DN -- The End Is Near XXVII: Not in Kansas
Title: The End Is Near
Chapter: 27. Not in Kansas
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light/L, Matt/Mello
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,796
Warnings: criminal puns, language, madness, boys in denial
Summary: A horrible day gets a bit bet -- er, worse -- when Mello discovers that a certain albino boy has disa-Neared. Matt, Mello, L, and Light set out to find him, come hell, high water, or chocolate shortages. Well, maybe not those.
Author's Note: In British English, bobby pins are called "hair grips." Wikipedia hath spoken! And eltea's help was instrumental in making Mello... Mello. XD
XXVII - NOT IN KANSAS
L’s nerves had gone from tight-as-spandex to taut-as-a-bowstring.
…the spandex bit was an assumption; he had never plagued his defenseless body with spandex. What kind of horrible person would do that to him- or herself?
Bowstrings he had more experience with, though he was deftest with his own limbs. He should have thought to try some of his most reliable moves in the dress-another oversight to tack onto the list of them.
He admired the serrated steak knives set out on the dining tables, vaguely listening to Light going on at length about how to solve the world’s problems in five hundred words or less, one column at a time, and wondered if he could find a convenient place to hide such an object.
He sorely missed his jeans. There was very little you couldn’t conceal in those blessed pockets without anyone being the wiser.
He blamed Light for his ludicrous unpreparedness. The boy had taught him how to let his guard down.
The orchestra seemed to be approaching the end of their rehearsing. A violin shrieked, and a chill rippled down L’s spine.
A faint touch to Light’s shoulder caught the boy’s attention.
“Do you think you might assist me in finding the ladies’ room?” L murmured, attempting once again to make his voice softer without letting the pitch slip any lower.
Light understood, as he always did. “Of course,” he replied. Sweeping a warm arm about L’s waist, he smiled at the assembled company. “We’ll be back after a quick little expedition,” he told them.
“Bathroom’s just-oh. That kind of expedition.” Falstaff grinned wickedly and threw Light a painfully obvious wink.
L appreciated the veil more than ever: he had just gone from wide-eyed and flushing to murderously offended in a matter of seconds. That sort of transition would probably frighten most people.
Before his mouth could betray him by commenting on Falstaff’s person-or perhaps his mother-L seized Light’s hand and led the boy through and out of the room. A curving stone staircase segued into another hall, this one more modernized, warm wood paneling sheathing the walls and a lush carpet spanning the floor.
“I’m going to do some reconnaissance,” L informed Light, trying to concentrate through the bewilderment engendered by the unusual clothes, the flickering candles, and, most distracting of all, Light’s fingers strolling up the part of his arm that the glove concealed, seeking his bare shoulder beneath the shawl. “Since the party at large will apparently assume that we’re having sex in the bathroom,” he went on with some difficulty, “you could search in another direction without being missed.”
There was a forty percent chance that Light hadn’t heard a word of that.
“Mmhm…”
…forty-five.
Light leaned in, his palm pushing the shawl aside, his warm breath ghosting over L’s neck. “Maybe we should vindicate their suspicions…”
L smiled, running his fingers once through Light’s hair. “I think you forget why we’re actually here, Light-kun,” he remarked.
“You make me forget everything,” Light replied, his lips against L’s skin, his murmur moist. “It’s terrifying, and I love it.”
L took the boy’s inimitable face in both hands and forced Light to meet his eyes. “I will make you forget your entire childhood, Light-kun,” he promised, “if you focus for me now.”
Light stole his hands and kissed his palms. Suddenly L hated the gloves.
“I’ll hold you to it,” Light decided. He ducked out of reach and headed down the hallway, throwing one last enigmatic smile over his shoulder.
L took a moment to compose himself. Once the veil was in place, his shawl was arranged, and he wasn’t feeling quite so inclined to tackle a certain Japanese genius to the floor and rip said genius’s clothes right off, L started down the hall in the opposite direction, taking care to open every door he came across.
There were a few that were locked, but the bobby pins that had heretofore secured the rose in his hair solved that problem quite efficiently.
The torque wrench he’d slipped down his bodice didn’t hurt either.
-
Matt looked like he wanted to tear John Falstaff’s throat out, throw it on the floor, and grind it into the parquetry with his heel.
Mello was thinking he ought to start a book or a blog or some shit, because moments like this one were just too damn good not to be immortalized.
Such a format would also give him the opportunity to describe at length how painfully frigging sexy Matt was looking on this particular evening. He was half-serious about all the raunchy lines. Who wouldn’t want a suited, bespectacled Matt doing them a favor or two?
Or three?
Or just doing them in general?
Honestly.
It wasn’t that Matt wasn’t usually hot-dear Lord, he was. It was just that he was usually hot, not imbued with the incredible intensity of a thousand flaming suns all going supernova in implausible unison.
Falstaff paused in relating the endless chronicle of his exes to notice Matt following the meanderings of a champagne-bearing waiter with blazing blue eyes.
“Designated driver?” he prompted, raising his own flute. It was his third just since he’d joined the conversation. Accordingly, his grin was slightly lopsided, and crinkles spread from hazy eyes. “Pity. I always end up using the limo service; I can’t be bothered to stay in a condition to drive back.”
“Dear Matthew likes it, though-don’t you, Matty?” Mello butted in guilelessly before Matt could reply. “I know I like to ride late at night. Matty drives me all the way home.”
Matt’s eyes were dark, and uneven blotches of pink were creeping into his cheeks. He looked like his will was about to break, which begged the question of what would happen when it did.
Mello was betting that somebody would get their head bitten off. Finally.
“Elle and Light have been gone quite a while,” Matt noted coolly. “Maybe we should go check on them.”
Mello mouthed check them out at Falstaff, who laughed uproariously.
Matt didn’t look quite so amused. Furthermore, he closed iron fingers around Mello’s wrist and commenced hauling him out of the room.
Mello waved to Falstaff, who gave him a thumbs-up.
“Gee, Matty,” Mello giggled as Matt started scanning one of the innumerable identical halls, presumably for abandoned articles of L and Light’s clothing. “You don’t have to drag me around to get me alone-”
Matt turned on him abruptly, the candlelight playing on an implacable, impregnable frown.
“Do you mean it?” he demanded. “Or are you just bullshitting for fun?”
Mello gazed at him with wide, innocent eyes. “I don’t know what you mean, Matty,” he murmured, sliding a finger along his bottom lip. “I mean… I wish I was a tornado, so that I could blow you into next we-”
He would have finished the sentence if Matt hadn’t shoved him up against the wall and kissed him so hard his head spun. There were hands on his waist, warmer than he’d expected, and then they were planted on his hips, the heels of them pushing him mercilessly against the edge of the frame of a painting that wobbled precariously as a result.
The wallpaper grated on his bare shoulders as he slid away from it. Like hell he was going to ruin this by bringing a portrait down on Matt’s head.
Man, he really did need a blog.
For the moment, he settled with burying both hands in Matt’s hair and yanking the boy in as close as a certain set of ersatz cleavage would allow.
Matt’s mouth was supple and commanding, and he fought to keep up amidst the wild fireworks bursting in his brain, lighting the short fuse of every damn nerve-it was a tingling at first, a prickling that solidified into a deep, deep burn.
Matt drew back, his eyes glowing like flares, and smirked.
“Not in Kansas anymore,” he remarked. “Are we, bitch?”
Mello’s reply, though certainly obscene, was more of a request than an actual insult, and he reeled Matt back in to prove it, scrabbling with the other hand for a doorknob he swore he’d seen.
-
Light jiggled the door handle. Nothing. He pressed his eye to the crack in the door, but he couldn’t see the contents of the room-just more of the halo of yellow light that spilled out where the door didn’t quite meet the frame. After a moment of hesitation, he knocked, but there was no answer.
What he needed was somebody with a lock-pick.
Or a miracle.
Difficult to say which was harder to come by these days.
He fished his phone out of his pocket, hit the first speed-dial, and raised it to his ear. Five uneventful rings later, it clicked to a message machine, and he hung up uncertainly. Maybe L had found something.
Well, if Mello could hide chocolate under that dress, he could probably hide lock-picking supplies.
And God knew what else.
No, God probably didn’t want to know, either.
Light skipped down a half-staircase to another hall, glancing every which way in an attempt to determine where he’d come from and how to get back there.
As he passed a closet, he heard a whole lot of mumbling.
“Matt-”
“Ow-loosen it first-”
“Mmmn, wait-”
Light rolled his eyes. He should have started making bets on what they’d be doing the next time-trading shoes, maybe?
He flung the door open, making sure to scowl disapprovingly. “You guys are so-”
Mello had one stocking-clad foot against the left wall for leverage, and both of the dress’s straps had been pushed off of his shoulders. Matt was in worse shape yet-his jacket had disappeared; his tie was half-undone; the first three buttons of his shirt had yielded to Mello’s red-tipped fingers, which were working on the fourth; his hair was in total disarray; and the coveted glasses were askew.
They both looked up, Mello from leaving an extremely obvious hickey on Matt’s throat.
Light wanted to say something that involved “disgraceful.”
All he managed was “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!”
He considered himself lucky that a few resilient parts of his brain had managed to stave off a complete short-circuit by the time Matt and Mello approached the corner in which he was huddled, rocking back and forth and trying to erase images that could not be un-seen.
“Aw, can it,” Mello told him. “Just because he’s hotter than you.”
“I don’t know if he can can it,” Matt reported cheerfully, his grin almost eliminating his other features. “Though it isn’t until he chooses to can-can it that I think we’ll be in real trouble.”
A little more of Light’s soul withered and died.
[Chapter XXVI] [Chapter XXVIII]
Chapter: 27. Not in Kansas
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light/L, Matt/Mello
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,796
Warnings: criminal puns, language, madness, boys in denial
Summary: A horrible day gets a bit bet -- er, worse -- when Mello discovers that a certain albino boy has disa-Neared. Matt, Mello, L, and Light set out to find him, come hell, high water, or chocolate shortages. Well, maybe not those.
Author's Note: In British English, bobby pins are called "hair grips." Wikipedia hath spoken! And eltea's help was instrumental in making Mello... Mello. XD
XXVII - NOT IN KANSAS
L’s nerves had gone from tight-as-spandex to taut-as-a-bowstring.
…the spandex bit was an assumption; he had never plagued his defenseless body with spandex. What kind of horrible person would do that to him- or herself?
Bowstrings he had more experience with, though he was deftest with his own limbs. He should have thought to try some of his most reliable moves in the dress-another oversight to tack onto the list of them.
He admired the serrated steak knives set out on the dining tables, vaguely listening to Light going on at length about how to solve the world’s problems in five hundred words or less, one column at a time, and wondered if he could find a convenient place to hide such an object.
He sorely missed his jeans. There was very little you couldn’t conceal in those blessed pockets without anyone being the wiser.
He blamed Light for his ludicrous unpreparedness. The boy had taught him how to let his guard down.
The orchestra seemed to be approaching the end of their rehearsing. A violin shrieked, and a chill rippled down L’s spine.
A faint touch to Light’s shoulder caught the boy’s attention.
“Do you think you might assist me in finding the ladies’ room?” L murmured, attempting once again to make his voice softer without letting the pitch slip any lower.
Light understood, as he always did. “Of course,” he replied. Sweeping a warm arm about L’s waist, he smiled at the assembled company. “We’ll be back after a quick little expedition,” he told them.
“Bathroom’s just-oh. That kind of expedition.” Falstaff grinned wickedly and threw Light a painfully obvious wink.
L appreciated the veil more than ever: he had just gone from wide-eyed and flushing to murderously offended in a matter of seconds. That sort of transition would probably frighten most people.
Before his mouth could betray him by commenting on Falstaff’s person-or perhaps his mother-L seized Light’s hand and led the boy through and out of the room. A curving stone staircase segued into another hall, this one more modernized, warm wood paneling sheathing the walls and a lush carpet spanning the floor.
“I’m going to do some reconnaissance,” L informed Light, trying to concentrate through the bewilderment engendered by the unusual clothes, the flickering candles, and, most distracting of all, Light’s fingers strolling up the part of his arm that the glove concealed, seeking his bare shoulder beneath the shawl. “Since the party at large will apparently assume that we’re having sex in the bathroom,” he went on with some difficulty, “you could search in another direction without being missed.”
There was a forty percent chance that Light hadn’t heard a word of that.
“Mmhm…”
…forty-five.
Light leaned in, his palm pushing the shawl aside, his warm breath ghosting over L’s neck. “Maybe we should vindicate their suspicions…”
L smiled, running his fingers once through Light’s hair. “I think you forget why we’re actually here, Light-kun,” he remarked.
“You make me forget everything,” Light replied, his lips against L’s skin, his murmur moist. “It’s terrifying, and I love it.”
L took the boy’s inimitable face in both hands and forced Light to meet his eyes. “I will make you forget your entire childhood, Light-kun,” he promised, “if you focus for me now.”
Light stole his hands and kissed his palms. Suddenly L hated the gloves.
“I’ll hold you to it,” Light decided. He ducked out of reach and headed down the hallway, throwing one last enigmatic smile over his shoulder.
L took a moment to compose himself. Once the veil was in place, his shawl was arranged, and he wasn’t feeling quite so inclined to tackle a certain Japanese genius to the floor and rip said genius’s clothes right off, L started down the hall in the opposite direction, taking care to open every door he came across.
There were a few that were locked, but the bobby pins that had heretofore secured the rose in his hair solved that problem quite efficiently.
The torque wrench he’d slipped down his bodice didn’t hurt either.
-
Matt looked like he wanted to tear John Falstaff’s throat out, throw it on the floor, and grind it into the parquetry with his heel.
Mello was thinking he ought to start a book or a blog or some shit, because moments like this one were just too damn good not to be immortalized.
Such a format would also give him the opportunity to describe at length how painfully frigging sexy Matt was looking on this particular evening. He was half-serious about all the raunchy lines. Who wouldn’t want a suited, bespectacled Matt doing them a favor or two?
Or three?
Or just doing them in general?
Honestly.
It wasn’t that Matt wasn’t usually hot-dear Lord, he was. It was just that he was usually hot, not imbued with the incredible intensity of a thousand flaming suns all going supernova in implausible unison.
Falstaff paused in relating the endless chronicle of his exes to notice Matt following the meanderings of a champagne-bearing waiter with blazing blue eyes.
“Designated driver?” he prompted, raising his own flute. It was his third just since he’d joined the conversation. Accordingly, his grin was slightly lopsided, and crinkles spread from hazy eyes. “Pity. I always end up using the limo service; I can’t be bothered to stay in a condition to drive back.”
“Dear Matthew likes it, though-don’t you, Matty?” Mello butted in guilelessly before Matt could reply. “I know I like to ride late at night. Matty drives me all the way home.”
Matt’s eyes were dark, and uneven blotches of pink were creeping into his cheeks. He looked like his will was about to break, which begged the question of what would happen when it did.
Mello was betting that somebody would get their head bitten off. Finally.
“Elle and Light have been gone quite a while,” Matt noted coolly. “Maybe we should go check on them.”
Mello mouthed check them out at Falstaff, who laughed uproariously.
Matt didn’t look quite so amused. Furthermore, he closed iron fingers around Mello’s wrist and commenced hauling him out of the room.
Mello waved to Falstaff, who gave him a thumbs-up.
“Gee, Matty,” Mello giggled as Matt started scanning one of the innumerable identical halls, presumably for abandoned articles of L and Light’s clothing. “You don’t have to drag me around to get me alone-”
Matt turned on him abruptly, the candlelight playing on an implacable, impregnable frown.
“Do you mean it?” he demanded. “Or are you just bullshitting for fun?”
Mello gazed at him with wide, innocent eyes. “I don’t know what you mean, Matty,” he murmured, sliding a finger along his bottom lip. “I mean… I wish I was a tornado, so that I could blow you into next we-”
He would have finished the sentence if Matt hadn’t shoved him up against the wall and kissed him so hard his head spun. There were hands on his waist, warmer than he’d expected, and then they were planted on his hips, the heels of them pushing him mercilessly against the edge of the frame of a painting that wobbled precariously as a result.
The wallpaper grated on his bare shoulders as he slid away from it. Like hell he was going to ruin this by bringing a portrait down on Matt’s head.
Man, he really did need a blog.
For the moment, he settled with burying both hands in Matt’s hair and yanking the boy in as close as a certain set of ersatz cleavage would allow.
Matt’s mouth was supple and commanding, and he fought to keep up amidst the wild fireworks bursting in his brain, lighting the short fuse of every damn nerve-it was a tingling at first, a prickling that solidified into a deep, deep burn.
Matt drew back, his eyes glowing like flares, and smirked.
“Not in Kansas anymore,” he remarked. “Are we, bitch?”
Mello’s reply, though certainly obscene, was more of a request than an actual insult, and he reeled Matt back in to prove it, scrabbling with the other hand for a doorknob he swore he’d seen.
-
Light jiggled the door handle. Nothing. He pressed his eye to the crack in the door, but he couldn’t see the contents of the room-just more of the halo of yellow light that spilled out where the door didn’t quite meet the frame. After a moment of hesitation, he knocked, but there was no answer.
What he needed was somebody with a lock-pick.
Or a miracle.
Difficult to say which was harder to come by these days.
He fished his phone out of his pocket, hit the first speed-dial, and raised it to his ear. Five uneventful rings later, it clicked to a message machine, and he hung up uncertainly. Maybe L had found something.
Well, if Mello could hide chocolate under that dress, he could probably hide lock-picking supplies.
And God knew what else.
No, God probably didn’t want to know, either.
Light skipped down a half-staircase to another hall, glancing every which way in an attempt to determine where he’d come from and how to get back there.
As he passed a closet, he heard a whole lot of mumbling.
“Matt-”
“Ow-loosen it first-”
“Mmmn, wait-”
Light rolled his eyes. He should have started making bets on what they’d be doing the next time-trading shoes, maybe?
He flung the door open, making sure to scowl disapprovingly. “You guys are so-”
Mello had one stocking-clad foot against the left wall for leverage, and both of the dress’s straps had been pushed off of his shoulders. Matt was in worse shape yet-his jacket had disappeared; his tie was half-undone; the first three buttons of his shirt had yielded to Mello’s red-tipped fingers, which were working on the fourth; his hair was in total disarray; and the coveted glasses were askew.
They both looked up, Mello from leaving an extremely obvious hickey on Matt’s throat.
Light wanted to say something that involved “disgraceful.”
All he managed was “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!”
He considered himself lucky that a few resilient parts of his brain had managed to stave off a complete short-circuit by the time Matt and Mello approached the corner in which he was huddled, rocking back and forth and trying to erase images that could not be un-seen.
“Aw, can it,” Mello told him. “Just because he’s hotter than you.”
“I don’t know if he can can it,” Matt reported cheerfully, his grin almost eliminating his other features. “Though it isn’t until he chooses to can-can it that I think we’ll be in real trouble.”
A little more of Light’s soul withered and died.
[Chapter XXVI] [Chapter XXVIII]