"I'm going to tell you a story," he says. "You're always asking about me, about my history, so I'm going to tell you."
That had certainly not been what Light had been expecting, but he doesn't interrupt. He's too shell-shocked to come up with words suitably eloquent enough to explain how fucking furious he is.
L clears his throat, a keen, unreadable look in his eye. "My mother died during childbirth and I spent my early years in a children's poor house in a small town in England," he begins, and Light clenches his teeth. "I went to work picking oakum when I was nine and - "
"That's Oliver Twist," he says, barely restraining an eye-roll. A part of him wants to laugh, and maybe he would if his gut wasn't aching and his head didn't feel as if it had been put on backwards.
"Oh," L says. "You're right. I do get he and I confused sometimes. Let's see." He tugs on his lip with an errant finger. "In truth, I was raised by my older sister and her husband. He was a blacksmith and I apprenticed for him until I came into a good deal of money from a - "
Light turns his snort into a cough. "Great Expectations," he says, realizing that L is, for lack of a better word, teasing him. "Why all the Dickens?"
"You'd prefer something else? Ahem. 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good -' "
There's a grim sort of hilarity to the situation, Light grabbed from his bed, tied to a chair on an abandoned floor all so that L could quote Pride and Prejudice at him. In the first place, he knows for a fact that L isn't overly fond of Austen - "More of a Bronte sort," he'd told him, during one of their late nights - and in the second, there doesn't seem to be any point to it, other than to shake him up. L may be unreasonable, but he's not incompetent. He has to have a purpose.
Perhaps to bore him to death.
Maybe Light will look back on this moment with fond amusement after L is dead, but it's hard to muster any sort of good feeling toward him while tasting his own blood in his mouth.
"Are we going to play 'guess L's favorite books' all day," he snaps, "or can you throw me in a cell and be done with it?"
He doesn't actually expect L to incarcerate him, and throws it down as an option just to completely rule it out. After all, L's plan is surely to shake him up as much as possible. He's not going to do something that he thinks Light will expect, but Light knows enough by now to expect anything. L is not above anything.
"Then what is the difference between you and Kira?" Light has asked, before.
Among other things, at least Kira has some fucking decorum.
L scratches his head lazily with two fingers, then stands up. The coat shifts slightly with the movement and Light's attention catches on a few faint marks around his neck. From last night, he realizes, and can't decide if he feels guilty or self-satisfied, until the throbbing in his jaw decides it for him. At least the chain had been good for something.
L paces the length of the small room. It looks like more like a disused office than a cell, although the only pieces of furniture are the chair Light's in and the one L's just vacated. L had paced often, when they'd been chained together, and often Light had had to pace with him simply as a matter of course.
L tips his head back to stare at the ceiling, as if his lines are written up there. "I really do have a story to tell you," he says, after circling the room several times over. "But it's not about me."
"You said it was," Light tells him, trying to sound bored and and unconcerned.
"I lied. It's a thing I do. Keep up." L's still talking to the ceiling. Light wants to bash his head in with a blunt object. "This is a story about names. Or rather, about a young man who knew people's names. Everyone's. As soon as he met them."
Light freezes.
"I know," L says, nodding without looking at him, "it seems like a cheap party trick, but it's true. Even names that were never spoken, names that were nowhere on file anywhere in the whole world. He just knew them." He flicks his eyes toward Light, muscles not shifting an inch. "That remind you of anyone?"
He thinks for a second that L is talking about him, that it's just another I know you're Kira ploy, but L doesn't say it accusatorially so much as curiously, and anyway, the evidence that L has at his disposal would lead him to a different conclusion.
"The Second Kira, maybe," Light says, after a moment, like he's followed the same line of thought. The original Kira needs a name and a face, the Second only a face. Does L know about the eyes? No, he can't. Rem wouldn't have said and Misa doesn't even have her memories yet. Light had meant to give her the instructions tomorrow. Today? He doesn't even know what time it is or how long he'd been asleep. L could have drugged him or -
No. No, he has to stay calm. He clears his throat. "So, you've decided that it's a man, then? That must mean Misa's in the clear."
"On the contrary," L says, probing eyes locked on Light. "Misa is very far from being in the clear. And I'm not talking about the Second Kira, I'm talking about someone I know to be 100% separate from all of the Kiras. Someone Kira has never met or heard of. But, if the Second Kira does have the ability to instinctively know anyone's name, then she - " Light begins to protest " - or he must have gotten it from the Death Note, correct?" L doesn't give Light time to answer. "So, it stands to reason that this young man must also have a Death Note, does it not?"
All the muscles in Light's neck go tense and hard and no, he's lying, he's lying - there's no way there's someone else out there with a Death Note. How would L even know? He'd only found out about the notebook two days ago. He knows nothing, he's just making things up, trying to scare Light, panicking. He knows Light is going to kill him - must have realized yesterday, the chain had been too much, too far - and he's trying to save himself.
"Don't worry," L says, catching Light's expression. "He doesn't pose any threat to us. Not yet, anyway."
Light sits there for a long time, trying to decide what to say to that. Should he ask questions? Would it be too suspicious? Would it be suspicious not to?
"Did you have to tie me up and beat me in order to tell me that?" he asks, after a moment, letting his body deflate in the chair, trying to make it obvious to L that he's no threat at the moment and that it's fine to let him go. He assumes that his father and the other investigators haven't been told about this situation, because if they had L would never have gotten away with setting Aiber on him little a rabid dog. So it's just him and L on the playing field, as it should be.
"No," L says, walking over to stand in front of him, "that was for last night."
It takes a moment for Light to understand what he means - last night had been good, had been so good - but his eyes flit to the marks on L's neck and he thinks maybe everything looks a little different from the morning after.
L starts walking again, passes him by and heads for the door.
"What, are you embarrassed or something?" Light calls, just to make him stop. It works. "Is that what this is about? Pissed because the tables were turned for just a few minutes and suddenly you were the one without any power?" He's almost glad he's tied to a chair; it lends a lot of weight to his argument.
L turns around on him so fast that Light's almost sure he'll knock himself down with the force of it.
"Don't," he whispers, voice a thin sliver of something torrential, "speak to me about power. Not as you are. Not as Light Yagami."
Light doesn't know what that's even supposed to mean. He is Light Yagami and Light Yagami is Kira and Kira is him - but to L there seems as if there's some sort of disconnect, like he's drawn a visible line into what they were before and what they are now. But it's not different, not really. Light's only regained his memories, not suffered some sort of Jekyll and Hyde switch where's he become a completely different person. His principles aren't changed, they're just more clear now. Still, it stands to reason that L wouldn't want to believe otherwise, would want to salvage some form of self-respect by denying that the boy he'd been so fond of these past few months is the same one who's spun the world on it's head, changed all the rules.
L stands there for a moment, body taut and tall, before he shakes his head and pulls out a key, curling down to unlock Light's chains with steady hands. First the ankles, then the wrists.
"I really would like to talk to you," he says as he works, making you sound like something new, something separate, "larger than life force of justice to larger than life force of justice." He looks up at Light, eyes steady and less cruel than they'd been a moment ago. "But you have to take off the mask first. I'm not going to argue with someone who doesn't exist."
Light almost smiles at him. Instead, he shoves out of the chair and grabs L by the throat of his ugly brown coat, stumbling them half across the room and drawing his fist back.
"Make it good," L says, right before Light punches him in the face.
It hurts his fist and it hurts him to stand, right shin aching and stomach still rolling. His lip has stopped bleeding but he doesn't doubt that any pronounced twist of expression will crack it open again. L doesn't make a sound of pain, doesn't try to stop him, and when Light pulls back and lets him go, he just slumps into the wall rather casually and rubs at the skin of his jaw.
"Now we'll match," he says, nodding at Light's lip. "I'm sure the taskforce won't find it overly suspicious."
Given the number of fistfights they've gotten into since first being chained together, Light thinks he's probably right. Although, the damage is a little more extensive this time and so, mostly just because his body aches and he's pissed off, he says, "I could show them the rest." He pulls up his shirt. There's a mark purpling on his abdomen. "Show them what you did to me."
L looks at his bare skin, face blank.
"And I coat unzip this coat and show them the bruises around my neck," he says, voice an even mumble, emotion locked out.
He keeps it on, though.
Light doesn't like that, so after a moment he moves in closer, backing L into the wall and tugging down the zipper with careful fingers. He more than expects to be shoved away, but L lets him open the coat up far enough to see the marks, to see the way they paint him in pinks and and light purples. For some reason, it has the effect of making L seem less fragile than he normally does, even backed against the wall as he is. Like he can withstand anything that Light can throw at him.
Light sort of wants to kiss him, but he doesn't think it will go over well, so he just reaches out, the tips of his fingers hovering over the marks.
After a silence that probably lasts too long, he says, "And I could tell them how much you liked it." He speaks softly, letting his breath puff out over L's face, but he doesn't fade into it like he usually does, doesn't bend to Light's body. Apparently he's abandoned whatever role he's been playing all this time, or maybe - maybe it hadn't truly been a role. Maybe that's the problem.
"Because you did," Light continues, lips so close that he could press them to L's neck, to his jaw and ear and shoulder. "That's why you're angry, isn't it? You like to be hurt, to be wrecked. You like to let people wreck you." He says the words into the cool line of L's throat, makes the skin shivers slightly beneath his lips. L's eyes are clouded over and the look in them is halfway between angry and terrified. "I'm not the Judas to your tormented savior," Light bites out, "but you love to think that, don't you? Want to be a martyr so badly, L?"
Light draws the back of his hand along Light's face. L takes in a breath and doesn't let it out.
"All you have to do is wait."
He has Aiber and Wedy escort Light back up to his room because he can't manage it himself. That feeling is back, that feeling like he wants to drink an entire bottle of gin or throw himself out of a window. Just fall to the ground, spine breaking and skull cracking and muscles loose and useless forever after. The end of the show, curtains go down. No one claps.
Although, Light is right - if L really wants to die, all he has to do is wait. Just do nothing until the hammer of justice knocks him down.
And it's a terrifying thought, because he should do something - anything - but he can't seem to make himself move.
Light has to kill L.
Light has to. All of his plans hinge on this one event. He kills L, and then everything works out. That's how it goes. The story has already been planned out in his head for ages, he sees it all, how it will go down in the history books. An enemy vanquished. The end of an era of false justice.
The end of L's thin mouth and his gaunt shoulders and his aborted laughs and quiet, rambling murmurs in the dark. The end of the rose-colored glasses that he'd stuck over Light's eyes and somehow, for some brief span of time that won't mean in anything in the grand scheme, made him believe that there were things in the world that would bend and not break, things that don't need to be broken in the first place. Things that are already good as they are and shouldn't be changed or removed or cleaned up, but simply locked away in glass cases to be kept hanging in their colossal, impossible, imperfect loveliness. It's poetry and it's a bit trite and maybe a little bit pathetic, but poetry is what moves all the mountains in the end, and the dream-world of Kira is only really a pretty story crafted from pretty ideas. Light should be able to have other pretty things, if he wants them.
Light misses his date with Misa and instead goes looking for Rem. He's running out of time and there's so much he needs to do.
tbc.
end notes: It's ridiculous how much western literature they talk about in this, but I don't know any of the japanese classics and I'm way too much of a lazy asshole to read any of them for the purposes of this fic. So, what gets referenced is mostly things I have read (i.e., not a lot).
In other news, does anyone remember when this fic was about something besides L's fucked-up emotional issues? Anyone? No, me neither. I promise things (gasp!) will happen next chapter, this was just something I wanted to explore before I could really go anywhere else, because I'm very off in the head.
Thank you all for reading/reviewing/etc., you're excellent!