Death Note: L/Light, three hours from now
Title: Equilibrium: IV ( I, II, III)
Author: nardaviel
Theme: #10 (time periods), week 4: three hours from now
Rating: PG-13 -- dark themes
Warnings: SERIES: insanity orz, canon compliance through chapter 58/episode 25 (i.e. NO HAPPY ALTERNATE ENDING HERE), resulting spoilers, gay smex, very slight bending of canon timeline due to borked canon timeline; FIC: still spoilers, angst, no dialogue at all wtf
Summary: SERIES: Light finds, and Light loses, and Light moves, but doesn't move on. FIC: And now it's done.
Word Count: 949
Author's Note: This week, Equilibrium is a bit strange and flashback-y -- the bit that's in present tense is the bit to which the week's theme actually applies. This is crossposted to my fic journal, silent_eden, and will be linked to there from rxl_fans. And lastly, this was written at an appallingly late time, in an appallingly short time period, as evidenced by the late timestamp -- this Was finished before the deadline, I'm just bad at formatting these headers, arg. Also due to the timing fail, this is is unbetaed and hardly edited at all, so please, please, forgive me for my fail. It's been another one of those weeks. I will go back through and edit this, someday.
When Light was very small, before Sayu was born, his family lived in a smaller, thinner house, big enough for the three of them but not much bigger. Soichiro worked a little less, then, and he brought some of his desk work home, in order to spend more time with the beginnings of his family. Sachiko went to bed early those nights, but Light liked to stay up with his father, sitting in his lap and peering with big eyes at the papers on the table in front of them. It was a game he played with himself, seeing how much he could understand, blinking at unfamiliar kanji until his eyelids drooped and he fell asleep, lulled by Soichiro's even breathing and the scratching of his pen.
When his parents called him into their bedroom and told him that he was going to have a little sister, and that they were going to have to move to a bigger house, Light was a bit resentful -- this was his house, these were his parents -- but largely indifferent. And the new house was big, and exciting in the way new things are, whereas his sister Sayu was much smaller, tiny and alive and helpless, and Light, who knew his duty as an older brother, declared himself her protector, a three-year-old knight. Soichiro worked more, and later, to pay for the house, but Sachiko stayed at home, and Light had always been an independent child anyway.
And if it took him several weeks to adjust to falling asleep in the dark and silence of his bedroom, he didn't complain. What good would it do? And if he never quite forgot his first house, or sitting on his father's lap and watching in sleepy fascination as Soichiro's pen left clean black lines on the paper, well, everyone has fond childhood memories.
- - -
The suite L and Light had shared was on the eighth floor. In the months of their cohabitation, it had changed startlingly little. The trash cans filled with candy wrappers, and were emptied, and filled again; clothes revolved through the closet and the clothes baskets. Neither of them were particularly inclined to personalize their space.
The night that the handcuffs were removed, Light claimed a suite of his own, on the seventh floor, across the hall from his father's mostly-unused rooms. The layout and furnishings were quite identical to those he had grown used to, and it wasn't until he was lying in the oversized bed that he even realized that the room was somehow... lacking.
It was nothing so maudlin as the warmth of L's body, nothing as atavistic as the smell of the detective's skin he was missing. It was just--
It was quiet. It was so quiet.
L was almost definitely tapping blithely away at his laptop. Its backlight would turned to its brightest setting and his face would be lit in a creepy, unflattering way. But he was doing all of this a floor above Light, and on the opposite side of the building, and Light lay in his newly-claimed bed feeling somewhat cheated. He had been very much looking forward to sleeping in a room without that nonsense, and now it seemed he had become... more used to it than he had thought.
But if he could get used to irregular clicks and flickering blue light, he could certainly become acclimated again to darkness and peace.
- - -
The thing that was once L has been removed from the investigation room. It has been covered with a cloth, gently (Light assumes) and with the utmost respect. Light has watched it being wheeled into the back of a car, to be taken to a morgue. The idea seems strange -- L, lying naked and blue in a cold room, like any other once-person.
Light's father is in the investigation room, on the phone with someone, discussing cemetary plots. The rest of the investigation team is wandering Headquarters, stunned, various degrees of grief-stricken, unsure how to proceed now that the immediate necessities have been attended to. Matsuda has, for once, stopped talking. Light finds that he's glad they're reacting like this: Dazed as he is, he can mimic their behavior with little effort.
He blinks, finding himself coming to a stop before the door to their rooms. He didn't mean to come here.
But why not? If nothing else, no one will want to disturb him here. And he finds that he wants to lie in the bed where he touched L, just this morning. They didn't make the bed before they left, and the thought, which he knows should repulse him, is somehow comforting. He opens the door--
But someone has already been here. The sheets are new, the duvet is smooth, and no one seems surprised or disgusted with him. Probably Mogi, then.
Light is surprised to find that the sight hurts him. The last evidence of their relationship is probably washing out in the laundry machines right now, and the closet doors are closed, if indeed their clothes are even still there, and the room looks like L has never touched it.
Suddenly exhausted, Light curls up on the bed anyway, and reaches for L's pillow. Beneath the fragrance of laundry detergent he can tease out L's scent, elusive and fading. He wonders how long it'll be before it disappears entirely, and then he closes his eyes in denial of the thought. He bites down fiercely on his bottom lip, stopping the burning in his eyes before it can start. He didn't cry when he was three, and he certainly won't cry now, not over L, of all things.
With the lamps still glowing, and with the rain pattering against the walls, Light clutches the pillow until he falls asleep.
Author: nardaviel
Theme: #10 (time periods), week 4: three hours from now
Rating: PG-13 -- dark themes
Warnings: SERIES: insanity orz, canon compliance through chapter 58/episode 25 (i.e. NO HAPPY ALTERNATE ENDING HERE), resulting spoilers, gay smex, very slight bending of canon timeline due to borked canon timeline; FIC: still spoilers, angst, no dialogue at all wtf
Summary: SERIES: Light finds, and Light loses, and Light moves, but doesn't move on. FIC: And now it's done.
Word Count: 949
Author's Note: This week, Equilibrium is a bit strange and flashback-y -- the bit that's in present tense is the bit to which the week's theme actually applies. This is crossposted to my fic journal, silent_eden, and will be linked to there from rxl_fans. And lastly, this was written at an appallingly late time, in an appallingly short time period, as evidenced by the late timestamp -- this Was finished before the deadline, I'm just bad at formatting these headers, arg. Also due to the timing fail, this is is unbetaed and hardly edited at all, so please, please, forgive me for my fail. It's been another one of those weeks. I will go back through and edit this, someday.
When Light was very small, before Sayu was born, his family lived in a smaller, thinner house, big enough for the three of them but not much bigger. Soichiro worked a little less, then, and he brought some of his desk work home, in order to spend more time with the beginnings of his family. Sachiko went to bed early those nights, but Light liked to stay up with his father, sitting in his lap and peering with big eyes at the papers on the table in front of them. It was a game he played with himself, seeing how much he could understand, blinking at unfamiliar kanji until his eyelids drooped and he fell asleep, lulled by Soichiro's even breathing and the scratching of his pen.
When his parents called him into their bedroom and told him that he was going to have a little sister, and that they were going to have to move to a bigger house, Light was a bit resentful -- this was his house, these were his parents -- but largely indifferent. And the new house was big, and exciting in the way new things are, whereas his sister Sayu was much smaller, tiny and alive and helpless, and Light, who knew his duty as an older brother, declared himself her protector, a three-year-old knight. Soichiro worked more, and later, to pay for the house, but Sachiko stayed at home, and Light had always been an independent child anyway.
And if it took him several weeks to adjust to falling asleep in the dark and silence of his bedroom, he didn't complain. What good would it do? And if he never quite forgot his first house, or sitting on his father's lap and watching in sleepy fascination as Soichiro's pen left clean black lines on the paper, well, everyone has fond childhood memories.
- - -
The suite L and Light had shared was on the eighth floor. In the months of their cohabitation, it had changed startlingly little. The trash cans filled with candy wrappers, and were emptied, and filled again; clothes revolved through the closet and the clothes baskets. Neither of them were particularly inclined to personalize their space.
The night that the handcuffs were removed, Light claimed a suite of his own, on the seventh floor, across the hall from his father's mostly-unused rooms. The layout and furnishings were quite identical to those he had grown used to, and it wasn't until he was lying in the oversized bed that he even realized that the room was somehow... lacking.
It was nothing so maudlin as the warmth of L's body, nothing as atavistic as the smell of the detective's skin he was missing. It was just--
It was quiet. It was so quiet.
L was almost definitely tapping blithely away at his laptop. Its backlight would turned to its brightest setting and his face would be lit in a creepy, unflattering way. But he was doing all of this a floor above Light, and on the opposite side of the building, and Light lay in his newly-claimed bed feeling somewhat cheated. He had been very much looking forward to sleeping in a room without that nonsense, and now it seemed he had become... more used to it than he had thought.
But if he could get used to irregular clicks and flickering blue light, he could certainly become acclimated again to darkness and peace.
- - -
The thing that was once L has been removed from the investigation room. It has been covered with a cloth, gently (Light assumes) and with the utmost respect. Light has watched it being wheeled into the back of a car, to be taken to a morgue. The idea seems strange -- L, lying naked and blue in a cold room, like any other once-person.
Light's father is in the investigation room, on the phone with someone, discussing cemetary plots. The rest of the investigation team is wandering Headquarters, stunned, various degrees of grief-stricken, unsure how to proceed now that the immediate necessities have been attended to. Matsuda has, for once, stopped talking. Light finds that he's glad they're reacting like this: Dazed as he is, he can mimic their behavior with little effort.
He blinks, finding himself coming to a stop before the door to their rooms. He didn't mean to come here.
But why not? If nothing else, no one will want to disturb him here. And he finds that he wants to lie in the bed where he touched L, just this morning. They didn't make the bed before they left, and the thought, which he knows should repulse him, is somehow comforting. He opens the door--
But someone has already been here. The sheets are new, the duvet is smooth, and no one seems surprised or disgusted with him. Probably Mogi, then.
Light is surprised to find that the sight hurts him. The last evidence of their relationship is probably washing out in the laundry machines right now, and the closet doors are closed, if indeed their clothes are even still there, and the room looks like L has never touched it.
Suddenly exhausted, Light curls up on the bed anyway, and reaches for L's pillow. Beneath the fragrance of laundry detergent he can tease out L's scent, elusive and fading. He wonders how long it'll be before it disappears entirely, and then he closes his eyes in denial of the thought. He bites down fiercely on his bottom lip, stopping the burning in his eyes before it can start. He didn't cry when he was three, and he certainly won't cry now, not over L, of all things.
With the lamps still glowing, and with the rain pattering against the walls, Light clutches the pillow until he falls asleep.