warnings: explicit light/misa sex, vague light/somebody else, scenes that are far too long, not enough L, general eh-ness.
notes: hello friends and romans and countrymen! there's sex for a pairing in this chapter that i'm sure quite a lot of you don't like, and i'm minimally sorry for that (because this is supposed to be an l/light fic, but has turned more into a 'jaye writes about all the characters she likes, aka everybody' fic, and i apologize for that.) that said, the events of this chapter are necessary for both plot and emotional development, it was a scene i enjoyed writing, and it is a ship i am awfully fond of, in a weird 'god this is so fucked i love it' kind of way. so i'm sorry if you don't enjoy the content, i'm sorry (as always) if the writing is bad, and i'm very very sorry that things are moving so slow.
thank you for reading!
chapter nineteen - humans.
"I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars."
- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
He takes off his tie and jacket and stands in the middle of the room. The first time he'd sex with L it had been slow, too, and sort of uneventful from a certain standpoint, despite the sweat on his palms and the whirring in his head. He does not want to fuck Misa, but he's been put into the position where - in order to keep her fully under his thumb - it has to be done. She has to be done. Heh. That's probably in bad taste. It's certainly a bad joke. It's something that L would say when drunk, or else in that particular mood where the stars roll in his eyes and he can laugh loudly.
Misa sits on the bed, unbuckling the long line of attachments on her shoes - all bells and whistles and needless glitz - and then moving up to the clips on her stockings. She doesn't perform the action with any particular sexual intent evident, but moves rather perfunctorily, as if it had slipped her mind what they're here for.
When she's done that, she stands, shrugging off her lacy little sweater and then looking up at him expectantly. The thing about her is that she is, for all other failings, very beautiful. The big eyes and the bow lips and the smooth lines and soft curves, every man's highest ideal, and tiny, doll-like. He only wishes that he could put her on a shelf.
"How many people did you judge today?" he asks her, slowly unbuttoning his shirt. He's not stalling. He's just curious.
There are already boxes scattered around the apartment, half-packed with her belongings and ready to be moved in the next few days. She's already purchased another apartment - far enough as not to be suspicious, but not much more distanced than that. She's still paying for this one. If he let her, she'd buy his clothes and go grocery shopping for him, too, but he's already got one mother, thanks, and she's not half so likely to go on melodramatic, rejection-fueled killing sprees. Probably. Light hasn't really been keeping up with his family of late.
He's got more important things to worry about.
"Twenty-six," she says, something peppy and uncaring lighting up her voice, "if you count the ones that were scheduled for today, too. If not, then twenty-four, which - "
"Isn't enough," Light finishes.
Misa crosses her arms, doing her usual petulant pout and tapping her feet with softer sounds than usual, lacking heels. She's barefoot. She's bare. "Light," she whines, annoyingly and annoyed.
There's just a fundamental incompatibility between them that's only aggravated by her insistence on love. As if it's just a thing that she can suggest and then have. As if it works like that. As if it works at all.
L is an outlier, an equation done wrong and something he cannot figure out, something that is not to be studied so much as experienced, and left at that. Anything more involves too many variables, too many unaccounted for, and twice as much blind scrambling as he has time for.
"This is important, Misa," he tells her, carefully folding his shirt over the edge of the chair. "We're saving the world. It's something that can't be done in half-measures."
"I'm trying as hard as I can," she tells him, folding her arms. "I have a job, too, you know."
"I know," Light says, sighing and stepping forward. He'll have to play it like this, he supposes, if he wants to come out of here at all unscathed. He cups her face, tipping up her chin like one would a little girl. She looks like a little girl. She looks younger than she is. Maybe that's why he's not at all attracted to her. "I know you're doing your best," he murmurs, leaning down so that his eyes are staring into her big, blue, color-contacted ones. He lightly kisses her cheek. "Do better."
And she's been rough edges and - and almost smart, for the past few days, almost a challenge, so he's not positive it's going to work, but it does. She melts under his hands, body curling into him like a faithful dog, desperate for any tiny bit of affection.
"Light," she whispers, warm feather-breath brushing softly against his collarbone. "Light, I love you so much."
"I know," he tells her, arms encircling.
"I can't stop, I can't help it."
"I know," he repeats.
He can feel her face pressed against him, the rapid-fire fluttering of her eyelashes, and then wet - water and salt and she's shaking a bit and it's very far from sexy, but still more appealing that any sort of romantic advances would have been. Maybe if he plays his cards right, he can manage to divert her into getting an early night.
But then she squirms a bit out of his arms so that she can look up at him directly and say, with a remarkable fierceness, "I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me like he fucks you."
Light's throat spams a little bit and he can't decide whether he wants to laugh or bury his face in his palm or a little of both. In reality he just frowns and, before he can stop himself, says, "What makes you think I don't fuck him? I definitely fuck him."
Misa rolls her eyes, wiping at her tears. "Whatever," she says, somewhat exhaustedly. "I don't care. Do you think I care? I don't care."
"I actually think you care an extremely disproportionate amount about what I do with my body and with whom, given how little I care about yours in return." He dusts at his wrists, standing there shirtless and expectant and feeling far less naked than he expected he would. "Now, are we going to do this or not?"
Misa shivers a little in front of him, small shoulders huddled together, and then wipes at her eyes and nods. "Get on the bed. Lie down on your back." Unzipping the back of her dress, she tells him, matter of factly, "I'm going to be on top."
Light snorts. "If you want to go dominatrix on me, maybe you should put the boots back on."
"Don't be silly," she says, rolling her eyes and suddenly perfectly chipper, despite the tears still wet in her eyes. "I actually have subtlety, not to mention class. Now, take you pants off."
Light takes a few moments debating whether or not to humor her, and ultimately comes down in favor of it being the best course of action. Taking the lead here could possibly insinuate - to her very uneven mind - that he actually wants her, which would no doubt reignite her buzzing romanticism and do much more harm than good. Her current feelings are preferable, even thought they're more volatile. After all, he'd rather have her playing her impotent revenge game with him than planning their wedding, although it's hard to really tell which she's going to do, moment to moment.
He settles back onto the bed, making himself look more comfortable than he feels and dragging down the zip of his pants with a calm disinterest that he hopes she takes note of. He hopes it hurts. He's never really cared to hurt or not hurt her before, but there's a peculiar pleasure from turning this around on her. She's grappling for power and he won't let her have it. He won't let her have him. She can fuck him and she can bargain and she can use those eyes of hers to get most things, but it's hollow and it's dirty and it's wrong.
Trading sex for favors is immoral and Misa Amane is not and has never been a good person. Once he has his world, once he's gotten rid of Rem and the investigation team and everything that's standing between him and the gates to paradise - then she can die.
The thought is comforting and as she pulls her slip over her head and stands there in her frilly bra and panties, he's not half so uneasy as he'd been a moment ago.
She climbs onto the bed, barely shifting the mattress at all, and slips slowly up his body, not seeming so much nervous as she does concentrative, like she's studying him. She's probably got a log in her head, noting down every part of his body, every inch of his skin. She'll fantasize about it later, he knows she will.
After a moment, she tilts her head, hand going directly to his crotch.
Light's eyebrows rise and he barely manages not to wince. "What, no foreplay?"
"Did you want it?" she asks, somewhat dully, but before he can answer, she's leaning in and kissing him softly.
It occurs to him that he could pull her back by her hair and refuse - 'I said I'd have sex with you, that's all, that was the whole deal,' - but he's not quite that cruel and the no-kissing rule brings up the inevitable connotation of prostitution. Not that it's that far off. They're exchanging services, and this is his end of the bargain.
He doesn't particularly kiss back but he doesn't particularly not, and when she pulls away from his lips - cheeks slightly flushed and eyes blinking rapidly - he just smiles as smugly as he can manage. As if in rebellion, she slips her hand into his boxers, wrapping around his cock. He's not hard. He's just not. He isn't often sexually aroused by women, though, so it's nothing against her. She doesn't seem to take much offense, and after a pause of understanding, she pulls it up and out and begins stroking it roughly, stubbornly.
The stimulation eventually results in a natural bodily reaction and he starts growing hard. He can't really be blamed - her hands are soft and she does have a certain determination that's being put to good use and, anyway, this is the whole point. He wouldn't be able to fulfill his end of the deal, otherwise. He wouldn't be able to fill anything.
That's another joke L would make and then act like it had been more intelligent than it actually had, with a thin smile and a jolt of the skin where his eyebrows should be. Drunk or wild-eyed, or both.
L. He should think about L. It's funny, but he hadn't even thought to. It hadn't even occurred to him. It's like mixing business with pleasure - not that L should be classed as a pleasure so much as he should be a necessity, like food and water and starched shirts and tea in the mornings. L is integral; pleasures are not.
Misa is as far from either as possible and his mounting arousal - fully physical as it is - agitates him to the point where he can't quite stop himself from gritting his teeth and asking, "Do you really think this is going to make me love you?"
She trips up slightly, rhythm being thrown off, and then gives him a harder squeeze than is probably necessary. She grimaces, like mottled porcelain. "Why do you assume that's why I'm doing it?"
"That's why you do anything," he tells her. "Or is it a game? I know what you've been doing lately. I know why you wanted to do this. You're picking up on the rules and you're trying to to join in. It'd be cute maybe, if it wasn't such an inconvenience. As it is, you're not close to being on my level. Or L's."
Misa pauses for a moment and there's a tiny spark of hope in him that she's been scared off, that his words have cut deep enough to shake her resolve and get her off of him. He wants her off of him. It's not as if she's unattractive, really, and she's very clean and well taken care of and her skin looks smooth, but the whole situation reeks with an air of illicit that makes his skin crawl. This is like prostitution. He is prostituting himself to her, like he's L or something. Or else like she's L.
This is what it had felt like when he'd first gotten his memories back. As if he had been lending out his body for profit. Trading sex for trust and security and a whole mess of other things that he was also never given. At least this time around, with Misa, he's the one who'd made the decision. The him that had slept with L for the first time had not been the same him that is here now, that had woken up in that helicopter, sullied and confused and loathing utterly the man beside him.
He does not loathe Misa utterly. He doesn't even think he loathes her a little bit. Doing so would expend too much excess energy on something that already causes him enough trouble.
He dislikes Misa. He dislikes her hands on his body. He dislikes them even when her palm has stopped and she's looking down at the bare skin of his thighs with a crease in her brow. He can feel the pads of her fingers on his cock.
She glances up at him then and her eyes are rather glassy but he can't quite tell if she's aroused or about to cry. The most likely option is a mixture of both.
She says, "Did you know that when my parents were murdered I was hiding under the bed?"
Light stares at her. Light did not know that. Light does not know why she's telling him that now - if she expects it to elicit sympathy, she really doesn't know him as well as she should by now. "No," he says quietly, after a bit. "Now, are we going to - "
"They weren't killed in the same room as me or anything, but when I went out I saw the blood soaking into the carpet and the man carting out the TV. He took all of the electronics and all my mother's jewelry but that's it. He killed my parents for their DVD player. We never even used the stupid DVD player. My dad preferred VHS and my mom didn't like movies, and I didn't like anything except fashion magazines and the people who wanted to put me in them."
She trails the edges of her fingers again Light's cock as she speaks, apparently absent-mindedly, and he can't tell whether it's annoying or pleasurable. He feels something, though. It's a bodily reaction, but he feels it and he has to feel it because that's the deal he'd made, what he'd bargained for.
"I lived with my aunt after that. She didn't have a DVD player and nobody ever came to rob us."
Light grits his teeth. "That's good, Misa, but I don't see why you couldn't have told me all this at some other, more convenient time."
Her reactionary grin is not particularly pleasant. "It's not like you're ever around for long enough for me to speak to you."
"I have work to do," Light says, eyes rolling. He's still hard in her hand. "Important work. Cleansing the world of evil doesn't really come with vacation time."
Misa's smile melts back into a frown of concentration, but not fully, so that the expression wavers somewhere in-between, shifting from one end of the spectrum to the other without settling on any particular emotion. A few moments of this, and then Light can no longer watch her face at any clear angle, because she's leaning in to press her lips against his. Not roughly, but not particularly softly, either. She doesn't kiss anything like L, nor like Teru Mikami, nor like any of the other unremarkable girls of her ilk who'd come before her.
She smells like bubblegum lipgloss and he can feel it smudged across his mouth.
Pulling back, she lets her lips trail around his jaw to hover over his ear - and she's not half bad at this, must have a certain amount of experience - and says, "Aoi Nakahara." Light has no idea what or whom she's talking about for a moment, struggling too much with the sensation to properly consider whatever she's going on about now. But then - "You killed him," she continues. "He died of a heart attack. February 2nd, 2004. You wrote his name down." She slips her free hand, the one that isn't still groping him, into one of his. "You wrote it down with this hand and he died and you did that and you saved me. Do you understand, Light? You saved me."
He blinks. His throat is rough and he can't think of what words to say or how to say them, but for the first time in possibly all the time he's know Misa, he's enjoyed hearing something that she's said.
Nodding against her forehead, he says, "Yes."
"You're saving the world," Misa goes on.
"Yes."
"I'm helping you do it. Today I killed a woman from England named Mary Sims who drowned neighborhood children in her bathtub. I killed a man from India who ran a human trafficking ring. Arka Johal. And Toru Minami from Japan. And Edward Slaby and Samir Abadi and - "
She goes on. She keeps listing names and Light can stop himself, he likes it. They're dead. They were bad, they did wrong, they hurt other people and now they're dead and the world is just a little cleaner and it's because of him. It all rises in him like a tide and he can hardly breathe straight or think straight, barely notices when Misa slips the condom onto him and then climbs on, sinking down with not even a moment's pause in her list of names.
He wonders how she can remember them all. He remembers them all, of course, but he'd never expected the same from her. He's never expected much from her. He'd certainly never expected this.
She grabs his hair and he doesn't even mind and he still doesn't feel any particular attraction to her, but he feels his cock throbbing and his head rolling and when she moves her hips down he moves them up and it might not be pleasant, might not be how or where or with whom he wants to spend his evening, but if he closes his eyes and just listens to the names - blocking out everything else on and around him - he could almost be alone.
The way he likes to be.
Alone with the Death Note.
"Does it look like you?" L asks her, tilting his head to the side and eyeing Rem up and down with limpid, disinterested eyes.
She stares back for a long time, then glances to the right for a bit, as if giving proper consideration to the question. She looks back, making a sound that may be one of insult and might simply be a natural production of her inhuman throat, and says, "No. He is far more gauche than I am. He looks like a Medieval depiction of the devil. Only with more accessories."
L blinks. He doesn't know where she picked up the word gauche, since he doubts it's anywhere in her Misa's vocabulary - clever as she often proves herself to be, she doesn't seem one to particularly exert herself over excessive intellectual expansion.
Rem has a curious humanity to her, but it only becomes apparent in her relations to the world outside of herself, because her self-contained manner is so stark and difficult to contend with. The assumption would be that a mewling little mess like Misa Amane would drive her rather more out of her mind than not, and perhaps she does, but there is obviously more than enough affection present to balance the scale.
L stands slowly, measuring every shift and movement, and locking his eyes on the stretch of empty air where he assumes the second Shinigami to be. If he's wrong, he probably looks very silly right now, but he is usually not wrong.
"Your name is Ryuk, right?" he asks, tilting his head. There is, of course, no audible response, but just because he can't hear it, doesn't mean the creature can't hear him. Likely, it's heard him more times than he's been at all aware of. "Ryuk, Rem, there's a lot of R's here. Is that a death god naming convention or is this just happenstance?"
Rem looks between L and the empty air to which he's directing his inquiries, eye narrowing in annoyance. "He's laughing."
"Have I said something funny?"
Rem's stance shifts, even as she hovers in the air, and she looks even less eager to converse than usual. "He's always laughing," she says.
"Charming," L replies, although he does not particularly care either way - beyond the fundamental enticement of learning about a completely separate species, but that's not something he's got time for at the moment, or any moment in the near future. For now, all that interests him is how he can use this second Shinigami, and in order to gauge that sort of thing, he's going have to see him in the flesh. Or, whatever it is these things are made out of.
Stepping forward slightly, as far as the chain will let him go, he asks, "Would it be possible for me to speak to him myself?"
Rem looks inconvenienced by this whole conversation, but she answers anyway. "He'd have to touch you with his own Note, and he's not going to do that because he doesn't like to participate in Yagami's schemes. He prefers to watch."
"What a coincidence," L says, "so do I."
He wants to continue with more leading questions, but she doesn't let him advance that far, but rather floats doggedly over so that she's looming above him and blocking his view of the nothing in the air that had so caught his eye.
"What we should be talking about," Rem says, in that echoing drone of a voice that she's got, " is your utter lack of progress with Misa. You're supposed to making her love you. She does not love you."
"Oh, doesn't she?" L asks, feigning shock. "I was under the impression I had swept her off her feet in those whole two and a half minutes of contact. Well, this news really does set things back."
If it is possible for Rem to make expressions, she displays one of utter dissatisfaction now. "Are you trying to be humorous?"
"Not at all," L assures her, "but if I was this would be a very tough crowd. Unless Ryuk is still laughing?"
"Stop asking about Ryuk. You won't get anything from him. He doesn't work with Yagami and he doesn't work against him, and he won't do either for you. He has no stake in this fight. All he wants is a good show and if you and Yagami keep up your lover's spats, he'll have that in spades and have no need to go looking to change anything." Rem pauses, what might possibly be her ears perking up, and then she snaps over her shoulder, "Quiet down, he can't hear you, anyway. If you want to defend yourself, touch him with your Note. If not, then stay out of it."
She turns back to L and they both stay silent and still for a moment as he waits for something to happen. For just the slightest touch and then a vision, sudden and as real as possible, like it had been that first time with Rem.
There is nothing. If Ryuk, in his infinite mystery and amusement, does something, it's not to L and it's not at all evident. Rem's eyes stay flat and blank and she doesn't react as if anything's going on, but then that is no indication, as she seems to maintain the same expression no matter the situation.
Except when Misa's around. Then she softens.
"Well, that didn't work," L says, slumping back against the wall.
"Nothing seems to be working," Rem tells him, cat eye slitting smaller.
He closes his eyes, laying out the floor-plan of the building on some clean, unimpeded level of his brain, setting up all the pieces in their appropriate places. "Things aren't always what they seem."
"And that is you attempting to be enigmatic, is it not? Because you are running out of options and are no longer sure what to do and so all you can manage is to act vague and mysterious and impotently string your audience along, making believe that you have it all figured it out. But you don't."
L doesn't like the lack of inflection in her voice. It reminds him too much of his own. He's feeling more agitated with her than he ever has before, but then - then he realizes what she's doing. It should follow quite logically, shouldn't it? Being not from this world, she's picking up the surrounding behaviors most likely to benefit her. She's mirroring him.
He tilts his head to the side, and she isn't so obvious as to imitate the movement, just stares him down with uninvested distaste. She doesn't believe that he knows what he's doing and he's not sure whether or not she's got the right of it, but it's not the facts that matter so much as perception. He needs her to think that he's doing something. More-so than that, he needs to do something. He's needed to for a long time. If not something drastic, then simply enough to keep the ball rolling, the game going.
He tugs at his bottom lip with one crooked finger, then says, "Is Ryuk going to tell Light what you and I say here?"
Rem looks back to the blank space that she had addressed before. It looks like any other part of the room. Maybe it should hum with aching darkness or some other such rot, but the air is undisturbed by Ryuk's presence. It looks completely mundane. Or, as mundane as an abandoned office building that one is chained up in can possibly look.
"He says he won't tell Yagami a thing, on account of it being more interesting that way," Rem tells L. "It's up to you whether or not you'd like to take his word for it."
"I'll take yours for his," he says, even though she's evidently distrustful of Ryuk. It's far more convenient if they go by the assumption that he won't tell a soul, and if he does - well, they'll get on just fine. "Now, Rem, the question becomes how willing you'd be to deliver a message for me."
"I told you," she starts, the way he'd known she would, "I am not giving the investigation team any information that could lead them to Misa, no matter if you say you can protect her or not."
"It's not for the investigation team," L tells her, rolling his eyes.
"Quillish Wammy counts as - "
"It's not for Watari, either." L slides down the wall, back moving out of its slump and into an inward arch as his top vertebrae meet the cool tile of the wall. He closes his eyes. If he doesn't think too hard about avoiding them, images of Light and Misa pressed against each other play on the backs of his eyelids and he's not sure whether he's angry or turned on. Something slimly like jealously shifts inside him, but he doesn't give it a name and in that case it may as well not be there at all.
He may as well not be here at all. He thinks he could fade into the dull hum of the world in moments like this. He's talking to death and death is talking back and he may as well be dead himself for all the commotion he's causing these days. Before he was the loudest thing out there - second only to Kira, maybe, and only because he throws less tantrums - but everyone heard, even if they didn't know where the sound was coming from. Before L was a name common in the newspaper, the results of his work were everywhere, covering the headlines and being passed around as bored office gossip the morning after a big 9 o'clock news story.
Light has stripped him of importance, or else L has stripped himself, but it all comes down to the same principal. He has split himself open at the seams for a university freshman with a closet full of neat suits and nice IQ score.
It's laughable, but L doesn't laugh, he just sits curled on the floor.
Then he says, "I need you to tell Aiber something for me," letting his eyes fall back open and lock onto Rem.
Light's orgasm is more wrung out of him than not, and when it hits his body does several stuttering jerks before he spills into the condom. He feels immediately exhausted, worn down and unclean and strangely victimized, even though he is the one in control, he has the power and he could tear her apart with a word if he wanted to.
He wants to. He wants to make her hurt, make her look down at her pale hips and hate them and hate herself, hate him on her and her on him because he can feel it pulling at his skin, the disease and the loathing and he wants out of here, he wants out.
Rather more weakly than he intends, he shoves her off, rolling over so that his back is all she can see. Well, not, all. He pulls the sheet over his hips with a jerk of force, covering anything she might enjoy looking at out of defiance more than modesty. The fact that she feels she can cow him this far is disgraceful, but more on his behalf than her own. He's the one who's been giving her room to pull him around. He's been scattered and weakened and falsified.
As with all things of late, this is definitely L's fault.
Light breathes in, sitting up. Collecting and composing and getting himself in order. He says, "Get out," without turning around the face her.
She stares at him, and surely the line of his spine is beautiful, but that's no reason to disobey. He glances over his shoulder, restraining the venom only because it's more impractical than not, and at this point his single goal is for her to be gone.
"Misa," he starts, his tone that of a chiding parent.
She's still and quiet and completely bare naked, smooth waist and soft thighs and everything cleaned and crisp and perfect the way any man is supposed to want. But he is not any man and he does not settle for the simple pleasures of the masses. Pleasure is not his aim here. If it was, he'd have achieved his goal long ago. At this point, with the grinding discomfort of his life at the moment, his new world couldn't be farther from bringing such to him, but that is what he has signed up for. Sacrifice, martyrdom, and - eventually - peace. One day he will have his world, one day things will be right.
That day, however, is not today, and Misa Amane in his bed is not right.
He does sharpen his expression then, and that gets a reaction. She stiffens, crossing her arms across her chest. "I have to pack some things," she says softly, "so that it doesn't look suspicious. Me being here this late."
"Fine," Light says, "then go do that. Then go."
She purses her lips, brows thickening as if she wants to say something else, but he waits and it doesn't come. Softly, she stands, retaining some sense of modesty and dressing quickly. Good. It will be such a relief to not have her flouncing around the place in her underwear and begging for attention like some kind of neglected puppy. Maybe for once he'll be able to get a decent night's sleep in his own bed. Maybe tonight.
He lies back down and closes his eyes, imagining rain, imagining a snowstorm, imagining walking slowly through chill air by himself - or with L there, there really isn't any distinction - and the slow warmth radiating despite the weather. He twitches and knows that it's only his bed-covers and, in an actual storm of such magnitude, there would be no such comfort. He does not like storms. He does not like L. And yet, he dreams.
Or he would dream, but he can hear Misa rattling around the apartment, gathering easily moveable things. There's still mountains of her belongings here that she'll need to have professionally moved, but for now, he's content with only getting rid of the bare minimum, if it will get rid of her.
Finally, after what feels like far too long, the door clicks open and shut and her shoes tap on the wood floors and out into the hallway and then he is alone. Finally, peacefully alone.
He closes his eyes. He can see the storm again, but only barely, and from here it seems sort of comical, and cliched in a way that he despises. L wet with the rain and laughing in a way Light has never seen him laugh. Light does not care about laughter. It's frivolous. He doesn't care about much.
Blinking his eyes open, he sits up. He feels dirty, degraded. He should shower. He should wash her off of him.
Instead of getting a towel, he picks his clothes up from the floor and puts them back on. Instead of going for the bathroom, he heads to the door. He does not want to sleep alone.
He stands at the corner, pretending to smoke a cigarette and watching the apartment complex. He's lucky that Yagami doesn't live in too upscale a neighborhood, or else he'd look highly suspicious at the moment. As it is, it's only a vague middle class - probably chosen for its nondescript location. Maybe Yagami thinks if the rent's low enough, he can pay it even if he gets rid of Amane. And he is getting rid of Amane.
Her clothes are mussed and her hair is back in a ponytail and Aiber's never before seen her look so unstudied. She's dragging a roller bag behind her, a couple of purses over her shoulders. He thinks about approaching her, about switching his game plan around, but that hadn't been in the cards and he's not quite sure how to go about it. It doesn't matter much, anyway, as she's called a taxi, and climbs in the moment it arrives, designer bags and all.
His cigarette burns down without him ever taking a puff and he stubs it out on the side of a building rather than the conveniently provided ashtray. This city is too clean. It's unnerving. And, like Yagami, like most clean things, that's a sure sign that there's more going on under the surface. Dirty, dirty underbellies.
Aiber doesn't know what he's waiting for. Watari had said not to come, had said he has other operatives to do this sort of thing, but Aiber doesn't see any of them around now. He doesn't see much. Except, then - is that?
Oh. Oh.
This is just his mighty fine luck - and his luck has never been mighty fine before.
Yagami is shuffling down the street, posture tucked in and an overlarge coat wrapping him up, almost like a disguise. It takes Aiber a moment to see him in it, but the hair-color is striking enough and it's quite difficult to mistake Light for anyone else. He is absent, however, of his usual strutting assertion. Typically, he is the type of person that attracts the eye of anyone he passes, but his presence now is pointedly detracting. He doesn't want to be seen.
Aiber considers it his good fortune - mighty fine, even - to have caught him at a time like this. He's heading towards what must be the train station, still in operation as it's not too late into the night yet, but it won't be for long. Wherever Yagami's going, he evidently doesn't intend to come back. Which can mean only one of a very limited pool of possibilities.
The option at the forefront of Aiber's mind, however, is -
He stops. Yagami has stopped. He's tensed up, looking around, eyebrows drawn down as if he's listening, and no - no he can't have heard him. Aiber's no professional at this, but he's not an amateur either, and Light is hardly a criminal mastermind, Kira or not. He doesn't have the training, and he's far too self-assured to doubt his security, but he knows. He's changed direction, turning left down an alley, away from the station. Wherever he'd been going before, he's not headed there now.
Aiber could wait around and hope he changes his mind, but that's not likely going to happen, and he doesn't have all night. He's got a new bottle of port waiting at his hotel room and a very pretty Taiwanese woman who'd given him her number at a bar in Harajuku. Playing Tom and Jerry until dawn is a waste of time.
There's nothing for it. He shoves his lighter in his pocket and approaches.
"Hey, Yagami," he hears, the badly pronounced Japanese following him down the sidewalk, "isn't it a bit past your bedtime?"
Eyes rolling on instinct, Light flattens his expression before he turns around, squaring his shoulders as if in preparation for battle. In truth, he's just exhausted, and he wants Aiber to fuck straight off as soon as possible so he can go to the building in Ikebukuro and sleep. He doesn't care that there's no bed. He will sleep on the floor. It's good for your back.
"Aiber-san," he greets, polite as ever but obviously displeased. "I didn't know you were staying in this part of town." He's not, of course. He's spying on Light. He's tracking him, no doubt because the taskforce has stopped and now he's got to do the dirty work himself.
At his shoulder, Ryuk grins. His presence is a bit of an annoyance, but on the other hand, if he hadn't grown bored of watching over L and flown back, Light never would have realized that he was being followed. Shinigami do have a few uses, after all.
"Yeah," Aiber says, jovially. "It's a very small world." He looks Light up and down. "You look terrible."
"Excuse me?" Light's jaw grits. He'd like to punch Aiber in the face for more than a few reasons, but he holds himself back. He'll find out his name sooner or later. He just needs to get him and Misa in the same place. Death is much permanent than a few facial bruises, and ultimately much more satisfying besides.
"Stress, isn't it?" Aiber continues, as if there had been no break in-between. Reaching out, he jerks Light's wrist forward with surprising force, the clumsy bulk of his fingers branding in against his skin disgustingly. "Any wrist pain? You'll probably get carpal tunnel if you keep it up the way you're going."
Light grits his jaw. "Are you insinuating what I think you're insinuating?"
"Well, no, not excessive masturbation, although I hear it has similar physical effects." Aiber smiles wide-set and utterly inorganically and Light would very much like to rip him apart.
He wrenches his hand back, lip curling with disgust. "Cute," he says.
Aiber's got dimples around his mouth; they twitch with his chuckle. "People are always telling me so." Dusting off his palms, he moves as if he might walk off, but then circles back around so that it becomes clear that he's just pacing to clear his head, and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. "I've been watching a lot of television lately. News stations, you know - everything else you've got playing in this country of yours in utterly indecipherable to my sensibilities - and well, nowadays, most all of them have got body counters. Down at the bottom of the screen, where they show the time and the temperature and all that. There's a little 'death toll' section. Kira's big tally, you know? And I'm sure it's not half of the actual number, especially since the media only counts heart attacks."
"I've seen it," Light says stolidly, letting nothing show on his face. Next to him, Ryuk is scratching at his chin, empty grin near matching Aiber's.
"Hey, how come I didn't know there was a counter, Light? That's so cool!"
Light ignores him, not pointedly so much out of self-preservation.
"You must be proud," Aiber says.
He is proud. He knows he is. He can't feel it quite right now - too tired, too run into the ground, too many things going on and in and around him - but he is proud. His world is being made and these are only the first steps. Right now, though, he wants to sleep. He doesn't have the energy for this conversation, and no desire at all to converse with Aiber in general.
"Not here," he says, voice hushed and stringent. "You want to throw around accusations at work, where the Kira case is my job and something I have to focus my energy on? Fine. It's your right to speak up for what you think, and even though I have no respect at all for you, I respect the basic human liberty of expressing what you believe in. But you come to my neighborhood and you track me down simply to harass me with unfounded accusations? That is not alright. I know why you're here. I know where your hotel is and you're halfway across the city from it. I know what you want, but you're not getting it. So, please," he says, with an earnest determination that rises up him as easily as if it were honestly there, "get the hell away from me."
Gritting his teeth, Aiber moves in closer, crowding him against the wall of a nearby building - Ryuk watching on as if it's a football match - and Light lets him because anything else would be too much action for him to properly assert the claim of victim in this scenario - should he need to tell his father about it.
"You don't know what I want. You don't have any idea in that pretty little head of yours of what I want." He stands tall, speaking with a self-assertion that, while suggested, has never been fully present up until this point.
Light doesn't like it. He'd prefer him to go back to being a joke.
Clearing his throat, he squares his shoulders and, meeting Aiber's eyes, says, "I don't know where he is."
Because yes, of course he knows what he wants. Of course he wants the one thing least likely to be wanted, that which falls by definition into the class of unwanted, despite being highly in demand all across the world. There's a great different between L the detective and L the man, even if they're literally the same in name. Who names their kid L, anyway? What fucking parent has a child and decides, oh yes, the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet, that's how I want my son to be known.
He wonders if Aiber knows his real name. If the word 'Lawliet' would mean anything at all to him, or just fall completely flat. He almost wants to try it out, but - in the unlikely event that Aiber actually knows what he means - that spells trouble. Because Light shouldn't know. Light wouldn't know, unless he can swing it as L having told him, but that's a long-shot and, even if the rest of the team would buy that, Aiber never would. And rightfully so. L would never tell.
Aiber leans over him, broad shoulders hanging across like a shade against the street lamps and city lights that shine dim in this part of town. He rolls his eyes.
"Of course you do, Light," he says, addressing him by his given name for maybe the first time ever. His toned has lightened, however, almost dangerously, and he slides a smile around his lips like something he's tasting for the first time. "You know where he is and you know what's going on and yes, you are Kira. I know these things. If is not a word that's going to factor into this conversation."
He pops his eyebrows, almost theatrical in movement.
"And what are some words that are going to factor into this conversation?" Light asks, stolidly, not letting on anymore than the bare necessities of expression.
"Oh," Aiber says, sprawling himself out across the late night sky, "I thought I'd talk about L's legs and his knees and you know, his cock, and see how it went from there." He winks like an underpaid restaurant host and Light can barely hold back his hands from balling into fists.
"You're disgustingly uncouth," he grits.
"You kill people with a journal, so if we're going to be spouting names at each other - "
Light seethes and he does it visibly because, in this situation, nothing less would be realistic. "You can't base your argument on ridiculous, unsubstantiated allegations that you came up with to -"
Aiber laughs. "Who's arguing? I'm just trying to have a conversation."
"Well, you're not very good at it. Personal space, for one thing," Light says, stretching out and arm to gesture Aiber back, "is something that's usually allotted." His efforts are not very successful.
"Hmm," Aiber says, not letting up for a moment, and in fact simply moving in closer, bending Light's elbow with the force of his weight and crowding him with skin-crawling proximity. "We must be used to very different kinds of conversation." His voice has gone low and no - no - but yes, and ugh.
If Light had any faith left in humanity at all, he might be able to convince himself that Aiber is not, in fact, attempting to seduce him on a public sidewalk two blocks from his apartment and on no ground except those of bewilderment and distraction. But the low voice and the heavy eyes spell the answer clearly, and his smile quirks with a self-satisfactions that speaks in ledgers and volumes about how much he's doing this just to get under Light's skin.
His hips angle forward and for some reason Misa's pale, naked body flashes through his head and no, not again, he's not doing this again. He is not letting them and their dirty hands paw and grasp at him. He is not a shiny object fit for the consumption of the most tenacious and he is not going to let this man fucking touch him.
"Get off, you son of a bitch," he spits, pressing his palm flat to Aiber's chest and shoving him away.
He just laughs, unkempt blond bangs falling in his eyes, and he does not seem happy and he does not seem amused and there is a desperation under the action that speaks more volumes than it doesn't. "I thought you liked that kind of thing," he says, almost icily, to Light.
"Not from you," Light shoots back, brushing off jacket for no other reason than that he feels it on him still, the breath and the fingers and the oily charm and it disgusts him.
"So he's special, then?" Aiber asks, and it takes not particular stretch of intellect to know who he is. It's who it always is. He's still in everything, no matter how absent.
"He was," Light replies, "yes. But he's not here anymore and I don't know if he's even alive and I'm trying to deal with that, and the case, and my ex-girlfriend moving out, and I really don't have time for this disgustingly childish assertion of manly dominance, or whatever it's supposed to be. So, Aiber, I'm asking you to fuck off right now and not come back. And if you ever touch me again, I'll - "
"Kill me? Or just tell your daddy? If you planned to use either of those options against me, you would have done it by now. Don't kid with me, kid. I know what you are."
He grips Light's jaw, jerking his chin up so that he's looking up to Aiber from below, and fucking westerners and their fucking ridiculous height and the fucking elderly woman who's crossing the street across from them, who doesn't look over and doesn't do a thing, how is that fair? How is any of this fair? He didn't ask for Timothy Morello, or whatever his name is, and his tragic romanticism, and he didn't ask for Misa Amane and hers.
He didn't ask for L and he's taking him anyway, so shouldn't that be enough? Shouldn't the world let up when he commands it to. It always has before. It's never dared disobey him.
"You don't know anything," he spits, jerking his neck in an attempt to slip out of Aiber's thick, imprinting grip. The hold just tightens and he feels dwarfed and out-muscled, but not afraid, not ever afraid because Aiber can jerk him around however he likes, batter him bloody after L's example, and it can only do more good than bad. If Light comes in to headquarters roughed up enough tomorrow, and with a finger pointing at Aiber, it's not long before the bastard is out of there for good.
And maybe it should be unexpected - but it isn't - when he feels warm whiskey breath on his mouth and nails in his hairline, being pulled and pressed up against Aiber's lips in a show of force more than anything else, warm and dry and angry, sandpapered, tiring and tired. Aiber sinks down against him and they're kissing and it's not boiling rage, and it's not lust, so much as it is movement, the assertion of a point without having to actually make one.
The sidewalks are wet like it should be raining, and it must have earlier, and Light's feet are cold, even in thick socks and loafers and he stumbles, lifting half off the ground in an attempt not to fall against his opponent.
Light kisses back because his body has become a commodity and he trades with his lips as well as he lies with them. He's not like L, he's not making fucking bank, but he's on his way. Is this what greatness is? Kissing seedy men that one loathes on residential sidewalks at 12am? Is this mundanity? Is it either of them, and is there any real distinction?
He questions things in the few moments that he forgets to breathe and it's not nice and it's not comfortable or arousing or the right kind of warm, just fleshy lips and fingers on his skull, and when Aiber finally rips himself off of Light - like he hadn't put himself there in the first place - it all comes flooding up and out and then he can't breathe.
Turning sideways, he doubles over, spitting on the concrete, on the little blades of grass that prick up between the slabs.
His ribs feel unanchored in his chest, like his skeleton might have just slipped out of sink with the rest of his body. He stands up slowly, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. He would like to vomit, just to make a point, but he hasn't eaten recently enough for any effort to the that effect to pay off.
He's slumped and he's tired and he wants to sleep. He wants to sleep with L. It is not that complicated. It's very simple. He doesn't want to be here, he wants to be in an abandoned office building in Ikebukuro. He looks up at Aiber.
"I'm going to fucking kill you," he remarks.
Aiber is reaching into his jacket, unsteadily, tilting sideways and grasping around as if he's got a whole store of objects to root around through in there. At length, he pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and at an even longer length, a lighter.
He breathes smoke into the cool night air and looks annoyed with the way it billows around him. "I'll take that as a threat," he murmurs, uneventfully, as if the kiss had been the climax - so to speak - of the evening, and everything here on in is just falling action. "But I'm sure you could pass it off as just a turn of phrase, couldn't you?"
"I could pass off anything as anything," Light tells him, not really thinking about him. He looks at his watch. The last train leaves in ten minutes.
Aiber holds out the cigarette, offering Light a puff. After a moment's consideration, he takes it, clean fingers brushing Aiber's ashy ones. After another moment, he tosses the cigarette on the ground, crushing it underfoot, for no reason more than simple human spite. Aiber stares at him for a few seconds, wide-eyed and comical and awake, then laughs loudly. It seeps into the night like it was always meant to be there. He lights up another.
"You should learn to tell when you're beaten," Light says, watching Aiber's thumb stumble with the switch of the lighter. He can still feel lingering pressure on his lips and he is disgusted.
"I don't consider it a loss until I actually do die, and so far I've never lost." He breathes out heavily, leaning down back on the brick beside Light as if they're suddenly pals or something. "You know how L caught me up? Tax evasion. I was always great at making money, never so good at managing it. Same goes for love, and children. I have a couple, you know? A five year old son. Maybe six now, I haven't checked in. And a little girl. Her first word was Dada, even though I've only ever met her twice."
"I don't care," Light tells him, tilting himself out of reach of Aiber's nicotine breath, "about your dysfunctional familial situation."
Aiber laughs again and that seems like all he's capable of doing. "And I'd like not to care about yours, but these are strange times, Yagami, and we do what we have to."
Light rolls his eyes. "And I suppose you have to sexually harass me on street corners, huh?"
"Well, I'm not doing for my health."
The warning light flashes for the train - five minutes - and Aiber's hair looks oily and unwashed, tousled as it is against the wall behind them, and Light is not going to be able to get to L, tonight, is he? Not when he's being monitored by the world's least sober professional. He could, of course, say to hell with it and board the train anyway and hope against hope that Aiber doesn't follow him or keep tabs in some way, but - tempting as it is in his current state, waning and absent of the usual straining elasticity of thought and demeanor - he knows well enough that as much would be painfully naive, and unabashedly dangerous.
Even drunk with exhaustion, he can navigate through the amateur traps they're laying him. He can keep it all together. He can hold it steady, hold it firm.
He'd be steadier with L, though. The weather is cold and the windows on the apartment complexes are foggy with the condensation of night and Light does not want to go back into that unfamiliar room with the stiff bed and pinstriped sheets that he hadn't even picked out. He hates everything in the linen closet. He doesn't even know where the aspirin is. He wants tea. He wants the Death Note, but he doesn't need to write in it. Just touch it. Like L. Just have it there. Him. It. One or the other. He's got pages but it's not enough. He's got a fading bruise on the edge of his jaw but it feels comical and weak-willed.
Aiber is looking at him like he's waiting for something and Light is trying not to snap, trying to keep his arm from shooting out and snatching him by the collar and shaking him until he dissolves, a bug knocked off of the windshield. Four minutes.
If Aiber's waiting for something, he gives up then, and stares out into the streets. "I honestly don't even really care if you're Kira or not. Just give him back. Do whatever you want with the world, but why don't you give him back?"
Like L is an object to be traded between them. Like he's an object that Light would trade.
No, he's going to say.
'm going to write your name down, he's going to say. I'm going to get my girlfriend - impossible to get rid of as she is - to look you in your face and she is going to tell me your name and I am going to write it down and you are going to die.
How is the weather in France? he's going to say. Would it be alright to move there? Do you know somewhere we could stay?
He's going to say, Can you keep a secret?
He doesn't say any other that. There's pop music, tinny and bright, and it takes Light a moment to realize it's a ringtone, and then Aiber is digging a phone out of his pocket, frowning, and flipping it open hurriedly.
"Wedy?" he says, with mild confusion in his voice. "I told you, I haven't got anything yet. Wedy?" There's a long pause, and then his brows jump up and his looks from Light to the empty street to sideways down his wrist, where he clutches the receiver. His lips open, like he wants to repeat the name, but then he pulls back, snapping the phone shut.
Light should maybe frown with concern, but his face stays flat. He asks, "What did she say?" more out of propriety than curiosity.
Aiber shoves the phone back in his pocket. "She didn't. She breathed heavily and laughed manically." And then, without a pause in-between, "I have to go." He pushes off the wall and strides concernedly down the street, as if Light and L and his passionate effusions with relation to them both have been replaced in his mind's uppermost position by something far more urgent.
Light maybe ought to care about this, as it means Wedy is definitely not dead - maybe - and something strange is going on - maybe. But he doesn't.
With three minutes to spare, he boards the train, Ryuk cackling at his shoulder.
He's listed prime numbers in his head up to 2,417, recited half of A Midsummer Night's Dream from memory out loud with Rem as his only audience, and mentally solved a case from last week's obituaries before Light comes in.
L hadn't been expecting him back tonight, and he just slumps down onto his backside - from where he'd been tucked up in a strange birdlike squat - and says, "Sakimi Moto was murdered by her son-in-law. You should tell someone when you get into headquarters tomorrow, or else make an anonymous tip, but I feel as if the case would look good on your record."
Light stands in the doorway, looking blank and expectant. He doesn't move for long enough that it makes Rem visibly uncomfortable, and she shoots L one last look through her cat-eye, then fades out through the far wall.
Light's steps are soundless as he moves across the linoleum floor, and when he reaches L, his body falls into an even dip that lands him softly on his knees. His palms go out, grasping solidly, and when he pulls L up by the jaw and kisses him squarely on the mouth, there's little to do but blink his eyes, flex his palms, and accept it.
He smells like cigarettes and Misa's perfume. L wonders if she'd been smoking again. This might be romantic, if romance weren't dead and they hadn't killed it. He wraps his unchained hand around Light's back, moving in slow circles, conjuring familiarity.
"Rough night?" L asks, once they pull back from one another, though Light's breath is still clogging up his airspace.
Light doesn't respond directly, just cards his fingers through L's hair and says, "I want to have sex, but I want to sleep more, so we'll do it in the morning."
L's eyebrows go up. "Will we? I suppose I don't get a say in this, do I?"
Rather hunkering down against him, Light tugs them into a stretch on the floor. "You'll say yes," he murmurs, eyes closed, pulling L against his chest like they're a married couple settling down for a quiet night in and - and this had not been expected.
L had foreseen anger, or stoney silence, or maybe a twitching mix of both, but Light seems exhausted and resigned, but not really out of humor, and it's a more functional mood than L has possibly seen him in since he's gotten his memories back. Either Miss Amane has some very particulartalents - though it's doubtful that such would do anything for a man of Light's inclinations - or something else had happened.
He almost wishes Rem would come back, because even if she'd have no more answers than he, L would at least have someone with which to share his bewilderment.
He sits up, palms pressed against Light's chest for leverage, and levels his eyes at him bluntly. "You're going to sleep on the floor? You? The god of the new world?"
Light doesn't open his eyes. "It's good for the back."
L snorts, facial expression not shifting an inch. "Did Misa dope you up or something? You're uncharacteristically okay. No catastrophes today?"
"Oh, plenty of them. I ran into Aiber on the way here and he roughed me up and felt me up and almost held me up, but Wedy's gone out of her mind or something - I don't know what that's about. And I had to prostitute myself out a girl who I could kill anytime I liked, in any way I wanted, if it weren't for her overprotective pet Shinigami breathing down my neck - and now that I think of it, Rem's probably listening to this right now and graphically planning my murder at the same time. And my whole family, not to mention my coworkers, think that I'm a philandering homosexual with a bleeding heart. My mother gave me a bunch of condoms yesterday. My mother, L. Like, a ton. I have so many condoms now, oh my god, and I have so many people I need to kill and I just don't care right now. I don't care. I'm tired. I want to sleep. The floor is good for you back. Let me sleep."
He rattles it all off with a curious restraint, changed from his usual tone in that it seems almost self-aware. He is his own catastrophe, he is coming apart at all his seams and doing it with a stolid dedication that L doesn't know whether to respect or be infinitely wary of.
So, he says, "Alright. Alright, sleep."
It has been rather a while since L has watched him, anyway.
Settling in, he thinks, with an uncharacteristic honesty of sentiment: sometimes I want to pretend the only thing that's happened to me is you.
He calls back twice, but there's no answer and he doesn't really expect to get one. That hadn't been Wedy. He knows all of Wedy's laughs, knows how she frowns when she sleeps and always consumes a healthy breakfast of fried eggs and cigarettes. She doesn't go outside without make-up on and she doesn't sleep with anybody she feels she can't physically restrain, should the need arise. She taught herself Spanish through telenovelas and reads weekly science journals just to prove that she can. She likes dogs.
She might be dead. Aiber's known her for going on five years now and she might be dead. They've had enough history that is separate from their involvement with L, respectively and otherwise, for the prospect of the loss to weigh heavily as an event in itself, rather than just a tail-end of tragedy tacked onto L's disappearance.
Aiber is losing people. He's losing people that he's only just regained.
He's called a cab because the trains have all started on their last rounds, and as he waits on the sidewalk, pacing back and forth with an unlit cigarette clenched between his lips, he dials Watari. Maybe now he'll share his oh so non-essential information. Maybe if Wedy's body turns up, mangled by that psychopath, it will become essential.
Maybe Aiber should just go back to France.
The line has only just clicked live when he feels a solid tap on his back, and swings around on wobbly legs, hoping against hope that it's Yagami back for more and he can knock his lights out - so to speak - and blame it on instinctual self-preservation.
"Yes?" Watari answers, firmly professional as ever.
Aiber means to say something, but there is a Shinigami in pale purples and deathly whites hovering over him, staring down with one bright yellow eye and a look of vague consideration, and the words don't come.
"Hello," it says, "Thierry Morello. I have a message for you."
In a world very separate, in the dark and mangled rot, the air bristles and the bells chime - castle bells, kingdom bells, church bells; loud and clanging, deafening - and the Shinigami King opens his eyes.
tbc.
end notes: so that was that! gosh, i really liked writing light being passed around the merry-go-round of romantic and sexual advances. anything involving deconstruction is a hoot, honestly. sorry there's far less L lately? he's my favorite character, so his lack of presence is not a conscious choice, so much as it is that he's a stationary point, whereas light, misa, mello, b, etc. are all out in the world and moving about, so he's getting less screen-time as a matter of course. that will soon be rectified as we move into the third arc (or rather, as the second and thirds arcs kind of coalesce into a great big mess of 'hey this might actually have a plot!')
and yes, that last line there was a nod to the future of this fic, which involves far more shinigami and mystical-related things than is has up until now. hopefully i can write it halfway decently and some things will be going down in the next few chapters. until, then, thank you again for reading.
all reviews are very much appreciated. like, my heart bursts with joy at the slightest response and i love you all very dearly.