(no subject)
(Day 4)
The pieces slide into place in the morning while L is sliding on his shirt after showering, and Light, delicately holding his cuffed hand in front of his eyes, catches a glimpse of L's flat hipbone beneath the drab white cotton.
He remembers. He remembers. Yearning for the thin body before him swells inside of him all at once - his fingers on the flat blade of L’s stomach, the hitch in L’s breath -
Immediately he clamps down on the emotion. He is horrified, exhilarated. He thinks: of course at the same time he thinks: I can use this.
L doesn't know about this - he can’t know. His glances haven't changed their shape since he got the Death Note back. Besides, an L who knew would be an L who had reacted - an L who would already be at Light’s command.
He thinks about Misa, about what one kiss had done. She was nothing like L, nothing as strong and as difficult to manipulate… but still.
Light had never factored anything like this into his plans for L.
The only thing he knows for certain is that his kinder, gentler self would never have acted out those fantasies. He tries to access that part of himself, but there are too many things at stake - too many memories he can’t touch. Among them is the vague idea he has that while without his memory of the Death Note he had been chaste in all ways: he knows that he had tried to suppress whatever feelings he had for L.
Ironically, the memory of trying not to want only draws into sharper relief all the memories of what he’d been trying not to want.
He tries not to remember what it was like to want L - he tries to focus only on what he can use.
He tries not to note the sharp angles of L’s wrists, the way his hair splays over his forehead and the back of his neck; the way his voice drops automatically when he says Light’s name, as if just the name alone is a secret, a revelation he doesn’t quite trust.
He tries not to remember what it was like to want L as they trade places and L holds a hand to his eyes while Light changes; as L sloshes coffee all over his sleeve and pours Light’s cup too full despite Light’s protests; as they trade mind games over breakfast of cake, cake, and, for at least one of them, more cake.
The handcuffs - too obvious, L, he thinks. Too easy to just -
And then the knowledge, the wanting, overpower him for a moment.
He has the Death Note. If he had L's name, if he only had L's name, there is nothing - nothing - he could not make L do.
The ideas come in waves, so strong he has to clench his fist tight around his coffee cup as he tries not to stare at the outline of L in his chair, a mess of jutting angles and protruding lines and knees and elbows and awkwardness.
He could make his own body, his own muscles twisting and burning around him, the last thing L feels before he dies.
He could make L beg for it - make him fall at his feet, surrender to him so hard he begs for his own death.
He could make L sleep.
The coffee burns its way down his throat. He closes his eyes.
"Are you all right, Yagami-kun?" L asks.
"I was just thinking," says Light smoothly, "about absolute power." He sips his coffee. "And how it corrupts."
"Fifty per cent," says L without breaking his gaze, and Light smiles.
"I know," he says, and looks back.
(Day 5.)