Work Text:
Yagami Light sat on a black seat made of an unfamiliar texture, with his elbow leaned on his knees. He was so inescapably bored. It was certainly not his first visit to an art museum, nor was he here for the first time since Mikami. Yet, for the first time, the pictures hadn't been able to catch his attention since he had lost sight of the painter. He straightened up in the seat and glanced at his watch. Only thirty minutes? If he's not careful enough, after a while, he'll be just as dependent on the other as much as Mikami is on him. The thought chased a faint smile to his lips, then Light stood up. It was time to find Mikami.
The halls of the museum were full of people who came alone. Halls full of those who waited to be addressed by a stranger because without company they would never enjoy such a place, and in the corners, and some came with a notebook, and the presence of others just spoiled their experience. Light could have talked to any of them. Extras, they were and he could have made them relevant, but he had some difficulties with it; he always liked keeping them in the background much better. With Mikami, he had no choice. The man showed up before he could decide about him, and stayed after everyone else in his life had melted into the scene. His footsteps accelerated, so he stopped and stepped to the stretched railing that separated him from the painting. He stroked the cold iron with his finger, and let his thoughts blur the textures of the painting. If Mikami wasn't around, his thoughts would swivel wildly, if he was there, it would all stop. Reassured him.
At first, Light didn't notice when the man stepped beside him, only when he felt their wrists touch for a moment. He smiled as he looked at him. In public, Mikami loved to hide behind thick layers of clothes, in a black cloth coat, a suit, and a neck-buttoned shirt. It only made it so enjoyable when he could undress him. Mikami's mouth trembled under the weight of the curious gaze, but he didn't reciprocate his stare for moments.
"Where have you been?" He asked, running his eyes over and over the picture in front of him. The question sounded so ridiculous that Light didn't hide the newfound cheer in his voice as he answered.
"Me? I just came here recently."
"I'd go if you already finished examining this one. I want to show you something, ” he declared, his expression stayed unreadable, but as he looked at Light for a moment, his eyes sparkled with devotion.
He pulled his coat together.
"We can go," he replied, then let Mikami grab his wrist and follow him through the next room.
"This is it," he said, stepping as Light looked at the painting. Two hands, but they never met. There is only one thing that connects them; a two-sided dagger drilled through their tense palms. The wounds at the bottom of the picture bleed a river, and trees grow alongside it, a flowering field.
"Savior," he muttered as he read the title of the painting, then turned to Mikami.
"Why this one?"
"I wanted to make something very similar once," he said. Mikami didn’t always keep eye contact with strangers or those he was too close to. Yet, now that they were not talking about each other, the man looked into his eyes without any hindrance.
"So I needed you to take a look because you'd understand it better."
"Should I be the critic who's initiated into detail? Light asked, but this time he wouldn't let the man turn his gaze away.
"No, be the objective," he answered.
"Then you're seeing it wrong. Knowing you now is like knowing who painted this. Objectively? Nice, but it just means nothing to me,” he declared, and Mikami shook his head, turning to the picture again.
"You shouldn't say that," he whispered, then grabbed his wrist again and braced their fingers together before Light could protest. Not as if he'd wanted to.
"I appreciate your work. But you shouldn’t care so much about what I think of others," he said, but a second later, he wished he wouldn't have. Mikami has always been sensitive to words, but to his luck, he didn't move beside him. A faint blush formed around his nose.
"I see what you mean," he finally replied. Light smiled and opened his mouth in response, but then said nothing.
He looked down and squeezed their hands clasped. Something came to his mind.
"You brought me here, Mikami, because there aren't many here, did you?" He asked, but received no answer. The man lowered his head in silent embarrassment. Light loved the way Mikami kept himself hidden from others. But now, as he stood beside the man, who was thickly covered in useless social expectations, Light's smile soon became bitter.
*
The thick pages of the sketchbook swirled quickly between Mikami's fingers as he flipped through it over and over again. Everything he had ever drawn into it, with tangled lines, chalk, and a run-out pen on a bank table...it was far too precious to lose. His fingers clung to a half-finished nude, then Mikami closed his eyes and shrugged on the bench. He didn't cry, but he was shaking. It had been only two hours since Light had left him alone, and the thought of losing, not him, but the feeling, his art, had slowly seeped into his mind. They were near to this place when it happened.
"I love the way you think about me, Mikami," it was an easy statement at the end of a conversation. Light didn't even expect an answer from him, he shouldn't have spoken. But he did.
"Some can only give silent worship," he muttered, and Light stopped on the sidewalk beside him. He watched as empty anger strode into his eyes.
"Do you still think I don't care about you? That I'm here for my own entertainment?" Mikami shook his head, but he couldn't look him in the eye. Light's voice almost boiled in his throat as he spoke. This wasn't a banter. Whatever he wanted to say at that moment, he didn’t have a chance. Light lunged forward, kissed him on the open street, and as he pulled Mikami into a soft embrace with gripping fingers, he bit into his lip. He didn't have the chance to kiss back, Light let go of him before he could react, yelled at him before he left. In the direction his parents' home was.
Barely two hours had passed since then, Mikami went home and came back here alone. He left his cell phone at home. He folded the sketchbook in his lap and let the wind creep under his coat.
Whatever happened, now everything was worryingly okay around him, now that Light wasn't here. The last time he felt like this, he was still a schoolboy, politely trying to convince himself that he wasn’t bored. Yet, every time the bell rang and the class was dismissed, boredom turned to terror, crawled up his throat, forcing him to hide in the staircase that led to the basement, but they found him, and...no, it was different this time. Mikami was now in control, awful, hard control over his life, and he could solve his problems now. Light will come back. He only needs a little time.
He buttoned his coat and licked his mildly bruised lips.
*
As Light had repeatedly stated to himself, Mikami's private apartment also didn't fit him perfectly. Wherever he was, despite all their attempts, the place showed only a crooked mirror image of his personality.
He stepped up to the third floor in the narrow stairwell that led to the thick security door. The spare key to the apartment lurked in his pocket but this time he rang, and tilted his shoulder against the wall, as he waited for the other to open the door for him. I could have come sooner, he thought, because it was really up to him when they visited each other again. Mikami was too…polite to make his move, and more uncertain with each passing day. They hadn’t seen each other all week, but Light knew for sure that he didn’t have the most problems trying to fill the sudden gaps in his "daily routine". The door opened.
"Good afternoon!" He greeted, and Mikami opened the door wide but didn't say a word. Light didn't talk anymore because whatever he saw in the man's eyes looked too precious to chase it away from there. He closed the door behind him, took off his shoes, he had known his way around the apartment for a long time now. As Mikami hurried back to his bedroom, Light slowly began to explore the beige corridor along which the other three rooms opened. The walls now looked even more painfully empty, he stated as he finally entered the bedroom. A double bed pushed against the wall, a desk full of tools, at least made this room more lovable. The center of the room was resoundingly empty and too large, but still so; much better than the workshop. He found Mikami kneeling on his bed, holding a notebook in his lap and a tiny, blunt-tipped graphite pencil between his fingers.
"I'm sorry, I'll be done in a second," the painter muttered, not even looking up from the paper. And Light waited, though he could never tell what made him so patient at such times. Maybe it was because the man was beautiful at this time. Not good-looking, or handsome as some called Light, but beautiful, with a concentration-tight jaw and radiant eyes.
"Thanks for letting me in," he replied, sitting quietly in the chair. On the desk, carefully laid out side by side, lay sketchy portraits, drawn on paper, each depicting the same person. Light leaned closer to one, blurring the line of the figure's back with his finger where the shadow should belong. Mikami never painted people. Before.
He had to wait ten minutes for the pencil-rattling sound on the paper to disappear, but Mikami finally laid the drawing board on the bedspread.
"How are you?" Light asked, and as if waiting for him, the man began to clutter.
"I'm not afraid to paint you anymore. But I haven’t finished any of them yet, they’re not perfect. I was just thinking that at least…they exist," his voice turned unsure by the end of the sentence, then he stood up and walked to the door to close it.
Neither Mikami nor Light had anything more to say to each other. While they tried to untangle the way they should behave with the other, Light sat over to the double bed and pulled his legs to his chest. The painter sat by the other end of the bed. Light only noticed now that he was wearing only a thin red shirt. He smiled.
"I shouldn't have left that day," he began, but he knew that Mikami wouldn't tolerate his apology for long. Mikami raised a finger to his lips and crawled closer to him on the mattress. His gaze remained unreadable, though their noses were almost touching. A small, relieved sigh broke from Light's throat as Mikami kissed his forehead. His gaze wandered to the other's lips, he discovered the two reddish lines his teeth had left in the soft flesh. Still visible.
"I understand that...you're quite fond of me. And I didn't want you to leave,” Mikami whispered as he pulled away from him and Light nodded. He didn't expect any more, but he appreciated the other for at least trying. He held out his hand to stroke the cold face of the man, whose hand clenched into a fist gripping the dark blue bedspread.
"You're strange, you know. But whatever you believe me to be...it makes me something more, something divine, ” Light said, stretching out his legs in front of him. But even if Mikami believed what he said, it wasn't true.
Because if either of them was a God, it would have been the painter, and not Light. It was in the way he looked at him. The way he built him from brushstroke to brushstroke, as he named him. Kami. Whatever Light was now, Mikami's perception of him formed him like this. He was the one who depended on the other.
They sat next to each other silently for a long time because one of them enjoyed their silence and the other had no intention of saying anything out loud that was on his mind.
Light fingers unlocked the upper two buttons on Mikami's red shirt to stroke his hot skin below his neck, making him let out a surprised huff.
"I think I owe you a thank you, Mikami. Let me show you what true worship looks like,” he whispered as the other slowly closed his eyes.