warnings: violence, crass language, smoking. seriously, everybody's always smoking. non-explicit gore. really fucked-up dynamics?
notes: Welcome to the second of what is probably going to be three arcs. If you made it this far, congratulations. Nothing really happens in this chapter, which appears to be a theme with this story, but alas. Thank you to every lovely person who read/reviewed/favorited. You all keep me chugging along when I might have otherwise driven straight off the tracks weeks ago.
chapter nine - the boy dies.
"When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
It's cold today.
They've got central heating and all, but Matt leaves the window propped open to flick his ash out by turns, keeping the smoke from staining the room thick and harsh. Roger knows he smokes - everyone knows he smokes - but no one says it outright. No one ever approaches the many behavioral deficiencies in Wammy's students, provided they keep their grades up. Matt smokes constantly, blows all of his allowance on cigarettes, just waiting for the day when third place won't be sufficient compensation for the habit. A quiet rebellion; he's daring them to kick him out.
He's daring himself to figure out somewhere else to go.
The carpet is cool and rough under his back and the floor shakes as Mello stomps in. His hair is in his eyes and he looks like he's about to cry, which is sort of scary, in a nervous oh god, what should I say, what should I do with my hands kind of way.
He steps over Matt, goes straight to the closet and pulls out a backpack, the one they used to use on hikes. Half the zippers are broken and there's gum stuck to the inside, somewhere. Matt sighs out some smoke, taps the butt into his empty mug and sits up. He doesn't say anything because all of the things he thinks of are obvious and also completely stupid.
"I'm leaving," Mello announces, not turning around, just haphazardly tossing clothes into the bag.
Too many shirts, Matt notices. Not enough trousers. Is he even packing socks? He watches Mello's hands move, quick and unsystematic, he's shivering slightly, keeps pulling his sleeves down lower. Nervous. He's nervous. He's leaving.
"Oh," Matt says.
Which is the worst possible thing that anyone has ever said in response to anything ever, especially because this is exactly what he wants. Right? He wants to leave, has wanted to leave since he came to Wammy's as a kid, only Mello - Mello was, is, the only person worth being anywhere with and Mello loves it here, always has, and so Matt had stayed. But he'd harbored fantasies, the way everyone does - tiny, silly things - that one day they'd go together, set out on the road, take London by storm or go to the US or go anywhere, really. He'd just been waiting for Mello to say the word.
And now Mello is saying the word and all Matt can say is, "Oh."
Mello doesn't turn around, so Matt stands up, just stands there, fingers flicking at his lighter. After a moment, he comes up with another word. "Why?"
"Because," Mello practically yells, spinning to face Matt, "it's time for me to grow the fuck up."
"Oh," Matt says again, because what else is he meant to say? Calm down, you batshit loon, calm down and let me stroke your hair like when we were little. "Should I come with you?"
"No," Mello says.
He wipes at his eyes, and he's crying, he's actually crying and this is all of Matt's late-night wank fantasies plastered right in front of him. Mello used to cry all the time when they were kids, throw tantrums, throw punches, and just fucking scream and sob when things weren't going his way. And things have never gone his way. Matt used to grab him by the wrist or the ends of his fingers, pull him under the north stairs with blankets and cups of cocoa, and he wouldn't say anything, wouldn't have to speak, would just listen to Mello tell him quietly about all of his plans, about all of the things he was going to do, the ways he meant to make L proud, make the world understand what he was.
Brilliant, better than Near, better than everyone. The best.
Of course, at age five - or six or seven or eight - Matt hadn't quite understood that curling up in a warm, confined space with Mello pressed casually up against him was the kind of thing you have to remember, to catalog every touch and glance and hot breath, because that stuff will all become monumentally important later in life.
And Mello is crying again, and so Matt should take him by the hand and keep him close, help him feel better, do anything - in his head he would, in his head he always does - but he can't seem to move, can't seem to say anything but, "Oh."
Then Mello is wiping at his eyes, zipping up his backpack, pulling on his boots - leaving. And Matt just stands there. He flicks his lighter on and off, tries to think of something to say and comes up empty. Mello's almost to the bedroom doorway and Matt thinks, isn't someone going to stop him? Where's Roger, where the fuck is Roger, where the fuck is anyone with fucking functioning limbs and words and thoughts? Mello is leaving -
And then he stops, turns around, walks back. He reaches out his hand to Matt's and for a split-second all the live-wires ignite and everything is close and warm and wonderful - and then Matt realizes that Mello is just taking his lighter. He looks at it, shakes his head, and chucks it out of the open in window.
Matt watches it go, still can't quite form words.
"Stop fucking smoking. You're gonna get - you'll - just stop, okay?" Mello says, eyes wide and shining and oddly serious.
Matt means to tell him to mind his own business, means to tell him to please, please stay, but just nods and says, "Okay."
And then Mello is gone. It takes a while for anyone to realize and an even longer time for them to get it together to send out a few cars to start looking for him. One of the teachers asks Matt if he wants to come, but he just shakes his head. When they're gone, he reaches into his nightstand drawer, pulls out his spare lighter and sparks it up.
The smoke is sharp and calming, the room is cold.
Watari pours her a gin and Wedy drinks it in one long sip. She feels like hell and her hair is a mess and it says something about the desperation of the situation that she doesn't bother to fix it.
"I cannot make you stay," Watari tells her, calm and solemn and overly polite. Most of the time it's charming, but right now the withdrawn butler routine is just making her skin itch, making everything more difficult to deal with. She wishes he'd spit out the words, wishes he'd be blunt and awful and say what he means. L would.
"No," she says into her empty glass, "you can't."
Aiber's hand is heavy and it hits the table with too loud a sound. He lifts it immediately, like grappling with himself, balling his fingers into a fist and grunting out the words between his teeth. "Maybe he can't, but I sure fucking can."
Wedy smiles rough, trips her fingers along the gun at her hip. "Oh, can you?"
She taps her glass. Watari pours her more gin. She feels ugly.
This is an ugly situation. L is gone, likely on his death bed if he's not already worm's meat, and the kid who killed him is prancing around the office like he's lord and commander as all the empty-headed suits follow his every word like law. Watari's not falling for it and Aiber can barely stand still for a moment without putting his fist through an expensive piece of surveillance equipment, but what are they really going to do? What do they expect her to do?
Wedy goes where the money is, but L is dead and they are in the wreckage of it. She's not going to run headlong into a burning building for someone who's just charred bone by this point. There's a difference between risk and suicide, and she'd rather be ugly than dead.
"So you'll just run away?" Aiber says.
His hair is a mess, too, falling in thick ruffles over his eyes. He badly needs a shave. He looks like he had the first time she'd met him - Thailand, out on the street in front of the hotel where L had been staying, arguing with one of the clerks. It'd been dark, streets wet from the afternoon's rain, and there'd been mud on his leather shoes. "I need to see him," he'd kept yelling. "You don't understand, I need to."
She'd called L, convinced him to let him up. "There's a pathetic European splashing around in the dirt down here and I think he belongs to you." He'd slept on the sofa while she and L had gotten to work on the case.
His eyes are wide and blue and desperate now, and she remembers, quite sharply and suddenly, the ways in which he can be pretty. Take away the performance, the shit cologne and the fast-talking, and he's just a sad thing like the rest of them. A fully grown man with no idea who or what he is, no idea how to properly dress himself. He looks like that now.
If Wedy were a better person, she'd stay.
She sets down her glass and turns on here heel. "I guess so," she says, and runs away. There's a flight to the States leaving in two hours and she's going to be on it.
L is bleeding again. He's been bleeding a lot lately. Light's not sure if it's because of the metaphorical resonance of suffering for a greater purpose - a death on the cross without the actual crucifixion - or if he's really just that convinced that he'll one day manage to slip out of the handcuffs.
His wrist is chafed to bits, blood sliding down his arm, dirtying the metal. He sits there, staring at the cuts like he doesn't comprehend them. Light sighs and sets down his shopping.
"You've really got to stop doing that," he says, moving to sit down next to L on the bed. He'd put on sheets yesterday, added a blanket and some pillows, tried to make him comfortable, but it all looks only vaguely mussed, barely touched. L is a terrible guest just like he is terrible at most things. "If I take the cuff off and switch it to the other wrist, will you try to escape?"
L does something like roll his eyes, which is annoying, but also comfortingly familiar. "Yes."
Light huffs, takes his arm and examines the cuts, the places where the skin's been worn away with little tears. He doesn't know what to do. This isn't at all like his fantasies. L is meant to be quivering with weakness, to be offering himself up to Light, begging for forgiveness, and then they're meant to have violent sex and confess their eternal love, and at some point in all that L's supposed to realize the error of his ways and join up as the high priest of the church of Kira, or something. It had seemed completely plausible to Light during the late nights, with only his hand for company. Now it just feels slightly stupid.
He goes out of the room to wet some paper towels and resolves to purchase a first aid kit for the apartment, for moments just such as these. It's oddly domestic, in a way, if he ignores the fact that his housemate isn't there of his own volition. Light hadn't been chained to L for all those months by choice either, not really. Any time he starts to feel bad about any of this, he remembers that it's L and that L, for all his ephemeral perfection, is rather more scum than not.
He wipes L's wrist clean, gently, but not overly so, and then wraps it up in a cloth to keep the cuff from digging in too much. L says nothing and Light doesn't know what to say, finds himself trailing his fingers through the ends of L's hair more often than not, which is both calming and distracting in equal measure.
It all feels different than it had. Through this lens, it's almost predatory; L is the object and Light is viewer, touching and examining and contorting, and L abides it either out of the solemn detachment that comes of experience with being examined and contorted, or else just because he's in love with Light.
Probably a combination of both.
"Here," Light says when he's done, opening his bag and setting a slice of fresh bakery cake in front of L, "this is for you."
It feels sort of desperate, like he's a schoolboy trying to charm his crush and getting absolutely nowhere. L is increasingly unresponsive and Light thinks, not for the first time, that maybe he should just kill him after all. It would be easy, at this point. He wouldn't need the name, wouldn't even need the notebook, he could live out all of his fantasies here in this room, on this bed. He wonders why he doesn't and hands L a fork.
Watching L eat is kind of like watching one of those nature videos from Africa about lions and gazelles and feeding habits and all that. The sort of thing you should look away from, shouldn't enjoy in some deep, visceral way - but you don't change the channel and you don't look away. There are crumbs on his chin. He's a mess. He's always been a mess and it's nothing new, but it's more off-putting than usual, because now he's a mess that Light owns. He ought to be cleaned up simply be extension.
"It's not as good as Watari's," L says, without bothering to swallow first.
Light rolls his eyes and can't decide what he's feeling. "Are you five?"
"I'm sad," L tells him, setting down his fork and slumping slightly to the side, like the strings that normally hold his marionette body up are being cut, one by one, limbs going loose and defunct. "This a sad room and you're a sad person and it's making me sad."
Light hands him a cup of coffee and sips his tea. "I didn't kill you," he says, casually, like this is the kind of thing that people talk about. He sits cross-legged next to L on the bed. This is practically a date. He makes a mental note to get the place some chairs or something. "I could have and I didn't. You should be thanking me."
"There are plenty of things worse than death, Light," L says, holding out his hand. Light drops a fist-full of sugar packets into it.
"Like what?"
L shrugs. "Like being a sex slave to a mass murderer."
Light freezes, eyebrow raising. Maybe he doesn't need to buy those chairs after all. "Sex slave?" he says. "That's kind of a leap, isn't it?"
"People rarely kidnap and chain me to beds for my health," L says. He's drinking his coffee hurriedly, hasn't really had any caffeine in the last few days, and it's dripping down his chin and onto his chest. Light can't decide if it's attractive or gross. But then, L has always been an revolving mixture of those two things.
Light smiles slightly, feeling kind. "Maybe I just wanted to keep you around for conversation."
"Were that the case, I would think you might have left my clothes on," L says.
Light full out smirks.
He's got a sheet draped haphazardly across his lap, but other than that, L is naked and has been all morning. It slants the dynamics of power rather more sharply that the cuffs do, but kink aside, it's mostly just a matter of necessity. The phrase sex slave has a charming ring to it, but L is not here to be a pet or a kept man. He's meant to be what he's always been, the cool, dark, quiet thing that talks with clever words and laughs without making a sound. He is a jagged monster made of humanity who lives under - and in - Light's bed, always watching and calculating and controlling, grappling for the upper hand.
His earliest memory is of a snowstorm. He likes Scandinavia, types 80 words per minute with two fingers, and sometimes does quadratic equations in his sleep. He bends well, folds into Light's hands and tastes like importance, but he is more than just a body, just like Light is. Light is physically perfect, but being reduced to nothing but his outside, his shiny exterior, is unendingly insulting. L, he's sure, feels the same, especially because his outside is just as flawed as what's within. He is constructed of flaws. He is beautiful. He is Light's.
"They're in the laundry," he tells L, idly picking up a napkin to wipe his chin. "I'll buy you more, I just - " he starts, then stops. "I'm trying to get everything in order. Do you think this is easy?"
Everything else is taken care of: Misa has retrieved the Death Note, the taskforce is eating out of the palm of his hand, Rem is behaving. Maintenance of L is the only thing eating up his time and patience, trying to keep his fed and watered and alive. The latter is particularly difficult, given his various creative attempts at escape. Aside from the mess that is his wrist, he's got several bruises from when Light had had to tackle him in order to keep him from trying to tunnel through the wall beside his bed. The bags under his eyes have gotten heavier, given that the only time that he gets any sleep is when Light drugs him into it. It's only been three days and already it's like trying to corral an especially impudent child who won't eat its vegetables.
"I told you that it wouldn't be," L says, finishing his cake and wiping absently at his mouth. "I don't fully understand why you're doing it."
Light taps his fingers along his chin, imagines stripping L's skin off of his bones, then imagines what L's reaction would be if he told him about it. "But you partly understand," he says. He keeps his thoughts separate from his words, always, even with L.
L slumps back against the headboard, hair snapping back to hit the white walls, a pretty, jagged contrast. He sighs long and casual, like he's not naked and chained up and Light's helpless prisoner.
"You think you're in love with me, I suppose," he says, making it sound like a minor annoyance that needs to be taken care of. "Yes, this happens sometimes. It's rather a bother."
And that's, that's - no. No. He wants to get angry, is getting angry, but he can't because that's exactly what L wants. He wants his power back and if he can't manage it physically, he'll take it emotionally. He's been playing this tactic all along, but Light's only just starting to see it now; with Aiber, with Wedy, with talking about all of his old cases, alluding to all of the people who have been in Light's place before. Trying to make it seem like this - them - is just a usual occurrence, something that happens all the time, something that is not a frightening, calamitous, watch-stopping event in human history.
It is, they are. It's not destiny, it's something more intelligent than that - planetary alignment; a necessity.
"I am not like any of them," Light says, leaning forward to bear down over L the way he knows L secretly likes. "You know I'm not. You know what I am."
He cards his fingers through L's hair, along his jaw, to his shoulder and lower down.
"God?" L says, in a quiet, large voice.
Light feels himself getting closer to L without moving, but he must be, because L is pressed back as far as he can go and his skin is warm against Light's hand, bare and soft and unreal. He feels like mundane deliverance, like something otherworldly and strange dropped into an unremarkable setting. Light loves him.
Everything is so much easier when he doesn't have to keep reminding himself not to.
He practically climbs onto L, covering his body like a blanket, hips lining up awkwardly, and it's not half as sexual as it is just close - like they could become the same person and not notice, fade right into each other. Light loves him, Light loves him and -
And Light's cheek is jammed into, hard, and then the floor is flying up and hitting him in the back. Metal, it's metal, L hit him with metal, but there is no metal, except - the chain.
The chain is broken and L is free and his foot slams into Light's chest, knocking the wind out of him, keeping him down. L doesn't say a thing, doesn't look at him, just turns into a black and white shape that heads straight for the door. The chain is broken. That is not supposed to happen.
There's a thumping, thick and lodged in Light's ears, and he can't tell if it's the blood pumping through his skull or L repeatedly slamming himself into the doorframe. It's not a strong door, Light thinks. L is a strong man, Light thinks. There's a crack and a thump a moment later and then L's black and white shape is gone and Light is scrambling up from the floor, depth perception gone wonky and swift sounds and shapes knocking through his head. He bumps into the bed frame on the way out, but doesn't let it slow him down. He feels oddly the same as when he'd been hungover.
There's another door at the end of the hall, this one with a deadbolt, and L probably won't be able to get through it, but he might, he might, and then everything's poisoned and ruined and gone.
He'd tell them. Light trips over his own feet, socks slipping on the cheap linoleum in a flurry of panic. L would tell them everything and they would know and they would stop him, kill him. He'd have to kill them, all of them, his father and the team, Watari, Wedy, Aiber - and wouldn't that be fun? - all of them. He'd have to erase all the servers, destroy anything incriminating. He'd have to raze the world, and it's not time yet.
He pads along the hall, almost caught up to L, and at that moment he understands what L has been talking about. This is dangerous. He is dangerous. His is a bomb and Light is keeping the bomb in bed with him. It could go off at any moment, get out, and then it's all ruined, everything good eaten away by necessary chaos.
The door is getting closer and then L's body falls, hitting the floor with an echoing thud. Light's mind registers it before his feet do and he practically trips over L when he reaches him. Rem is floating there, sticking out halfway through the wall, an empty needle in her great, ugly hand.
Light breathes out, straightens up.
Took her long enough.
"Good girl," he says without looking at her.
He reaches down to turn L's body onto its side, instead of face forward on the dirty ground. He really needs to see about getting this place cleaned out. He can't get a maid service, of course, on the chance that they'd find L chained up and call the police. Maybe he could write in the Death Note for a criminal to come to this building with a mop and bucket before their heart attack? Although, it would have to be someone who would realistically do such a thing, or else the instruction won't go through. Perhaps he could find an criminal janitor? There must be plenty of those.
Rem droops there, disapproving of him with her gaunt, skeletal face. "This is your worst plan yet."
Light almost laughs, overtaken by a manic sort of relief. L had gotten close, but he didn't succeed - couldn't possibly. It's terrifying and brilliant, a thrilling game that plays through Light's head. He sighs, leans back against the wall, and says, "Be polite or I won't allow Misa to come by and visit you."
"Maybe I'll kill you and go see her myself," Rem says. Light would assume that she's joking if she were Ryuk, but she's too sullen and humorless to even understand the concept of teasing.
"You wouldn't," he says, straightening up to stand over L. "My death would devastate her. It'd break her fragile little heart." He nods at L's crumpled body and Rem sighs, swooping down to pick him up and turning back towards the hall. Light will have to go get a sturdier chain before L wakes up. Also, get his clothes out of the wash.
Rem moves like the ghost of someone who was never alive, doesn't look at him when she says, "Misa Amane does not have a fragile heart."
Misa's room is clean for once. There are usually useless, pretty things scattered all over the place: bras and hairbrushes and magazines with her face winking, giddy and lovable, up at her from the cover. Everything is in neat boxes today. She and Light are moving in together. He's only doing it so that he can use the Death Note out from under his family's watch, of course, but still.
She and Light are moving in together.
She chews her pen, taps it on her lip. She feels prettier than she has in months. Confinement was okay, she supposes, but there'd been eyes on her all the time, watching and tracking and judging and she just hadn't been able to breathe. Now the only pair of eyes on her is wide and laughing and yellow, like the twin headlights of some killing machine.
Ryuk's alright company, but she misses Rem. She'd been quiet and heavy, felt more like a shield than an annoying pet. She'd had all the answers herself, had never asked stupid questions.
"He's keeping Ryuzaki around because they're friends, Ryuk," Misa repeats. She pries at the plastic of the pen with her teeth, knows she shouldn't - nervous habit, has to go, her agent had said so - but she does it anyway. Misa does all kinds of things that she knows she shouldn't.
"Really?" Ryuk asks from where he's floating upside-down, wide grin splitting his face. "So they're not doing sex, because Light says - "
"Having sex, Ryuk," she corrects. "Humans have sex."
Ryuk flips around, balancing his chin on a pointy hand. Still smiling. "Right, sorry. Japanese is hard."
Misa rolls her eyes, taps her pen again. It's gel, light blue, has sparkles in it. There are twenty-six names written on the page of the Death Note in front of her and she traces them with her eyes, the tips of her fingers. It's sort of fantastic, if she thinks about it - and she doesn't often think about it. People are dying. She is killing them with light blue gel ink.
"I'll buy you a grammar book, if you want," she says to Ryuk, not really paying attention anymore.
Distancing herself. Everything is easier if she distances herself from it. The dead bodies become statistics in the newspaper and Light's smile blots it all out, makes murder into shining, golden justice. Light's smile can do anything.
"Nah," Ryuk says, "buy apples if you're buying something. Anyway - "
"Yes," Misa almost snaps, then stops herself. Slow breaths, even breaths. Think of Light's smile, the ends of his hair touching his eyelashes; warm hands, smooth skin, hers in a way that he isn't anyone else's. She starts again. "Yes, they're having sex. So, what? What am I supposed to do about it?"
Ryuk shrugs his jagged shoulders, moving like a caustic puppet. "Don't know. You could kill L."
Misa's pen stops tapping.
"I couldn't," she says. "Light would be sad."
Light fucks L and doesn't fuck her, but what is that, really? Her eyes are something L doesn't and can't ever have. She sees death and knows death and Light needs that, needs her. He doesn't need sex or friendship or L, not really. It's just something to occupy himself with. L is a toy, but Misa is a tool, and only one of those things is indispensable.
Ryuk shrugs again, gets packing tape stuck on his fingers and twirls off in a fit of otherworldly amusement, calling back as he goes, "I didn't know Light was happy."
Misa taps her pen.
There's a church down the road from Wammy's, old and unused. There's a church down the road from everything in England, it seems. L goes there when they're zipped up in stifling winter coats and sent out onto the grounds to do what is widely referred to as "play" by everyone at Wammy's who is over the age of ten. L doesn't play. L knows how to do everything, but he doesn't know how to do that.
B follows him. He follows him around corners and down the gravel path and through the cold sunlight that flickers between the dying limbs of ancient elm trees. B watches his hair toss in the light wind and traces the outline of his profile with the tips of his fingers. He wants to draw L's face on the back of his hand, wants to imprint it somewhere it can never change or grow or go away.
Run, run, run. L always runs when he notices B following him, skips over stones and stumbles heavily through the quiet fall morning, always straight to the church.
"What are you doing?" B will say.
"Go back inside," L will say, standing before the heavy stone doors.
"It's ugly," B will say, or something like it.
And it is. Dark, wet moss grows on the sides and there are bugs and mice and dead and dying things inside. The stained-glass windows have all been smashed or removed, carted off to street fairs and flea markets; a corner of the Virgin Mary's face sold for a few pounds. The church was built by humanity and it's been left to decay by humanity. God has nothing to do with it. It's ugly.
"I like it," L will say.
"I like you," B will say, or sometimes, "I love you," if he's feeling comical and brave and half out of himself.
The wind will whistle like a nasal ghost through the old stones of the building and something will flap its broken wing somewhere far off. B will hear it, or think that he can.
"Go back inside," L will say again.
B will never listen.
He wakes slowly, not shifting sharply from a dreamscape to stark reality, but blinking lazily as one fades into the other. His childhood becomes the present, his tiny unpracticed limbs elongate into those of a grown man, and the old church down the path from Wammy's, lined by towering elms and visceral tethers of nostalgia, becomes the basement level of an abandoned warehouse two miles outside of London.
B sits up, feels as if his organs have liquified - a metaphorical ebola, beautiful in its ecstatic nausea - and breathes in the sick scent of late morning garbage.
He's been here for only a day, had snuck onto an L.A. to London flight the night before, then stole a cab while the driver was having a smoke break. He'd driven it to the edge of town, found a rat-infested building vacant of squatters, and set himself up in it like a hotel room. People are - can be - lovely, with their bones and teeth and hollow laughter, but they crowd things, make it loud and hard to think straight, send his thoughts running in uneven jumps like a arrhythmia of the heart, instead of the flat, still line of death.
He stands with several quick cracks of his spine, pulling on his shirt and picking up of the jar he'd knocked over in his sleep. Laudanum, undiluted, cheap for the common man and free for B's clever fingers and fast feet. And one of the only things that will put him to sleep properly. It's not that his mind is filled with horrors to keep him awake at night or anything in that maudlin vein - he's actually rather fond of horrors, as it goes - it's just how his body works. He doesn't need sleep.
But he wants it. His head gets crowded and he needs things to go dark and dreamy, to corral his thoughts back into their proper order and make everything clean agin.
The dream about the church is familiar, comforting in its way, even though it hadn't ever truly happened like that in waking life. B would follow L, sure, but never fast enough, and most days the chapel doors would already be closed behind L, and he'd have to chase him inside, through the pews and behind the tabernacle, an improvised game of hide-and-seek played within the moth-eaten curtains surrounding the smashed-in windows.
He had once tackled L into one of the stone walls, cracking his head solidly against the stone. The blood had gotten all over B's hands, dark and thick and slightly terrifying - because the idea of Lawliet dying had been the relative equivalent of a nuclear warhead decimating the city of B's mind, cutting his existence into the jagged, finger-pricking pieces it had been in before they'd met. He'd panicked. He'd been 9 and L had been 11 and they were both already trained in the basics of first-aid, but B's hands had shaken and his feet had stomped and he hadn't - he couldn't -
L had spoken slowly, given directions in his quiet, uninterested voice on how to staunch the bleeding, how to keep him awake. Neither of them had even thought to go back Wammy's, hadn't been found until Roger, noting the disappearance, had sent a groundskeeper out after them.
B had never apologized. The injury had struck him as deserved. L had never asked him to.
He packs up his meager supplies and moves out into the street. He assumes his cab must have been re-stolen by this point, so doesn't even bother checking for it. He ought to steal a car that people won't constantly be flagging down, besides.
There's a woman is in a bra and skirt standing on the next corner, shirt thrown over one arm, high heels clutched in the hand that doesn't hold a cigarette up to her smudge-red lips. She's not very pretty, but appealing in an indulgent way. B would fuck her if he was someone who knew how to indulge.
"Looking for something, love?" she calls to him. Leeds accent, low and smoke-harsh.
B smiles wide and far from charming. "Why yes," he says, turning to face her fully. There's a momentary flash of unease in her eyes, but in her line of work, you'll never get any business if you turn away every man who makes you a bit uncomfortable.
Her blood doesn't splatter the alley walls quite as nicely as he'd imagined it would, but there's still a catharsis to it. She doesn't put up as much of a fight as she could, almost as if she's resigned to it, and her chest cavity is warm and slightly enigmatic. He feels like a poor man's Jack the Ripper, killing prostitutes in London. Maybe he could stick around, make a game of it, but there's no investigator here that's clever enough to play with him properly.
He can't stay, anyway. He needs to catch the next train to Winchester.
Light is on him when he wakes up, face pressed into the crook of L's neck, warm breath puffing against his skin. L tries to shift, feels his head reel and realizes that his movement is impeded by more than just the body resting on top of him. The metal clanks and he feels the cuffs cutting into both of his wrists, feels the bandage soft on one, and resigns himself to the fact that his most successful escape attempt was not particularly successful.
Still, progress is progress.
But Light is asleep, half on him and quiet in the windowless dark, and it's one of those surreal moments where everything feels too fake and ridiculous to really be real, but then he breathes in and out and time continues lagging on and it becomes inarguable that reality just has more of a sense of humor than it's typically given credit for.
So he lies there in bed with Light, which has lately become more habitual than is healthily navigable, trying to catalog his circumstances into something that can be measured and understood. The current state of affairs can, perhaps, be summed up by the following:
(1) Light is Kira. (2) Light has become rather fond of him. (3) Light has kidnapped him.
What this all ultimately leads to is the assurance that, when he gets out, he will have more than enough evidence necessary to prosecute Light - if not to a court of law, then to the taskforce, at the very least. So then the question becomes, does he want to? Light has laid all of it out on the board, shown his hand, made the game too easy. Though, there are loose ends - how did he get Raye Penber's name, how did he find Naomi Misora, what connection could he possibly have to B?
The last question strikes L dully, uncomfortably. He tries not to think of Beyond if he can help it, occupies himself with things far away from Wammy's and their tragic little world therein, and doesn't particularly like to consider anything to do with his childhood - apart from Watari, of course, but then he has an almost unconscious tendency to mentally distance Watari's current role in his life from the Quillish Wammy of his youth. There are cruel truths wrapped up with the thoughts of Quillish Wammy, just as their are with B, and Roger. Even in Mello and Near he can see an unflattering reflection of his own upbringing, the unfortunate realties that shape people like him, like Beyond Birthday.
And maybe one of the most appealing things about Light is that he is so separate from all of that. Reality means nothing in the world of Kira, where people die from pen ink and ugly gods float at your shoulder. Light's plane of existence is a fantasy-scape, a dream kingdom that he's trying to build for himself, and even though it will all ultimately come to nothing - the way every brilliant attempt at this sort of social and governmental upheaval has - it is still mesmerizing in its chaotic precision.
The basic problem with Kira is not that he is a murderer. L is a murderer, too, if not necessarily a direct one, as are plenty of the greatest men and women documented in the history books. Humanity is a species of murderers. The problem with Light isn't even his ideals. In theory, they're really quite nice, but most things are nicer in theory than they are in practice, and the innate goodness of man that Light seems determined to seek out and drag bodily to the foreground is one of them. Kira's plan is brilliant in its conception, the only true problem with it being that it will never, ever work.
Criminals are not born, they are created, and man's inhumanity to man is not something that can be wiped out with a notebook and a lot of free time. The Old Testament God couldn't even manage it with a flood.
Light is peaceful in sleep, the mask firmly on even now, and L wonders if he dreams in doubts, if any part of that pretty head is filled with uncertainty over his decisions. If he can see the ruination of his budding new empire that's so clear to L even in waking life.
Perhaps he dreams mundane things, extracts from the normal life he's denied himself. A house in the suburbs, a good job, a pretty wife who can throw dinner parties and smile wide. Maybe a child. Maybe two. All the things that people like L aren't and never were going to have, the things that people like Light are born right into. That's all gone now. He's sabotaged his comfort to make way for meaning, a quiet revolution in his childhood bedroom. He's changed the rules for himself.
L admires him as much as he envies him, and condescends to him even more still. Light doesn't yet understand the gravity of his sacrifice because he hasn't realized that he's given it all away for nothing. There is no kingdom for the righteous at the end of the road, not on earth, and not for people who do what Light's done. Not for people like L.
L can't tell the time from where he is, but it must be morning or close to it, because Light's internal clock is rigorous and he's shifting awake now. He rolls off of L slightly, then rolls back, touching hid bare arms, breathing into his neck, the warmth from his skin an apparent draw in Light's barely conscious state. It's only then that L fully registers that he's clothed again, back in his white shirt and jeans and - he reaches down to check - underwear, too. They smell like an unfamiliar fabric softener. The movement wakes Light a little further and he sits up, yawning. He's sleep-soft and tempting and L would rather like to fuck him and maybe would if this weren't a hostage situation and he wasn't miffed about that fact.
"Morning," Light tells him, soft smile altering the air in the room.
L doesn't hold back his eye-roll. He sits up, surprised when his arms move and keep moving, unimpeded in stretching to their full length. He looks down at the cuffs. They're different.
"This is my chain," he says dully, not looking back up at Light. There's a bit of plaster around his wrist, presumably cleaned and bandaged meticulously, because Light is like that.
He shifts lazily, reaching over to trace the metal with his fingers, sliding along the bones of L's hand. "It's just as much mine," he says, so casually that L feels half-transplanted by it, into a world where all they need to do is drink coffee and read the paper and exist near one another. "I must have earned partial ownership given the amount of time I spent voluntarily imprisoned by it."
Light's smile is a transforming thing. L blinks at it, feels uneasy, like he should be running and hiding and fighting. He's tired, though, and doesn't remember the last time he ate.
"You went back to headquarters," he says.
"Obviously," Light returns, standing from the bed and picking up his watch from the side-table. "It'd be slightly suspicious if I disappeared at the same time that you did, wouldn't it?" There's a niftily little spark in his eyes that L doesn't like, reeking of ardent superiority. "The Kira investigation has been a bit on hold in order to make time for the search for you, or your body." He looks in the mirror, a recent addition the the otherwise bare walls, and begins sorting out his hair. "Given that the only people who know what you look like are on the investigation team and that Watari has forbidden us from describing your appearance, it's not going particularly well."
"Watari's alive?" L asks. He hadn't liked to think about it, but Kira's track record had suggested that he wouldn't be.
"Everyone's alive," Light says.
L assumes that he's referring to the investigation team and not, say, everyone on the entire planet. He knows this not just from basic logical reasoning but because Light has brought in the paper the last few times he's been to visit - hasn't seemed to have any qualms with letting L know the date or time; three days since his imprisonment, last L had checked, probably four now. Kira's back and more committed to the cause than ever, is seems. Light has to have Misa doing at least half, if not most, of the judgements, given the amount of time he's been with L over the past few days. Close and crowding, on him and touching him, unceasingly - not even particularly sexually, just touching. Skin contact. He's even tried to hold his hand a few times, although L had promptly shaken him off in turn.
It should be hard for L to rationalize the darling lover boy in here with the exacting killer making the headlines out there, but it's not. Not really. L has had months to get used to the unsettling disconnect between Light's various masks.
He's playing a part now as he gets dressed, acting as if this situation is the pinnacle of normalcy, using his school-boy tenor instead of his true voice. "If someone isn't a criminal and doesn't pose a clear and present danger to Kira's reign," he says, straightening his collar, "then it wouldn't be right for me to kill them."
L snorts, watches the shifting lines of Light's body.
"I posed a danger," he says. It's an opposite situation, but a relevant one nonetheless. "I still do."
Light looks over his shoulder at him. "That's cute that you think so."
L stands so quickly that the chain makes a clanging, cacophonous noise. He feels an expression trying to twist its way onto his face - nostrils flaring, teeth gritting - and shoves it down.
"Oh, am I cute?" he says, voice a thin ring of disdain. "Am I your pet detective now? Feed me cake and pat my head when I'm good, asphyxiate me when I'm bad." He shakes his arm, causing another orchestra of clinking noise. "Are we going to live happily ever after like this?"
Light watches him with wide, almost shocked eyes, as if an outburst of disapproval from his captive is something he had never in a million years foreseen. He almost seems to be under the impression that L will just go along with this, will just fade into him, overtaken by love or something ridiculous in that vein.
He opens his mouth, but doesn't speak. The grey of the lowlight in the room paints him in long shadows, making him seem tall and grim and fantastical. He's still such a beautiful thing.
L shakes his head. "You're so deluded," he says. "It's actually kind of striking. If I were a starving artist I'd probably make you my muse." He lifts a hand, using his expanded freedom of movement to scratch at his head. He doesn't know what to do, to say. The game has gone to a standstill and he doesn't know what pieces to play now that the board is gone. He gets quieter, more sober; looks down at his hands, then back up. "You're going to lose, Light. You're going to lose and it's because of this. Me."
Light still doesn't speak and L is starting to realize that it's on purpose, that he's leaving L alone to flounder with his own words, to try to make sense of his own convictions. L breathes the other things he wants to say out in a heavy breath, expelling the sentiments without giving them voice. He's so tired.
Light steps forward. His shirt is wrinkled and he has bed-head and sleepy, adoring eyes, and when he cups L's jaw it feels like what Adam touching God must have felt like, except much dirtier.
"If you were really so clever, you would have killed me," L breathes against Light's skin when he's pulled close, letting himself fade into the warmth. He's tired. All he does is sleep now, but he's still so tired.
"Clever isn't everything," Light says into his hair.
"Oh, isn't it?"
Light skates his hands down L's back, sort of clutching him, and it's slightly shameful how enjoyable it is. Light has become a comforting thing to him and, at some point, L has become a thing in need of comfort. It ignites in his mind and, quite suddenly, everything becomes a panic and he's twisting out of Light's reach. The chain jangles from where it's hooked onto the best post, and if Light wanted, he could chase L, corner him against the bed and do that whole violent, overbearing sex thing that he's so fond of.
He doesn't, just stands there, hands at his sides, looking at L. There's a curious import to Light's eyes now that Kira's at the helm, a strange sense of appraisal in his every glance. Justice is meant to be blind, but half of Kira's power lies in faces. A person without eyesight surely couldn't do any damage with the Death Note, even if the rules were in brail.
"There's more to it," Light says. He's not following a proper line of conversation as such, but L still knows what he means.
L looks at him steadily, resolves not to argue this because it's circular and always will be, and any agreements that they can come up with will be tentative at best, fading into nothing as soon as L escapes and the game is back on. This is war and Light is insisting on a recess and L is mixing his metaphors and, really, there are no good choices to be made here and he can't, he can't -
"Tell me there's not," Light says, stepping forward, voice even. "Go ahead, perform. That's what you do, isn't it?" He looks at L expectantly. "Make a moving speech about justice, lay out all of your ugly parts. I'm waiting." He rounds on L without really moving, presence fanning out and taking up too much space. "Tell me all the ways in which it's very simple, how much you're not in love with me."
He lays it out almost like a business proposal, an offer on the table. Like L's answer even matters. The curious thing about Light is that he sounds very sane sometimes, even when the substance of what he's communicating is anything but. There's a sobering, trustworthy card he likes to play and he's laying it down hard now.
L looks away. "I'm hungry," he says, watching the cuffs slide around his wrists.
Light stops, looks as if he's going to say something weighty and imploring, but changes tactics at the last second, shaking his head. "I can't stand you, you know," he says, leaning forward to plant a kiss on L's temple. It's chaste and quick and shiver-warm.
"I thought you loved me," L says dully, leaning back onto the bed.
Light follows him, pressing close, overtaking. L's senses thrill with the feel of lithe teenage boy and his insides twist tighter. He's getting hard, and from the twitch of Light's lips against his neck, he's realized.
"It's interesting, isn't it? How that works," he says, pressing his lips to L's chin, his jaw. His hands slide along his hips, tickle his rib cage and sides. "I feel things for you that cannot possibly exist," Light murmurs, rocking his hips softly against L's. "Human behavior makes so much more sense now."
L almost laughs at that, hair tickling his ears. Light feels unbearably nice against him. "And yet how to navigate it is still a mystery to you."
"Not one that I need to solve," Light says. "I don't need to be a person."
L rolls his eyes, slipping his foot up the back of one of Light's calves. "Ah, yes, I forgot. You're God."
"I am justice," Light tells him, head buried against L's neck, "I am salvation." He's predictably very turned on by this and the rate of his thrusts speeds up, pressed tight against the crook of L's hip. "I am truth and - "
"What is this, one of those door-to-door church spiels?" L says, hand running down Light's back. It feels excellent, of course, but that doesn't obscure the fact that this is all more than a little ridiculous. "Are you going to give me a pamphlet, too?"
Light grunts, glaring up at him. The hint of hormonal embarrassment in his face, which he quickly quashes and replaces with vague distain, almost makes this whole kidnapping thing worth it. L sits up, shifting Light, who by now is more or less in his lap.
"If you let me have a shower," he says almost lazily, feeling a hint of power returning, "I'll jerk you off." He keeps his voice low, tempting, cheek pressed to the side of Light's jaw, breath whispering across his ear. Light shivers, makes a noise that sounds suspiciously desperate and, apparently realizing this, stands abruptly and roughly unlocks L from the bedpost, wrapping the other end of the chain around his hand and leading L off to the bathroom the way one would lead a pet.
The shower is nowhere as nice as it had been at the investigation headquarters and the both of them barely fit, skin pressed to wet skin, but it prompts something like a return to the strange normalcy that they'd existed in for the last few months, a war ruled more by domestic grievances than murderous ones. If L were a good prisoner, he's sure he'd fight Light, wouldn't want to touch him or kiss him or fuck him, but part of L - beyond the intellect, the measured cruelty - is this lank, pale body and it wants, demands things from everyone who gets close enough.
His hands snake around Light's cock, teasing him, making his gasp and shove and mutter death threats under his labored breath. It's a heady, powerful feeling and he milks it for all it's worth, turning Light into a soft, golden puddle, making him writhe his hips prettily.
He breathes warms spots on Light's neck, holds him up when he comes, legs going weak and shaky; still a helpless little boy, even now.
"L," Light sighs, head falling back onto the cool tile.
He's late for work.
The honeymoon period comes to a sudden end.
Light is taking the train back from headquarters to his and Misa's new apartment - partly to appease her, mostly just to pick up some clothes to take back to L's - after a determined but fruitless day of searching for their lost leader. He'd done a fair bit of staring off into the distance, apparently wallowing in the agony of a lost friend, while in actuality mostly just thinking about the lean curves of L's thighs, the lines of his back. Fucking him on and against various household objects.
If it were anyone else, it'd be slightly pathetic. As it is, it's just glorious, a torrent made out of beautiful things.
A man has thrown himself in front of one of the trains - not an unheard of occurrence in Tokyo - and although no one else was hurt, it causes quite a hold up at the station. Light thinks about walking the rest of the way, but he stops when he sees the screen, news headline flashing across in vibrant type: 12-year old boy found murdered, raped in Shibuya. Suspect in custody.
A photo of a balding, waxy man with an uneven beard and little round eyes appears on the screen, name written boldly below. Kaito Hidaka, age 44. Elementary school tutor. His identity is so blatant, so direct, it feels as if the media is purposefully giving it to Kira, saying, "Here, you can have the son of a bitch." They show the murdered boy's class photo. He's small for his age, like a frightened rabbit, wide black eyes staring up into the camera.
Light feels sick. His fingers twitch.
Before he can think about, he's ducking into the subway bathroom, pulling the pieces of the notebook out of his wallet that he's kept for safe keeping and scribbling Kaito Hidaka across one in thin, looping Kanji. The rage pours out of him, quick as it had blossomed, and then he just feels the thick ooze of power, a heady, cloying sensation. It's what justice tastes like, he knows. A little bit of the rot has been washed away and a glorious cleanliness seeps into him then.
He leans against the bathroom wall, smiling to himself. He gets a few odd looks, but nothing more, and when he comes out, he's coiffed and perfect again. He changes his course, doesn't bother with his own apartment but goes straight to L, picking up an evening newspaper along the way.
The first thing he does when he walks in the door, not even acknowledging Rem's presence, is toss the paper into L's lap. It smacks him in the chest and falls to his lap, unrolling to reveal the top story.
"12-year-old boy," Light says, going straight for the small hotplate he'd brought in the other day and heating up some water for his tea. "Raped and murdered. Corpse mutilated. Liver cut out." He cuts a sharp look at L over his shoulder. " I suppose you think that the man who did this should be allowed to go free?"
L looks down at the paper, then back at Light, very slowly. "On the contrary, I think he should pay for his crimes. Although, you can't be completely sure that the murderer is a man, but - "
"I can," Light says. "They caught him. I killed him."
"Ah," L says, mind apparently locking onto Light's point. He sets the newspaper down, curling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. "It must have been awfully fast, for them to have a court case this soon."
Light rolls his eyes. He doesn't have time for this. "There was no case. It just happened yesterday."
"Then how can you be sure that he was guilty? Because it was on the news?" L scoffs. He falls back against the headboard. He's always falling back at things in a big huff and Light wishes he'd cut it the fuck out.
"It was open and shut. The man was his tutor, he was obviously - "
"But you don't know, do you?" L says, sitting up again. "You have no idea of what you're doing." He laughs and it's not a kind laugh. "Here I was thinking that Kira was a brilliant mastermind, only to find that you're just some boy who throws a tantrum and scribbles away in his diary every time he's confronted with something troubling in the world."
His loathing for L then is thick and flaring, rising up like a disease. He hates him more than he hates Kaito Hidaka.
"Something troubling? A child was raped and murdered, you despicable bastard," Light snaps, feeling his lip curl. L might as well be a child rapist and murderer.
"And what have you done?" he says. He could stand, anyone else would in his position, but he stays curled up on the bed. "How have you helped anything? You didn't solve the case, you didn't even try. Who knows if you got the right man, but who cares, right? As long as someone's heart stops then close enough, I suppose." He shakes his head, looks at Light with wide eyes and it's not just posturing, is it? L really thinks these things. "You're not justice and you're certainly not a god. You're a senseless, violent, unbearably human little mess of a thing, tearing down everything in your path because you can."
What the fuck is wrong with L that he thinks these things?
"Oh, but you're a paragon of innocence and noble intentions, huh?" Light bites back, across the room and standing over L now. He's always standing over L these days. "At least I'm trying to do good. You're just trying to amuse yourself, maybe get a good fuck or two in the bargain." He breathes the words onto L's face, watches them slip in around his eyes, between his lips and down his throat. "You're pathetic. Do you think I haven't realized? Do you think I don't see you for what you are?"
He doesn't notice when he puts his hand on L's chest but he does notice when it's shoved off. He moves it back, fingers grappling with the material of his shirt, pressing down hard. He can feel L's body heat against his palm, the steady twitch of his heartbeat. There is blood in him, pulsing under his skin. Light could open in the right vein and it would all just come pouring out, like a leak in a boat. He could drown him in it. He could drown them both.
L stops, tilts his head to the side. "If I fight, will you rape me?" he asks lowly. It sounds like nothing but distant curiosity.
Light pauses, imagines the scene playing out, imagines pinning L to the bed the way he so likes to pin L to beds. Imagines truly hurting him, making him bleed, killing him and mutilating the body. Removing his liver.
His had drops quickly away from L's chest.
"You'd like that, I suppose," he says, disgust apparent in his voice. "You can suffer and fight and play the martyr card, and still get what you want in the end. This is what you want, isn't it?" He leans in, close so L can feel him there and understand that he is something to be afraid of. "Sometimes I want to pretend the only thing that's ever happened to me is you," Light whispers, just cruelly enough to be a tease. "Do you want to know what I think?"
"Not really," L murmurs, voice unsteady, "no." His eyes are bulging wide, but he doesn't look afraid so much as he does curious, waiting with bated breath, as if Light is just a show being performed for nothing but his amusement.
It makes him angry, make his fingers twitch dully.
"I think you were telling the truth," he says. "When you said it to me, when you say it to anyone. You're so disgusted with yourself, with all the things you've done, all the people you've let inside, that you want to erase it all. With every case you try to become someone new. You shuck off your old skin, dirty and blemished and used, and play it like it's first love, the first touch." He twists the words up on his tongue, making them sharp enough to pierce skin. "You're reborn with every crime you stop, every suspect you pinpoint. You solve cases not to absolve your sins, but to try to hide from them."
This is the point at which, on any other day during any other fight, Light would simply pin him to the bed. He can't quite make himself do it. The face of the 12-year-old boy who's name he can't remember is staring back at him from behind his eyes and it aches in ways that he knows that L can't understand. L doesn't care about that boy. L doesn't care about anything.
"But the eye of justice cannot be blinded," Light says, staring stonily down at L. "I see you for what you are and I hold you in judgement."
He waits for a moment for L to say something, to apologize, to admit to Light's point, to tell him pretty, redeeming things about the places he's been and the people he's saved and the crimes he's solved. Good things, true things.
"There are no true things about me, Light-kun."
L doesn't speak and after a moment more, Light goes, door falling dully shut behind him.
London is a shithole, as it turns out.
Mello's boots are dirty and his hair hasn't been washed in four days and he smells like a pub toilet. Food is cheap and sold on every corner - from coffee shops and market stalls and fast-talking men with thick accents who call out orders - but one can only live off of curry and hot cocoa for so long, and room and board are harder to come by. It snows too often and everyone walks too fast and knocks his shoulders and he's very tired and he misses L.
He hasn't seen L in over two years and hadn't expected to see him anytime soon, but dead people are so much easier to miss and the sense of loss has more shape to it by this point than his ambition. If L is alive, then he has no idea how to find him, and if he's not -
Then Mello has no idea how to anything.
L isn't like a brother to him, or a father, or anything stupid and kitschy like that, but he is something, a nameless force that exists to be aspired to. A thin smile and unimpressed eyes and a voice that talks in words that Mello wants nothing more than to understand.
Almost cruel, in his way, but then you don't speak ill of the dead, and you don't speak ill of L anyway. He's L.
Mello spends all of his time with that in mind, which is probably why he keeps seeing a thin shadow with a mess of black hair skirting around at the edges of his vision, following him on soundless footsteps. The shadow smiles sometimes, even though it should be too dark to make out its teeth.
He coughs, pulls his coat tighter. London is a shithole.
tbc.
end notes: Christ, there were a lot of different POVs in this chapter, eh? People in reviews keep telling me Light is likable in this and I agree, but I don't know how it happened. Anyway, things to look forward to/fear in the next chapter: there is going to be Mikami. He's completely unnecessary to the plot at this point, I just… like him. I have a feeling I'm not doing author's notes right? This reads like free-form poetry more than anything else.
But still, thank you all so much. Your support means a whole lot.