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Light has never felt more childish, more dressed down and humiliated than being forced to face the immediate consequences of his mistake. He doesn't know if that's the real L's voice, but it's gleeful and convincingly genuine to the point it fills him with spite.
"Oh, he got you." Having Ryuk as something of a neutral ally is welcomed, though he can do without the commentary.
Light paces his room while he feels his body heat up. Anger? Very much so. Shame? The first time in years he truly remembers what that sting feels like. He has to get into a cool shower just to sap some of the heat, but once he's in he laughs.
He's a fucking moron. It's the first time he's reckoned with such a thought since early adolescence. Light doesn't do self doubt. It doesn't cross his mind. He's usually better than this. That’s arrogance, and he’s suddenly aware that he has it in abundance.
He doesn't know L. He doesn't know if he's a real person. He doesn't know if it's a pseudonym, or a group of detectives and investigators, or a representative of an entire scope that goes beyond that, but in his head L is a person, one singular person, one to direct all of his ire towards. He decides L is his enemy.
-
The cameras are expected to the point they don't feel like an invasion of his privacy. He wants L to watch, whatever L is.
He hopes it's a man. He hopes it's a man watching him spread the magazine on the bed, on the awkward angle laying on his side. Light masturbates, all men do, but it's often straight into the toilet in the morning like brushing his teeth. He doesn't think. He just does. The only satisfaction is getting his morning wood down quickly and, sure, cumming is nice, but not nicer than any other pleasant experience.
But he feels this. He feels everything at once, and that's why he's hoping it's just one man watching him touch himself. Admittedly, even he is a little nervous to be seen being so enthralled by the thought but Light will not be invaded, Light is the one who invades.
He is the main character. No doubt, he’s centered on a monitor somewhere, or a series of them, the sole subject in view. Is L watching right now? He cums in his hand thinking how he hopes so.
-
Fool him once. But there's something so offbeat about this man claiming to be L, an intensity. He doesn't belong here. He doesn't belong anywhere, patently. He sticks out the moment he steps in and sits beside Light. He is an other.
He hates this situation because he knows he's being microanalyzed. It’s a shit test. He feels it in that even stare, can almost hear the gears turning as he takes everything in. That's why he thinks that, maybe, this is the real deal.
L faces forward again. Did he pass? Maybe there wasn’t a test to begin with. He's not sure if what he feels is animosity or just his nerves setting themselves on fire.
They spend time together eventually, Light is measured and polite and L is flat and disinterested.
He doesn't know what he's doing in a diner with him.
He pours over the menu, but only the desserts. He responds to Light's attempts at conversation with one-word answers.
This is the man supposedly obsessed with him? Or maybe he's projecting. He's the one obsessed with L, so he expects the same. He hates to think he's a little disappointed that L finds him boring, of all things, but maybe boring is good.
While L is not paying attention to him, though, he pays attention to L. Unkempt hair, thick. Browless at the first glance, but on a closer look they’re picked. L even brushes over his brow-ridge absently with his thumb.
He's mostly European. He sees something in him that indicates the history is more diverse than his initial impression. "Are you Kazakh?"
It's the first time L looks up, his eyes are wide when he addresses the question, though not with any perceivable expression, or at least one that Light has learned to recognize. "I don't know. I'm an orphan."
"Ah. I'm sorry to hear that."
"Why?"
What an odd question. He thinks of how Misa would apologize in a similar way and how baffled she'd be when he responds with such a thing. He almost laughs. "Well, typically it's a sad thing."
"Presumptuous," he hums and goes back to the menu.
For some reason, it feels like an indictment. He feels childish again, the word size dismissive of him, but he feels dressed down and insulted. It leaves him sufficiently annoyed, but not angry.
This is real, everything tells him. This man is the real L. His rumpled, simple clothing, his posture like he's never once been corrected. His gaze, steady and focused on whatever he's interested in and curt with whatever he isn't. No one would send a man so strange as a diversion.
Finally, the waitress returns. L orders dessert and coffee with more sugar than anyone ought to.
"I really don't do well with bitterness. I'm sensitive to it." L says it in the way as if he's said it a thousand times before, rehearsed and ready.
It strikes him that these aren't just the eccentricities of some mad genius, and all the quirks coming together start to make sense once he starts making more presumptions.
He hears L chiding him in his head for it. Light is no big shot detective, but he's pretty sure he's figured this out. It's not that L's bored. It's that he's not privy to the same games Light has mastered. He'll eventually learn that that doesn't mean L isn't playing any of his own, but he's naive still. Being smart doesn't make him experienced.
He's perplexed and exhausted from interacting with L, but he knows he hates him. That's the only thing he gets out of this lunch with him.
-
Light doesn't like dyed hair. It stands out. Her voice is high pitched. That carries as it is, but she's also loud. Her entire profession is about calling attention to herself, a rising idol just on the cusp of breaking into the mainstream with a drama role.
He can't help but think how unlucky he is. She's beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in real life, but he feels nothing. It means nothing. She doesn't see the bigger picture. She smiles when he discusses it, the utopia he'll build, but he gets the sense that heaven to her is wherever he is.
That's nice, but it's not good enough. It's funny. He wants her to be devoted, it’s convenient, but she’s not devoted to what matters.
She has this thing about her, this ability to relate to other people, to care for ones she’s never met. Light feels out of touch with her. What she says doesn’t make sense to him, it doesn’t matter, but keeping her happy enough is what he sets out to do because it suits him. For every mark against her, she's more useful than she isn't.
-
L's eyes do come alive, they do when he sees Misa for the first time. Even with eyes almost as black as his pupils, Light saw how they expanded when the sun caught on them.
It's almost insulting that L finds Misa more interesting than Light.
That’s the only time he sees anything resembling life behind those eyes. Everything else he approaches with the same flat enthusiasm.
For one, he has no business being enrolled in a university. He has no need, assignments are finished as soon as they’re given to him, and it’s clear he only attends to monitor Light.
For two, he’s strange. Those unkind will whisper that he’s creepy. If L hears them as Light does, he does not indicate so, or he simply pretends not to. Aside from when it comes to Light, he’s passive and non-confrontational.
It’s only Light that he challenges. Light feels special because of this, but in turn that small joy makes him remember just how far he has to go when, for some incomprehensible reason, he seeks his enemy’s worthiness.
He sees now what L is. L is the obstacle, but L is the paragon. L is who he aspires to be, and neither will exist as they are once Light overcomes this obstacle and assumes his place.
He has a deep, innate understanding that there is not another single individual like L. He doesn’t know why, as conviction is irrational, but he feels it and he's sure. He’s More sure of it than he is of himself, and that means something.
He knows in his mind that he’s projecting. He thinks L sees the bigger picture because he wants him to. He rationalizes it, that maybe L sees it from another perspective, because how can such a man not?
He finds himself irritated that he respects L to such an extent. He’s naive. He’s a child.
He fumbles over his pronunciation, over grammar rules. He was the top of his class in English, but he can’t hope to match a native speaker. “How you say-”
“‘How do you say’,” L corrects.
Light hates being corrected, and it’s worse when L actually seems amused as Light grows visibly more frustrated.
He’s a child, working his mouth, reminding himself to calm down because it’s really no big deal, but he also sees some of his arrogance reflected in L’s delight and it’s almost fascinating enough to distract him from the feeling of being inadequate. He clings to it for later, hoping he’s one piece closer to conquering this puzzle of a man.
It's not one he wants to solve. It's one he wants to understand so he can fundamentally dismantle it, so he can create a new one with its pieces.
One day L would be nothing but a memory, but now he stares at Light, speaking slowly so Light can see and hear how he makes those sounds. “Jewel.”
Light nods, repeats after, mindful of the position of his tongue in his mouth. “Jewel.”
L nods. It's approving, and Light is worried about how good it feels to receive that approval.
-
The others don't get it. They don't get him. Light likes to think he does, that he's let in a little more, that the guard is lowered for him. They have something like camaraderie sometimes, he and L, where he and Light can share a laugh and, for a moment, the bigger picture is forgotten.
It's dangerous, but Light likes to think he's mastered toeing that line.
The others have derogatory things to say. To them, Light is one of the guys and L is the “other”. He’s the offbeat detective with strange routines and even stranger rituals.
There's a disconnect, they don't see past his mannerisms. There's a reluctant acceptance that he's a genius in spite of his eccentricities. To Light those things are surface level and dull after just minutes with him, but the others don't care to look past that.
He knows he can trust his father. He speaks about l with a sort of cautious reverence, certainly better than the dismissal from the others. His father is even surprised when he agrees, as if expecting Light to have a different opinion. How many times have his kind words been challenged for him to be that way, he wonders.
But he understands the relationship with recognition should be kept at arms' length. It’s easy to get addicted to. Light doesn't wish to be known. He doesn't wish to be named. Even if parades are thrown in his honor, he would not attend. Even if a throne is constructed for him, it would remain vacant, so he understands L's simple desire to do his work in the margins, to exist solely as an idea and receive his recognition as such.
The idea of L is more powerful than the reality. So is the idea of Kira. Behind the curtain, they’re just men, simple and fallible.
Seeing those fallibilities in L helps light to recognize his own, like arrogance. L doesn't realize his displays of it, just the occasional flexing of his knowledge and an impatient lift of his brow ridge when he realizes someone isn't as quick on the uptake as he is. He’s actually poor at hiding it. It's obvious to Light who watches him often, especially when L interacts with the others.
Light has similar habits, Similar displays of impatience. He's gotten better, more aware, more in control of himself. He taps, or has a restless leg if they're crossed.
He sees L's pride. He appears unaffected by praise, but there's a brightening in his eyes that shows that he's moved by it. He doesn’t take it for granted, even if he speaks right past it. It makes Light realize how numbed he’s become to praise as he’s come to expect it.
But above all, he's interested in what he doesn't see. L is visibly unmoved in the face of criticism, level in the face of conflict, but he wonders what's going on in there, wishing he could occupy that space behind his eyes for just a moment if only to perceive the world the way L does.
Knowledge is power, it’s a tool to best him in their game, but above all, he just wants to sate a deep and personal curiosity, to force his way to the truth that lies in the mystery. It’s not enough to kill him. He wants everything that L is, that L will be, that he ever was and he wants to grasp it all in his hands and slowly crush it until it's nothing but sand squeezing out between the gaps of his fingers.
He recognizes he's been in a state of peaking mania, every day a little more than before, but he sees L as an idol, as his idol. He's almost insulted on L's behalf that mediocrity like Misa's is celebrated under the same title.
But at the same time, L is not untouchable. He wants to throttle him. He has it pictured so clearly in his mind, a visceral and personal end at his hands. That's what Light deserves, and that will uplift him.
He crosses his legs because he's hard, covers his mouth because it's hanging open. Of course, L doesn't notice him, he's talking to Aizawa and all of his attention is on that conversation, but for a moment, his eyes drift, meeting Light's. They linger, then meander back.
L hasn't noticed anything amiss, he's just bored with his conversation, but Light wonders what would become of him if he does.
-
There's a stark contrast to spending time with L and going back to Misa, from measured, quiet banter to noise.
Light doesn't listen. He doesn't care to. He thinks it's actively harmful to commit any of her words to memory. Light realizes he's not good to her. Not good for her. He just doesn't care. He doesn't care because Misa chooses to velcro herself to his side like a bur. She gives herself to him, offering herself to be used. Light will use her.
Finally, in a lull between how the shoot went and the set accident that caused a small fire, he gets a word in. "I'd like you to join me and L when we go out tomorrow."
"He makes me uncomfortable."
"It'll be fine. You know, we'll be spending a lot of time together soon enough."
She gives in, ultimately.
Light wants Misa to come along to make L come alive, to see more of him. He drops his guard around her. He trusts her, despite simultaneously not. Something about women, he's softer around them, has fewer walls. A beautiful woman is all the more effective.
When they go out, all three of them, Light and L wait just outside the dressing rooms while Misa tries on a bundle of clothing. She comes out in a dress for appraisal. It’s not overtly sexy, just a subtle, tasteful lift in the bust.
Light plays the role of boyfriend well here. He gives an approving smile, though as soon as she goes back into the dressing room he turns to catch L just as he’s beginning to shake off the enthrallment.
Something happens here. It’s strange. Light is leaning in without thought, he’s speaking before the words even mean anything in his mind. “Do you want to fuck my girlfriend?” He asks quietly, a whisper so Misa can’t hear.
He’s lost control of himself. He’s made a mistake. For the first time, L looks at him with an expression that’s clear and open. He’s shocked, what Light said has genuinely shocked him. His mouth moves, as if he’s struggling to speak, but he hears the rattle of plastic hangers and he faces forward again.
For once L doesn’t have a one-up, no commentary, no smart response that only serves to infuriate and belittle Light, and the terror of having said such a thing leaves him at once. This is what he’s wanted to feel, this triumph, however strange, however implicative it is of something amiss with him. It’s fine because he’s learned something implicitly, that he’s embarrassed L by saying such a thing.
Of course, he makes quick assumptions. Maybe it’s too on the nose. Maybe it’s indicative of more, after all, he can’t think of L as anything other than a virgin.
He can tell he’s a train derailing fast, feeling words bubble out of him again. “You know, I can arrange it. She’ll do anything for me.”
L doesn’t look at him again, but he sees his eyes go wide just from their corners. It’s addicting, but he has to control himself as Misa comes out again, and this time L lowers his gaze.
Is he ashamed? Is he just being mindful now that he’s been called out? Is he pensive? Light’s mind runs away with the last question, imagining the three of them pressed into the tiny dressing room.
First, Light watches, L having Misa pressed up against the wall, but the image changes quickly to Light having L pressed against the wall, her moans turning to L’s shaken breaths.
“Light! How do I look?”
He’s awakened from this daydream. Misa is in another dress, it looks almost exactly like the previous one to him, but with a slightly longer hemline and a different print. He does the same act of smiling, nodding approval so that she goes away and lets him retreat into his mind again.
He supposes self discovery is possible even in adulthood.
-
He doesn’t know what to make of the intrusive thoughts. If he thinks about his feelings, they’re contradictory. There’s an inevitability to L’s life in Light’s eyes, but there’s some small hope that L will see the same bigger picture he does, that there’s an eternity in there somewhere that can accommodate the two of them.
Ideas can coexist. So can they, as men, but it’s weird to want it. It makes him angry to be distracted from his original goals. Only a diversion, but he can’t help but think it’s fitting that it’s L of all people that reminds him that infatuation is both very real and very dangerous.
Things are different. They don’t appear so on their surface, but L is more distant with him since their outing. The paranoid part of him is nervous that somehow tipped him off to something, but ultimately it’s meaningless. How is a hidden depravity supposed to implicate him? Being branded as a pervert is nothing. If anything, it gives him depth.
Things will change soon. He wonders how they’ll impact his relationship to L. He wonders if the animosity will disappear without its context or if it will remain contextless without his memories. If that’s the case, then will the awe go with it?
He imagines a version of himself completely unimpressed with L, completely neutral, where they’re no more than colleagues working toward the same goal. He imagines a life where he falls asleep thinking of anything other than L, whether it’s the passive fantasies that lull him to sleep or the active imagination when he’s draining a load into his hand.
It’s all for the better, but for some reason, he doesn’t want it to go that way.
-
Light hates L. He’s not sure why. There’s a fog somewhere where it feels like the memories should be. He remembers L looking at Misa with desire, but he feels nothing when he recalls that. He remembers smirks, and although annoying, they don’t explain his feelings. He remembers even eyes staring at him, unwavering and bored, and Light almost laughs to himself at how frustrating L can be sometimes. But for the life of him, he’s unsure why he hates L.
It’s weird because it’s not straightforward, not as hate should be. He looks forward to spending time with L, at odds with that uneasy feeling of just being around him.
He hates being accused. He knows he’s innocent. Sometimes he has to stop and think about whether he really disagrees with Kira’s goals here, but he’s committed to this project and he’ll see it through. There’s something bigger in taking down Kira than just stopping a criminal at large. It’s an exciting prospect, like toppling God Himself, and if anyone can topple God, it’s Light.
L sees it that way where the others don’t. He pays a lot of attention to L out of habit. He finds himself looking often. He finds himself listening intently as he watches him speak. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he feels impassioned and emboldened watching L report his own discoveries, gathering his thoughts aloud. Sometimes to no one, only to himself, but he seems to be aware that Light is always listening.
It’s weird to Light that he feels aroused by him. He doesn’t get it, and it’s not just with the normal quandaries that come with questioning his sexuality, though that seems very secondary to the problem at hand of finding himself being attracted to L when he’s supposed to hate him.
The cuffs are an interesting experiment because of it. They’ve been doing this for a week now, sharing a bed because they’re attached. They grow accustomed, learn to sleep so the chain doesn’t pull and nag and hurt them after a few nights of bruises and tugs of war to get the better part of the slack while they adjust to new sleeping positions.
Now they stay up, they talk. They talk about anything. It reminds Light of staying over friends’ houses and staying up all night talking about nothing, about everything. He somehow thinks these talks should be important to commit to memory, but because he’s unsure why, he lets them go, he allows them to be transient and there’s a misplaced, empowering sense of freedom in there.
It’s not that L is bored. He’s always thinking, he tells him. Sometimes the thoughts are useless and plentiful and loud and it takes L everything he can to focus on one subject. Except now, where things are quiet and it’s just the two of them.
“I like quiet,” L says.
“Don’t we all?”
“I think you do well whatever the situation.”
It’s such a small compliment, but it feels huge. Something swells. He hates L, he tells himself, but he’s unsure why, and it’s bogged down and forgotten by this simple, aimless conversation existing just so they can listen to each other, whatever thoughts pushed out to the forefronts of their minds and out of their mouths.
“I often think about what you said to me about your girlfriend.”
Light feels warm. He feels ashamed, almost. There's so much about L that just feels like it's missing. There’s so much context gone from him, and he's also hesitant to say as much because something is stopping him, some self preservation instinct. But so many feelings are there, so many recollections from nights spent jacking off to his imagination of choking and fucking L, of hurting him and making him gasp and cry. "The truth is,"
And L looks genuinely interested in a way he's never seen before when he prefaces with that and allows for the pause to gather his thoughts.
It makes Light feel emboldened. If he can't be honest about the one thing nagging him, he can at least be honest about this, take some control of his mind. "I think about it often. Just the two of us.” The silence is loaded and thoughtful and panic inducing. “I probably shouldn’t say that when we’re forced to share a bed.” He tries to make light of it, but L looks the same way he did when he initially suggested that thing about him and Misa.
It’s rare to see L like that, and there’s some dull, detached memory of how he felt when he made him feel that way before. It excites him, loath to admit, unaware of the source of this depravity he feels for making L uncomfortable.
Light is no seductor. Women approach him, all he does is be friendly. That's all he has to do. This isn't the case with L. Even with him before his very eyes, he's fantasizing, he sees L beneath him, only L beneath him and something about the image just feels right. Not because it speaks to his sexuality, but because it speaks to his sense of entitlement.
He needs to act on this. Nothing will happen if he doesn't, but something may if he does. That's motivation enough and his hand slides over so he can brush L’s knuckles with his thumb.
L's hand starts, it jerks lightly, but doesn't pull away entirely.
"I think about this," And ‘this’ doesn't just refer to the act but everything it encompasses, everything that goes into feeling this way and what it means to actually wanting something more than he can ever hope to understand.
He's usually a rational man. He knows why he wants things, but Light doesn't know why he wants L.
"What is ‘this’?" It isn't a flirtatious challenge. L's picked brows furrow, and he's looking on, looking vulnerable for one, beautiful moment that really resonates with Light.
"Do you want me to be more explicit?" And he hopes L says ‘yes’ even though he won't be able to stop himself if he does. He won't be able to stop the flood of what's going on in his thoughts, of every single thing he wants to do to L, how he wants to inhabit his body and use it as an extension of himself.
"No," and it's disappointing how quickly L responds and pulls his hand back. "I don't." It's firm. He's made up his mind.
So Light is left wanting, feeling frustrated and rejected for the first time in a long time, and he reminds himself very sharply, he hates L, and this is probably why. He makes him feel like a child.
-
Things don't get better between them. It's hard to come back from that. Light is irritable from frustration and L is more distant despite them being physically forced to be in each other’s proximity. It’s hellish at best.
He wants. He wants, he wants, he wants. He wonders what it was before this that kept him so distracted from wanting, why he doesn't remember it ever being this bad despite having spent months together, why there's something there still making him so cautious and mindful, why he should care when he can just take what he wants. He burns with it. He stews in it. He deserves this.
He's so aware of L. It's a hell in itself, hairs stand up on the back of his neck when L so much as clears his throat, so attuned to every one of his littlest actions, hanging off every word.
He wants to touch L's hands. They're cold. They have poor circulation, he remembers how cold the knuckle felt even as they were beneath the covers.
He wants to touch the back of L's neck, that hump from persistently bad posture. It's objectively unattractive, but so inherent to the physicality of L that he can't help but find it attractive. He wants to feel the bumps and ridges of his spine beneath his fingers.
He never sees L fully naked, that European sense of modesty. He uses a privacy screen when he bathes, Light sitting outside in a folding chair set up in the bathroom for the occasion. Light is not concerned at all with being seen nude.
He thinks about coming in, interrupting his shower, joining, just in that daydream daze until L finally cuts the water, grabbing the robe hanging just outside of the curtain before coming out.
He sees ankles. They're thin. Calves, impossibly thin, thighs just a hair wider. He wants. L can't be heavy. He thinks about throwing him around. He thinks about throttling him again, how easy it should be.
He gets in the shower just as he gets hard.
His showers are longer because he jerks off. L doesn't. He's never seen L jerk off. He's never gotten any indication that he does so. He wonders if L is impotent, and at first he sniggers to himself in a boyish way but then thinks what that would really mean if Light ever gets what he wants, L only for Light to fuck him, existing only for his pleasure.
It’s what he deserves. The idea resonates with him deeply, though he can’t figure out why.
He's drained, naked when he comes out, looks up to see if L even spares a look, but he's disinterested, flipping through a magazine with a Cyrillic alphabet, though Light is unable to place the country of origin.
He wants. He can take it. L isn't paying attention, and even with his surprising strength, Light has weight on him. He can pin him down. He can use his surprise, he can leverage his fear. He can take L.
And then an echo of his goodness, he recoils at himself. Where is his humanity? Why Light can’t piece anything together is because he doesn’t remember that he’s surrendered it a long time ago.
-
There is nothing tethering him when he becomes Kira again. He feels powerful when the memories return. He feels unstoppable.
When the cuffs come off, everything is in motion, fast approaching the inevitability he felt since he first met L. It’s the rush before the climax. It’s nearing its end.
They're alone. They often are, the men are often uncomfortable being in L's company for too long and Watari is attending to some other aspect of managing the household that will keep him away long enough.
Everything is moving too fast to possibly stop him. Light will take what he wants, what he deserves as L is flipping through a newspaper.
Light grabs L’s wrists. They’re thin and his fingers circle around them easily. He pins him.
He's stronger than he was before. It’s not functional strength, he’s never built this, but he just possesses it and uses it. Maybe adrenaline, but it’s inconsequential. Whatever the case, it’s been summoned just for him to use at this moment.
L fights. He's not stunned as he'd hoped, but Light knows now, he knows how to diffuse this. He knows how to win.
He plants a knee in his stomach, presses down and winds him, but it also pins his midsection firmly in place. He wants to say something to him. He wants to say everything to him, everything at once. He wants to provoke him, he wants to insult him, he wants to confess his feelings and his crimes.
Instead, he touches L. His fingers brush up to his cold hands, two thin wrists pinned in his old, allowing him one free hand to roam as he pleases. L breathes heavily and harshly, partially because of exertion but it changes in minutes, grows harder and slower when the touching moves down his jaw and his neck.
"Light."
He can't speak. He'll say everything. He feels the world is in his hands and if he just widens his arm span then he can hold the entire universe. He can contain it. He can own it.
In fact, it's already his. It's been his, he's just been delaying it because the component to make him see it was missing, he needed this piece to finally have the grit. Now that he knows he owns it, he can crush it.
L's nipples get hard beneath his shirt. They're large, larger than the average man's. He needs to see them, lifts his shirt first with the knee, sees the sunken stomach and pronounced ribs. L is sinewy, muscles defined only because he is so thin. His chest is lean and flat, his nipples dark brown and rounded.
It stands, either or both because he’s cold or aroused. He sucks one. L is sensitive, he arches, relents in a way where the fighting and thrashing of his arms weaken.
He breathes, he doesn't make noises aside from that, only breathing. It's beautiful. It's the most beautiful sound Light has ever heard. It's stuttered and shallow, on the cusp of whispering his name but he never speaks out.
He can't fuck him right now. He wants to. He needs to, but he doesn’t have anything to make it happen. They're on a lounge sofa. They're in the middle of the repurposed living area. Anyone can walk in at any time and catch them in the middle of it. Light would have too much to answer for.
L's cock does get hard, to his surprise. In loose jeans, it’s easy to notice. It's normal-sized, average. Light is bigger.
He keeps sucking a nipple, only for minutes and L cums, goes from pushing him off to clutching his arm, shaking against him.
While they still have time, he thinks of carrying L to the bedroom while he's still weak and shaken, but he hears keys in the door and regains his senses. He steps back, pretends to be standing while watching the game on screen while L assumes his normal seated position after quickly tugging down his shirt.
Nothing looks amiss. L's clothing is always rumpled. His hair is always mussed. He doesn't get flushed, his skin always remains pallid. Light pretends to be flushed with anger, grumbling at the television.
-
Every day he feels a new high. It's indescribable. L doesn't talk to him but it doesn't matter. It's inevitable. He knows it. He feels it. He's won.
The message comes asking him to see him in one of the bedrooms and Light is there before he has time to question it.
L is in his robe, he’s laying back on the bed, propped up on pillows. His arms are crossed. “I’ve sent Watari away on an errand.” The message is clear. ‘I'm giving myself. Take it.’
Light has his convictions that L only knows Light’s body, that he will only ever know Light’s body and L’s body will only be known by him.
Light does not look a gift horse in the mouth.
L’s overwhelmed. It's not out of despair, nor out of fear. It's too much, too fast and he shudders just on the feeling of Light tugging the robe open, fingers feeling down the divots of his ribs.
Again, he breathes. He only breathes, at least at first, under brushes of his nipples and circles on his stomach and the thumb dipping down just below his hip bones, where he tenses every time Light teases dropping his hand a little further at every pass.
L does not know how to kiss. He first turns his head when Light brings his mouth close, but then corrects himself, faces forward again to let it happen and his mouth is hanging slack while Light leads. He’s not responsive, but he doesn’t need to be, this is exactly in line with what he expects.
When L is limp in his hold he imagines wrapping his hands around his neck and squeezing, but not yet. Lightly, he taps L on his side, he whispers to him, “I want you on your stomach.”
When he turns, Light touches the ridges of his spine. L doesn’t know how to relax, tensing at every touch, every dip, and the hand settles on his bottom when Light sucks on his ear.
L’s hard, but his breathing grows more shallow, more shuddered. Maybe to the point of tears, but Light can’t see his face in that position. That’s what he imagines, though, and it makes him feverish.
The motions and dips in the mattress caused something to knock into Light’s knee. It’s a bottle of lube. It’s been opened, a fifth of the way empty, and he lowers his hand between the cleft of L’s ass and feels how it’s wet, how it’s been readied for him.
He puts a finger in and it’s clear L is in pain just with that, but that’s fine, because this is for Light’s pleasure. All of this is for him, and he’s working off his belt and pants with his other hand while fingering L, feeling him get tight around him. He can’t wait to feel it on his cock.
He lubes up, but he’s not waiting a second beyond that, up on his knees, keeping a hand low on L’s stomach to keep him level, keep him still while he pushes inside of him. It’s difficult, and now when L breathes he whimpers out. The sound is amazing.
He’s in. He’s being fought out, but he’s in and he presses L against him to stay in, to let him learn to relax, otherwise let it stay difficult for him. To Light, it makes no difference.
L’s breathing is still stuttered, still shallow, and he needs to see him, so he pulls out, watching L’s hole twitching and feeling how he exhales in relief. He turns, and sees his mouth is still slack, eyes wet, though not actively crying, only tearing up.
He kisses him again, on that opened mouth, and his jaw works as he breathes, almost closes, almost kisses back properly as he lines up and pushes himself in again while L is too distracted to immediately push back. He’s fully seated before L completes another exhale.
He takes a moment to enjoy this, to commit it to memory, where one day when he’ll look back and wonder whether this is real, he’ll be able to affirm to himself that it is very real. He can feel L on him, can feel his breathing, the expanse of his diaphragm against his chest.
Then he fucks him. Neither of them are prepared for it, L less so, but it gets easier. L’s an impossibly quick learner, after all.
He holds onto Light. His grip hurts, his nails are a little long and digging in. He feels too good to recognize any of the pain, fucking easily now that L’s learned to take him. It feels wetter, he might’ve torn something, he might be bleeding. It’s not going to stop him.
He’s not done after he cums the first time. He stays in, and L’s head is lolling, his eyes look distant. He’s elsewhere until he feels Light’s eyes on him, gaze slowly making its way back to meet his.
Light’s still hard. He has to stop because it hurts a bit, the head of his cock feels raw, but even then he finds his hips moving in small pumps while they maintain eye contact. He kisses him again and it’s better, just weak. L is tired, but Light’s not done.
It’s quicker the second time, against all odds, Light going hard because it hurts for him but he needs to get that second load out, needs to fill L just a little more. By the end he’s loose, wet with lube, cum and blood. It’s slick when Light pulls out, spills in a thin stream on the bed and L’s body relaxes all at once, limp like a broken toy.
Light lays on his side, lounging, watching L process the night, coming to terms with what it all means, that Light has won.
But as he thinks the game is over, it turns out L's not done playing. A hand extends. Light thinks to catch it before it touches him, but he doesn’t interfere. The cold pads of his fingers touch his cheek, hold his jaw. It’s brief, but L smiles, and it’s fond.
The freight train that is the course of their lives comes to an abrupt pause. It’s suspended as a moment in time, as this moment, where for a second Light loses touch with every negative feeling this man has ever made him feel up to that point. The animosity, the inadequacy, the jealousy, the hatred, it all vanishes.
At first Light feels the tears, then he’s bawling, and a thumb wipes at the corner of his eyes.
But it lasts for only a second before everything moves along again, inevitable. He feels like a child, and deeply, bitterly, he hates L all the more for it.
-
Sadness is not a feeling he acknowledges, but the end looms now. This is what he wants and it's coming. Every day it gets a little closer. Victory makes him anxious in so many ways. He just wants it to be over with, but then there are the moments afterward, where they’re laying in bed and tangled in sheets, he wants those to last forever.
He and L make love whenever they can. They fuck whenever they can. The terminology flip-flops in his head, they never discuss it out loud. They never acknowledge it aside from the invitation.
He gives now. He gives pleasure, until L is shaking and gasping and pushing him off because it’s too much. Light doesn’t get tired of it.
Sometimes that fire in his blood spikes up for a moment and he sees the vision of hurting him, choking him dead while he’s inside of him. It’s vivid, and that part of him is excited. But then the sense of finality echoes, and the preemptive sense of loss echoes with it.
It'll get easier. The anticipation is the worst part. Light knows now that L is only such a small part of the bigger picture, and to focus on such a small aspect is why there is no longer a place for him in it.
L is so touch starved and affection obsessed once he learns more. He likes kissing the dips between Light’s fingers. His back is sensitive to touch, Light is able to make him hard just by stroking his spine.
This is his world. He is a god and L is nothing.
L pulls the blanket up on himself until Light pulls it down again. There isn’t a piece of skin on L’s body that Light hasn’t had his mouth on. They’ve been at this for four hours now.
This is only a moment in the rest of his life, and there’ll be so much more to it, there’s so much promise, because ideas win out over men. The idea of Kira is more powerful than L, the man.
L's never said the words out loud. Light has said them more times than he can count, in whispers on his skin, and for the first time he understands what it means. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
He hates L for it. He blames L for it, and that’s why he has to go. He’s too dangerous to keep.
L doesn't have to say the words, he feels them in the way the fingers are threaded through his hair on the back of his head, the thumb stroking his neck. L is looking at him, the most alive his eyes have ever looked.
For the first time in Light's life, there's something he can't have. It makes him angry, but he's too tired for it to manifest into anything meaningful. For this moment, he will enjoy this utopia they’ve created together in all of its transience.
-
He mourns in his own way.
He no longer feels like a child, even in retrospect, it's all dissipated.
There is that sense of triumph. Sometimes the victory overjoys him to the point that he's hard. That's his arrogance, he’s never learned to let that part of himself go, he’s just more aware of it.
The grief is heavy, but It's buried with time. L is just a memory, and so is that Light who loved him. It died with L.
All that's left is to finally realize the picture he's been seeing all along.