DN -- Caveat Emptor III: Human Contact
Title: Caveat Emptor
Chapter: 3. Human Contact
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: L/Light
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,955
Prompt: "dark"
Warnings: don't even get me started! XD
Summary: In which there are shopping trips, sarcasm, backhanded compliments, dark rooms, big guns, bubble baths, trauma of every sort, and detailed fantasies involving cake - lots of those. Let the buyer beware indeed.
Author's Note: "Guh" is one of my favorite onomatopoeia in real life...
iii. human contact
They’d been sitting in silence for a long time.
Light was losing it. He didn’t know exactly how “it” was quantified, but “it” was going, and fast. In this impenetrable, unbreakable, speechless, sightless pit, he was losing “it” at the speed of Light. He couldn’t tell what part of the day it was; he couldn’t differentiate walls or the door or even himself; he couldn’t see L sitting two feet away-or three, or five, or eight-fucking-teen for all he knew. There was no concept of space, no tracking of time, no reassurance of his existence at all, but for the grating of his breath in his dry mouth. He strained to hear the soft answering sigh of L’s, struggling not to panic when long moments passed in which he couldn’t make it out. The dark pressed against his wide-open eyes and wriggled wormlike in through his ears.
It was eating his brain.
Guh.
It was like before. It was like before, except that this time, he was stranded in an uncaring oblivion, and no one would be watching intently on the monitor in case he passed out from lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of human contact…
He was of the belief that human contact was a necessity. Not all humans. Just… some of them. There were people he couldn’t live without.
He wasn’t sure how he’d done it before, but he didn’t think he could do it again. Not now that he knew the difference.
He cleared his throat, and it sounded like a thunderstorm.
“Did you really think,” he managed, “all that time, that I was Kira?”
“Light-kun uses the past tense,” L observed quietly.
Please.
“You can’t honestly-”
“Light,” L interrupted, gently but unrepentantly, “listen to me. The judgment is not personal. It is not about you. It is not a reflection of how I feel about you. It is about the case, for which reason I am doing my very best to separate myself from that case. Differentiating myself as a human being from the work that I do isn’t something that’s easy for me, but I am trying very hard to ensure that Light Yagami as a suspect and Light Yagami as a person exist in two distinguishable parts of my life.”
He could understand that. Of course he could understand that. L probably dealt with people this way all the time. It was probably the only reason he was still alive.
For the moment, anyway.
“What about me reeks of mass-murdering psychopath?” he muttered. “I could get a new cologne.”
L laughed softly. “No,” he responded, “Light-kun smells like he ought to smell. It isn’t that so much as…”
He trailed off, and the silence stifled them again.
“What?” Light prompted.
“It is my conclusion,” L mused, “that Kira believes that what he does is right. I think he does see himself as the world’s savior, and misguided as he may be, he has the power to enforce his will. Given what he has done with that power and what he appears to intend to do… that requires a certain type of person.”
Light closed his eyes. Dark. What a surprise.
“And you think I’m that type of person,” he finished.
There was a pause.
“Not as such,” L replied, inexplicably. “It is more that… you are righteous. You are naïve. You believe in things like justice, and you see the world in black and white.”
All black, at the moment.
“Thank you or something,” Light muttered, wishing, wildly and fervently, that he could run a hand through his hair. He wanted a damn shower. He wanted five damn showers in a row, though he wasn’t entirely sure how he intended to determine where one ended and the next began.
“It is a good thing,” L responded softly, “to have faith. And what is likely the most backhanded compliment thus far… to be frank, Light-kun, you’re the only person I’ve ever encountered who I believe is intelligent enough to have executed-even to have imagined-a plot of this caliber. There are not many people like you-like us-in the world, Light-kun. Many high-class criminals are intelligent, but they are not brilliant. Kira is, and you are.” He breathed. “I know that isn’t proof. I know that’s barely a correlation, and no court would take commonality as evidence. But you have the potential, Light-kun. Almost all of the variables are in place. That’s what frightens me. And that’s why I can’t let it go.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Light insisted, gritting his teeth. “I don’t know anything. You’ve been here. You’ve seen. Isn’t that enough, L? Aren’t your own damn eyes evidence enough?”
“It’s got to be you,” L murmured. “It must be.”
“Why? There are other geniuses, L. Other people with all the variables. There’s you.”
The handcuff chain jingled quietly, and he gathered that L was shaking his head, more to himself than anything else.
“It must be you,” L told the dark, “or I have nothing.”
“If it’s me,” Light returned wearily, “then I do.”
“Light-kun-”
“Think about it, L. All that I’ve put into this-all the time, all the effort, all the energy. All the people I would have had to lie to, all the trust I would have had to betray. That’s all I’ve got-the reassurance that those things belong to me. Being Kira would devalue every one of them. Destroy it all.” He drew in a deep breath, held it, and released it. “I know it would make sense, and I understand what you’re saying, but… I’m not, L. I know it’s hard to trust that, trust me, but there’s nothing else I can give you. The truth is all I have.”
There was a long silence, and then L spoke quietly.
“Do you think they’re watching us, Light-kun?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Infrared camera?”
“Something to that effect, yes.”
“I imagine they would,” he decided, “for safety purposes. But what difference does it make?”
“None.” The links of the handcuff chain trilled again, and then bare feet patted over the cement as their owner crossed the floor. L sat down-close by, terribly close by somewhere behind him, and then even closer as he slid towards Light until their spines touched. He took Light’s sore, chafed hands in his and held them. His palms were smooth, and his fingers were warm. “No difference at all.”
-
L’s thumb was sliding gently back and forth along his index finger. It was lulling. It was solace.
“Have they fed you, Light-kun?” he asked.
“No,” Light murmured, shaking himself awake. Something struck him. “You must be starving…” To be deprived of sustenance this long had to be an indescribable blow to a perpetual snacker like L.
Not to mention the unprecedented dip in his blood sugar; good God.
“I’ll survive,” L decided mildly. “How is your headache?”
Light had been focusing almost exclusively on the warm, soft pressure of L’s hands around his. He attended the nerve inputs from his skull.
“Worse,” he related.
Feathery hair brushed the back of his neck as L nodded, and goosebumps rippled down his arms. Unthinkingly he clasped L’s hands a little tighter.
“The dehydration could do that on its own,” L informed him, “so we can’t really be sure whether or not there are any lingering effects from the anesthetic.”
“Uh-huh,” Light mumbled. Cake. Cake and strawberries, flavor exploding on his tongue; sweet, cool juice running down his dry throat, slicking its sore walls; L’s thin fingers brushing a lock of hair behind his ear… Is that enough, Light-kun? We have a great deal if you’d like more. We have all the cake you could ever want, all the cake I could ever want, and all the time in the world…
“Are hallucinations normal?” he heard himself asking indistinctly.
“Hallucinations, Light-kun?” He wasn’t sure whether the note in L’s voice was puzzlement or concern.
“More like… daydreams…”
L’s fingertips grazed his palm. “What of?”
Oh. He should quit now, while he was, if not ahead, at least not totally fucked.
“…stuff…”
L was smiling faintly now; he could detect it-ha…-in his colleague’s voice. “The particular character of ‘stuff’ involved makes quite a difference, Light-kun.”
Light shifted. “It’s usually… cake.”
There was a pause.
“I don’t think you need to worry too much, Light-kun,” L told him. “I daydream about cake with some consistency.”
I like my cake with a good consistency, too.
He wanted to slap himself, but even without the handcuffs, he never would have dared to take his hands away from L’s. He had no guarantee he’d be allowed to put them there again.
“Well,” he said, “I… don’t, usually. Y’know.”
“I would imagine not,” L replied, sounding vaguely amused. “Do these daydreams include anything else?”
Light took a deep breath. He knew how persistent L could be. L must have already known, or he wouldn’t be asking. He was L, for Christ’s sake.
“You,” he answered quietly. “You’re in them.”
You, me, cake, handcuffs. Sounds like a party. See you at seven? (Or will we need more time?)
L hesitated-for a split-second, but he did-before returning to the task of stroking the backs of Light’s hands.
“That makes sense,” was his verdict. “You have likely come to associate cake with me, and with good reason.”
Yeah. That was it. That was it, and all there was to it.
This was a dead-end street, and he’d better brake and turn around before he spun out of control, smashed through a fence, and ended up in someone’s swimming pool.
That happened sometimes.
“Yeah,” Light improvised feebly. “I’m sure that’s all. It makes sense.”
L squeezed his hands gently. “We’re going to get through this, Light-kun,” he promised. “One way or another, between the two of us.” The two of them. The pair of them. Together. United. Understood. “Believe that, and believe in it. I lie when it suits me, Light-kun, but I’m not lying now.”
“I know,” Light told him. “I can hear that you believe it, too.” He smiled thinly, his cracked lips mustering a meek, stinging protest. “Though the optimism seems a little uncharacteristic.”
He heard an answering smile in L’s voice, dryer even than his own. “We must have something,” L noted.
Light held tighter. “We’ve got hope, then,” he said. “Hope, and each other.”
-
Unsurprisingly, both of his bulwarks failed.
They came for L again not long later. The hinges shrieked, and the faint gray light was blinding where it streamed from the hall. L clutched Light’s hands briefly closer, then released them and stood with the usual strange, half-bent dignity. Through the dappled veil of black and white spots shifting before his beleaguered eyes, Light saw just how pale, gaunt, and tired L looked despite his indomitable will.
Well, there went the hope.
Whichever indifferent lackey it was grabbed L’s shoulder and jerked him across the threshold; it was blatantly a matter of intimidation for its own sake. He pitched something at Light-somehow he ducked it, and it rolled across the floor a ways. The door slammed shut again, the hinges howled again, and Light, in kind, once more sighed feelingly and let his shoulders slump.
He sat still for a few long minutes-or perhaps a single long moment, or perhaps a relatively brief eternity-before noticing just how tingly his hands were, and how idle his mind.
Neither would do for the great and gifted Light Yagami, of course.
With three deep breaths to fortify him, Light set about the task of threading himself through his own linked arms to move the handcuffs around to the front.
Judging by the general silence of things for the past however-long-it-had-been, he doubted that anyone was watching or would care-and why should they? What difference did it make if he could finally scratch his nose? He was still alone with his thoughts in a pitch-black room, the door was still locked, and all his prospects still looked distinctly shitty.
Business as usual.
The cuffs bit into his wrists as he struggled to slide them under himself, and he kicked off his shoes to lose a fraction more bulk, wondering why he hadn’t thought to do it earlier. His endlessly-chafed wrists were chafing again, with renewed vigor and considerable gusto; blood began to trickle almost lackadaisically along the lines of his palms, running down his fingers, and droplets quivered, suspended, at the tips. He focused on the warmth instead of the needles of pain, a tremor of shredding guilt rippling through his stomach at the thought of what L might be enduring as he sat here, curled, straining, and bitching about it like a spoiled socialite.
Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, he fed his legs through the awkward ring made by his trembling forearms and drew the cuffs up and past his knees, and then he had… succeeded.
He would have liked a bit of fanfare to accompany his vaguely-contortionist triumph, but no such luck.
Tentatively he probed at the worst of the scrapes before remembering where his fingertips had been-that was, here with the rest of him-and revising his decision to deliver bacteria directly into his own bloodstream.
Cringing inwardly even now, he wiped his hands on his pants and waited uncertainly, the emptiness pressing, his hoarse breathing a roar in his ears, for the bleeding to stop. He supposed that if it didn’t, his best recourse would be to go to the door and make noise until someone came to help.
If he could find the door.
If his voice worked.
If anyone was there.
Deep breaths. Oxygen to the brain. The walls were not closing in. They would bring L back soon, like they had done last time. It would be okay. L had said so. He believed it, and L was always right. Hope, and each other.
He found the item the guard had thrown, which turned out to be a plastic bottle of water. Prying the cap off, sniffing, and testing it with the tip of his tongue, he found nothing amiss, and he was so damn thirsty that he almost wouldn’t have cared anyway. It wasn’t like poison would do all that much more damage than the dehydration.
When he’d emptied half the bottle one slow, savoring sip at a time, he set it carefully aside to save the rest for L and sat again to wait.
Cautiously, when the twinges in his chafed wrists had faded to a dull, consistent throbbing, he lay properly on the floor for the first time, folding an arm to pillow his head and settling gratefully. It was strangely, almost eerily easy to sleep here, or at least to drift and doze until it was impossible to discern sleeping from waking. Maybe it was the indistinguishable, fragmented mess of time, or maybe it was simply the purity of the dark.
This was all very tiring.
-
The door opened. Light raised his heavy head, thinking he should hide the new position of the handcuffs, but there wasn’t time, and the door slammed peremptorily shut as soon as L had been shoved through it anyway. Bare feet pattered, stumbling, and a fresh cadence of shallow breathing joined Light’s.
“Are you all right?” he asked, sitting up and peering uselessly into the field of oblivion before him.
“Yes, Light-kun,” L answered-belied by his voice, faint and inches short of breaking. “Are you?”
“I’m fine,” Light assured him, getting unsteadily to his feet to step cautiously towards the sound. “Where are you?”
“Here, Light-kun,” came the reply, and he moved to the voice, arms outstretched, until his hands found the warmth of L’s shoulder, the cotton of the familiar plain shirt soft where his fingertips brushed along a seam. Unthinkingly, he latched on with his left hand, feeling for L’s face with his right, wanting, somehow, to confirm…
A wet warmth now, a trickle under his thumb, thick, slick, and feebly dripping. No, no, no-
“You’re bleeding,” he concluded, hearing his voice shake. “What did they do to you?”
“I’m tired, Light-kun,” L murmured. “Please let me sit down.”
“Well-sure, of course, here-there’s a little water-”
Gently he guided the spindly figure to the floor, holding L’s arm to bear as much of the man’s insubstantial weight as he could manage. L made a weak noise that combined the worst parts of a sigh and a groan. Light winced, fumbled the bottle into the thin, thin hands, and repeated, more softly than before, “What did they do, L?”
“It’s merely intimidation, Light-kun,” L answered quietly, handcuff chain jingling meekly as he shifted to raise the bottle to his lips. L’s lips. Not the time to think about L’s lips, L’s lips and water, L’s lips and cake… “And of course the pettiest sort of revenge; the further a man falls, the uglier his dreams of retribution.”
“What do they want from you?” Light asked, running a hand-well, both his hands, since they were linked-down L’s arm, a gesture he hoped was equally encouraging for its object.
“They want to know,” L explained quietly, “how much of my money and our money Watari would be willing to shell out to recover me-to recover us, though odds are they’ll approach the Japanese police separately on your behalf.”
Light frowned, struggling to resist the urge to take L’s hand in both of his and refuse to let it go. “But… Watari would just pay them the stupid money and be done with it, wouldn’t he?”
“That,” L noted, “or he is already on his way, which would explain why they’re still telling me that I must convince him-they can’t reach him. Whatever the case, it would be a tremendous waste of money that could go towards much more important projects.”
There was a pause.
“You’re letting them beat you,” Light summarized flatly, “to save a couple bucks.”
“A couple million,” L sighed.
“As if money means anything to you.”
“…there is also the principle of the thi-”
“L!”
Chain links clinked again as L raised both hands to rub his face. “Light-kun,” he whispered, “what would you have me do?”
Light hesitated for a long moment, and then, cautiously, carefully, giving the other man ample time to revolt and recoil, he crawled around to sit behind L and drew the narrow torso gently down, settling the riotous head in his lap, where he could bury both hands in L’s hair and slide his fingers slowly through the tangles of feathery strands. L’s hair was impossibly soft, soft like a kitten’s fur, matted in places with blood and heaven knew what else, smooth and violently angled, but incredibly clean given the various horrors to which its owner had been subjected.
Light expected L to protest, or to pull free, or at least to tense up, unnerved by the contact and the proximity, but… he didn’t. Instead, he settled on Light’s crossed ankles, nestling closer, and released his next breath as a warm, soft, contented sigh.
“That’s nice, Light-kun,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
It was because L couldn’t look at him. It was because anything that happened in the midst of nothingness was perfectly deniable. It was because they were alone, and even the one and only L needed a little human contact sometimes.
Light touched a delicate finger to a meticulously even crescent-shaped laceration on L’s cheek. “So he thinks that the more he abuses you,” he surmised slowly, “the more money Watari will be willing to offer for your return. Your ‘safe’ return. The more you’ll ask Watari to offer, it sounds like.”
“Precisely right,” L remarked, a note of approval in amongst the resignation.
“But-he wouldn’t kill you,” Light sputtered. “I mean-would he?”
He heard a smile in L’s soft voice.
“Have you ever been in love, Light-kun?”
It was a complete non sequitur, but all Light could think was that L didn’t say fallen. He said been.
“I-” All the grit and dust of a thousand Saharas had conspired and coalesced to block his throat. “-don’t-know…”
It couldn’t mean what it ought to. What it had to. What he wanted it to mean.
He scrabbled after thoughts like dandelion seeds on the breeze, but they were gone. His head rang hollow.
“It was very stupid, really,” L remarked. “The moment that I realized.”
He was having trouble breathing. The world was moving too fast; somebody needed to tell whoever was running this show to slow it the hell down, because he was going to fall off and hurt himself.
“Do you remember,” L asked, “when you asked me if I wanted the strawberry on your slice of cake?”
If he’d had a brain, he might have tried to rack it for the sliver of information, but his skull ached with its own emptiness, and there was nothing decipherable written on its walls.
“No,” he said, feeling the blood throb in his fingertips where they rested against L’s skin.
“Well,” L replied, smiling faintly again by the sound of things, “you did.”
His mind was an Arctic wasteland, everything swathed and silenced by a blinding white that burned in contrast with the dark that hemmed him here.
“And-you-realized…?”
“No,” was the correction, still smiling. “I realized when I said, ‘I’d rather you have it,’ and discovered that I meant it.”
Fucking strawberries. Fucking strawberries had no right to change everything when the status quo was so, so wonderfully secure. Light understood how to operate in a world where L was distant, aloof, untouchable, and unmoved-when he was a god-angel hovering just beyond the limits of accessibility, when he was more than human, when his preternatural reasoning and his ethereal form together proved that he existed in a separate sphere entirely. But this-confessions, admissions, what might have been truths-this wasn’t L. This couldn’t be L. This couldn’t be L, because it wasn’t safe to love him if there was a chance in heaven-hell that he loved back.
Light held his double-knotted tongue and petted L’s hair with shaking hands. There was blood on them, not just his blood, but L’s too. L wasn’t supposed to bleed. If he could bleed, he could break, and if L broke, the world did.
L lay still for a long moment before clearing his throat. “I believe this is the part,” he noted, “where you inform me first that I am a stalker and second that you are into women.”
“You’re not,” he retorted immediately, because defending L and disagreeing with him were both reflexive and frequently contradictory. “And-and I’m not. I mean-I’m not into women, but not really men either. It’s not about a gender; it’s about… people. Specific people.” He swallowed and closed his eyes, to an identical darkness that at least was self-imposed. “You.”
L breathed, and Light stroked his bangs back from his forehead.
“I’m not easy to get along with, Light-kun.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“The fact that you persist so far makes me optimistic.”
“You’re worth it.”
“My modi operandi are… abnormal…”
“You also have a propensity for getting in way over your head.”
“Yes.”
Light traced a heretofore-mythical eyebrow. “Yes,” he said.
L was silent for a moment. “If you’re willing to try,” he decided, “then I will do everything I can.”
“If we survive this part,” Light replied.
“Light-kun’s sanguine outlook is positively inspiring.”
“You’re a sarcastic bitch.”
“And a kettle of a rich ebony, Light-kun.”
Light smiled, leaned down, and kissed his forehead. “And that,” he said.
[chapter ii] [chapter iv]
Chapter: 3. Human Contact
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: L/Light
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,955
Prompt: "dark"
Warnings: don't even get me started! XD
Summary: In which there are shopping trips, sarcasm, backhanded compliments, dark rooms, big guns, bubble baths, trauma of every sort, and detailed fantasies involving cake - lots of those. Let the buyer beware indeed.
Author's Note: "Guh" is one of my favorite onomatopoeia in real life...
iii. human contact
They’d been sitting in silence for a long time.
Light was losing it. He didn’t know exactly how “it” was quantified, but “it” was going, and fast. In this impenetrable, unbreakable, speechless, sightless pit, he was losing “it” at the speed of Light. He couldn’t tell what part of the day it was; he couldn’t differentiate walls or the door or even himself; he couldn’t see L sitting two feet away-or three, or five, or eight-fucking-teen for all he knew. There was no concept of space, no tracking of time, no reassurance of his existence at all, but for the grating of his breath in his dry mouth. He strained to hear the soft answering sigh of L’s, struggling not to panic when long moments passed in which he couldn’t make it out. The dark pressed against his wide-open eyes and wriggled wormlike in through his ears.
It was eating his brain.
Guh.
It was like before. It was like before, except that this time, he was stranded in an uncaring oblivion, and no one would be watching intently on the monitor in case he passed out from lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of human contact…
He was of the belief that human contact was a necessity. Not all humans. Just… some of them. There were people he couldn’t live without.
He wasn’t sure how he’d done it before, but he didn’t think he could do it again. Not now that he knew the difference.
He cleared his throat, and it sounded like a thunderstorm.
“Did you really think,” he managed, “all that time, that I was Kira?”
“Light-kun uses the past tense,” L observed quietly.
Please.
“You can’t honestly-”
“Light,” L interrupted, gently but unrepentantly, “listen to me. The judgment is not personal. It is not about you. It is not a reflection of how I feel about you. It is about the case, for which reason I am doing my very best to separate myself from that case. Differentiating myself as a human being from the work that I do isn’t something that’s easy for me, but I am trying very hard to ensure that Light Yagami as a suspect and Light Yagami as a person exist in two distinguishable parts of my life.”
He could understand that. Of course he could understand that. L probably dealt with people this way all the time. It was probably the only reason he was still alive.
For the moment, anyway.
“What about me reeks of mass-murdering psychopath?” he muttered. “I could get a new cologne.”
L laughed softly. “No,” he responded, “Light-kun smells like he ought to smell. It isn’t that so much as…”
He trailed off, and the silence stifled them again.
“What?” Light prompted.
“It is my conclusion,” L mused, “that Kira believes that what he does is right. I think he does see himself as the world’s savior, and misguided as he may be, he has the power to enforce his will. Given what he has done with that power and what he appears to intend to do… that requires a certain type of person.”
Light closed his eyes. Dark. What a surprise.
“And you think I’m that type of person,” he finished.
There was a pause.
“Not as such,” L replied, inexplicably. “It is more that… you are righteous. You are naïve. You believe in things like justice, and you see the world in black and white.”
All black, at the moment.
“Thank you or something,” Light muttered, wishing, wildly and fervently, that he could run a hand through his hair. He wanted a damn shower. He wanted five damn showers in a row, though he wasn’t entirely sure how he intended to determine where one ended and the next began.
“It is a good thing,” L responded softly, “to have faith. And what is likely the most backhanded compliment thus far… to be frank, Light-kun, you’re the only person I’ve ever encountered who I believe is intelligent enough to have executed-even to have imagined-a plot of this caliber. There are not many people like you-like us-in the world, Light-kun. Many high-class criminals are intelligent, but they are not brilliant. Kira is, and you are.” He breathed. “I know that isn’t proof. I know that’s barely a correlation, and no court would take commonality as evidence. But you have the potential, Light-kun. Almost all of the variables are in place. That’s what frightens me. And that’s why I can’t let it go.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Light insisted, gritting his teeth. “I don’t know anything. You’ve been here. You’ve seen. Isn’t that enough, L? Aren’t your own damn eyes evidence enough?”
“It’s got to be you,” L murmured. “It must be.”
“Why? There are other geniuses, L. Other people with all the variables. There’s you.”
The handcuff chain jingled quietly, and he gathered that L was shaking his head, more to himself than anything else.
“It must be you,” L told the dark, “or I have nothing.”
“If it’s me,” Light returned wearily, “then I do.”
“Light-kun-”
“Think about it, L. All that I’ve put into this-all the time, all the effort, all the energy. All the people I would have had to lie to, all the trust I would have had to betray. That’s all I’ve got-the reassurance that those things belong to me. Being Kira would devalue every one of them. Destroy it all.” He drew in a deep breath, held it, and released it. “I know it would make sense, and I understand what you’re saying, but… I’m not, L. I know it’s hard to trust that, trust me, but there’s nothing else I can give you. The truth is all I have.”
There was a long silence, and then L spoke quietly.
“Do you think they’re watching us, Light-kun?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Infrared camera?”
“Something to that effect, yes.”
“I imagine they would,” he decided, “for safety purposes. But what difference does it make?”
“None.” The links of the handcuff chain trilled again, and then bare feet patted over the cement as their owner crossed the floor. L sat down-close by, terribly close by somewhere behind him, and then even closer as he slid towards Light until their spines touched. He took Light’s sore, chafed hands in his and held them. His palms were smooth, and his fingers were warm. “No difference at all.”
-
L’s thumb was sliding gently back and forth along his index finger. It was lulling. It was solace.
“Have they fed you, Light-kun?” he asked.
“No,” Light murmured, shaking himself awake. Something struck him. “You must be starving…” To be deprived of sustenance this long had to be an indescribable blow to a perpetual snacker like L.
Not to mention the unprecedented dip in his blood sugar; good God.
“I’ll survive,” L decided mildly. “How is your headache?”
Light had been focusing almost exclusively on the warm, soft pressure of L’s hands around his. He attended the nerve inputs from his skull.
“Worse,” he related.
Feathery hair brushed the back of his neck as L nodded, and goosebumps rippled down his arms. Unthinkingly he clasped L’s hands a little tighter.
“The dehydration could do that on its own,” L informed him, “so we can’t really be sure whether or not there are any lingering effects from the anesthetic.”
“Uh-huh,” Light mumbled. Cake. Cake and strawberries, flavor exploding on his tongue; sweet, cool juice running down his dry throat, slicking its sore walls; L’s thin fingers brushing a lock of hair behind his ear… Is that enough, Light-kun? We have a great deal if you’d like more. We have all the cake you could ever want, all the cake I could ever want, and all the time in the world…
“Are hallucinations normal?” he heard himself asking indistinctly.
“Hallucinations, Light-kun?” He wasn’t sure whether the note in L’s voice was puzzlement or concern.
“More like… daydreams…”
L’s fingertips grazed his palm. “What of?”
Oh. He should quit now, while he was, if not ahead, at least not totally fucked.
“…stuff…”
L was smiling faintly now; he could detect it-ha…-in his colleague’s voice. “The particular character of ‘stuff’ involved makes quite a difference, Light-kun.”
Light shifted. “It’s usually… cake.”
There was a pause.
“I don’t think you need to worry too much, Light-kun,” L told him. “I daydream about cake with some consistency.”
I like my cake with a good consistency, too.
He wanted to slap himself, but even without the handcuffs, he never would have dared to take his hands away from L’s. He had no guarantee he’d be allowed to put them there again.
“Well,” he said, “I… don’t, usually. Y’know.”
“I would imagine not,” L replied, sounding vaguely amused. “Do these daydreams include anything else?”
Light took a deep breath. He knew how persistent L could be. L must have already known, or he wouldn’t be asking. He was L, for Christ’s sake.
“You,” he answered quietly. “You’re in them.”
You, me, cake, handcuffs. Sounds like a party. See you at seven? (Or will we need more time?)
L hesitated-for a split-second, but he did-before returning to the task of stroking the backs of Light’s hands.
“That makes sense,” was his verdict. “You have likely come to associate cake with me, and with good reason.”
Yeah. That was it. That was it, and all there was to it.
This was a dead-end street, and he’d better brake and turn around before he spun out of control, smashed through a fence, and ended up in someone’s swimming pool.
That happened sometimes.
“Yeah,” Light improvised feebly. “I’m sure that’s all. It makes sense.”
L squeezed his hands gently. “We’re going to get through this, Light-kun,” he promised. “One way or another, between the two of us.” The two of them. The pair of them. Together. United. Understood. “Believe that, and believe in it. I lie when it suits me, Light-kun, but I’m not lying now.”
“I know,” Light told him. “I can hear that you believe it, too.” He smiled thinly, his cracked lips mustering a meek, stinging protest. “Though the optimism seems a little uncharacteristic.”
He heard an answering smile in L’s voice, dryer even than his own. “We must have something,” L noted.
Light held tighter. “We’ve got hope, then,” he said. “Hope, and each other.”
-
Unsurprisingly, both of his bulwarks failed.
They came for L again not long later. The hinges shrieked, and the faint gray light was blinding where it streamed from the hall. L clutched Light’s hands briefly closer, then released them and stood with the usual strange, half-bent dignity. Through the dappled veil of black and white spots shifting before his beleaguered eyes, Light saw just how pale, gaunt, and tired L looked despite his indomitable will.
Well, there went the hope.
Whichever indifferent lackey it was grabbed L’s shoulder and jerked him across the threshold; it was blatantly a matter of intimidation for its own sake. He pitched something at Light-somehow he ducked it, and it rolled across the floor a ways. The door slammed shut again, the hinges howled again, and Light, in kind, once more sighed feelingly and let his shoulders slump.
He sat still for a few long minutes-or perhaps a single long moment, or perhaps a relatively brief eternity-before noticing just how tingly his hands were, and how idle his mind.
Neither would do for the great and gifted Light Yagami, of course.
With three deep breaths to fortify him, Light set about the task of threading himself through his own linked arms to move the handcuffs around to the front.
Judging by the general silence of things for the past however-long-it-had-been, he doubted that anyone was watching or would care-and why should they? What difference did it make if he could finally scratch his nose? He was still alone with his thoughts in a pitch-black room, the door was still locked, and all his prospects still looked distinctly shitty.
Business as usual.
The cuffs bit into his wrists as he struggled to slide them under himself, and he kicked off his shoes to lose a fraction more bulk, wondering why he hadn’t thought to do it earlier. His endlessly-chafed wrists were chafing again, with renewed vigor and considerable gusto; blood began to trickle almost lackadaisically along the lines of his palms, running down his fingers, and droplets quivered, suspended, at the tips. He focused on the warmth instead of the needles of pain, a tremor of shredding guilt rippling through his stomach at the thought of what L might be enduring as he sat here, curled, straining, and bitching about it like a spoiled socialite.
Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, he fed his legs through the awkward ring made by his trembling forearms and drew the cuffs up and past his knees, and then he had… succeeded.
He would have liked a bit of fanfare to accompany his vaguely-contortionist triumph, but no such luck.
Tentatively he probed at the worst of the scrapes before remembering where his fingertips had been-that was, here with the rest of him-and revising his decision to deliver bacteria directly into his own bloodstream.
Cringing inwardly even now, he wiped his hands on his pants and waited uncertainly, the emptiness pressing, his hoarse breathing a roar in his ears, for the bleeding to stop. He supposed that if it didn’t, his best recourse would be to go to the door and make noise until someone came to help.
If he could find the door.
If his voice worked.
If anyone was there.
Deep breaths. Oxygen to the brain. The walls were not closing in. They would bring L back soon, like they had done last time. It would be okay. L had said so. He believed it, and L was always right. Hope, and each other.
He found the item the guard had thrown, which turned out to be a plastic bottle of water. Prying the cap off, sniffing, and testing it with the tip of his tongue, he found nothing amiss, and he was so damn thirsty that he almost wouldn’t have cared anyway. It wasn’t like poison would do all that much more damage than the dehydration.
When he’d emptied half the bottle one slow, savoring sip at a time, he set it carefully aside to save the rest for L and sat again to wait.
Cautiously, when the twinges in his chafed wrists had faded to a dull, consistent throbbing, he lay properly on the floor for the first time, folding an arm to pillow his head and settling gratefully. It was strangely, almost eerily easy to sleep here, or at least to drift and doze until it was impossible to discern sleeping from waking. Maybe it was the indistinguishable, fragmented mess of time, or maybe it was simply the purity of the dark.
This was all very tiring.
-
The door opened. Light raised his heavy head, thinking he should hide the new position of the handcuffs, but there wasn’t time, and the door slammed peremptorily shut as soon as L had been shoved through it anyway. Bare feet pattered, stumbling, and a fresh cadence of shallow breathing joined Light’s.
“Are you all right?” he asked, sitting up and peering uselessly into the field of oblivion before him.
“Yes, Light-kun,” L answered-belied by his voice, faint and inches short of breaking. “Are you?”
“I’m fine,” Light assured him, getting unsteadily to his feet to step cautiously towards the sound. “Where are you?”
“Here, Light-kun,” came the reply, and he moved to the voice, arms outstretched, until his hands found the warmth of L’s shoulder, the cotton of the familiar plain shirt soft where his fingertips brushed along a seam. Unthinkingly, he latched on with his left hand, feeling for L’s face with his right, wanting, somehow, to confirm…
A wet warmth now, a trickle under his thumb, thick, slick, and feebly dripping. No, no, no-
“You’re bleeding,” he concluded, hearing his voice shake. “What did they do to you?”
“I’m tired, Light-kun,” L murmured. “Please let me sit down.”
“Well-sure, of course, here-there’s a little water-”
Gently he guided the spindly figure to the floor, holding L’s arm to bear as much of the man’s insubstantial weight as he could manage. L made a weak noise that combined the worst parts of a sigh and a groan. Light winced, fumbled the bottle into the thin, thin hands, and repeated, more softly than before, “What did they do, L?”
“It’s merely intimidation, Light-kun,” L answered quietly, handcuff chain jingling meekly as he shifted to raise the bottle to his lips. L’s lips. Not the time to think about L’s lips, L’s lips and water, L’s lips and cake… “And of course the pettiest sort of revenge; the further a man falls, the uglier his dreams of retribution.”
“What do they want from you?” Light asked, running a hand-well, both his hands, since they were linked-down L’s arm, a gesture he hoped was equally encouraging for its object.
“They want to know,” L explained quietly, “how much of my money and our money Watari would be willing to shell out to recover me-to recover us, though odds are they’ll approach the Japanese police separately on your behalf.”
Light frowned, struggling to resist the urge to take L’s hand in both of his and refuse to let it go. “But… Watari would just pay them the stupid money and be done with it, wouldn’t he?”
“That,” L noted, “or he is already on his way, which would explain why they’re still telling me that I must convince him-they can’t reach him. Whatever the case, it would be a tremendous waste of money that could go towards much more important projects.”
There was a pause.
“You’re letting them beat you,” Light summarized flatly, “to save a couple bucks.”
“A couple million,” L sighed.
“As if money means anything to you.”
“…there is also the principle of the thi-”
“L!”
Chain links clinked again as L raised both hands to rub his face. “Light-kun,” he whispered, “what would you have me do?”
Light hesitated for a long moment, and then, cautiously, carefully, giving the other man ample time to revolt and recoil, he crawled around to sit behind L and drew the narrow torso gently down, settling the riotous head in his lap, where he could bury both hands in L’s hair and slide his fingers slowly through the tangles of feathery strands. L’s hair was impossibly soft, soft like a kitten’s fur, matted in places with blood and heaven knew what else, smooth and violently angled, but incredibly clean given the various horrors to which its owner had been subjected.
Light expected L to protest, or to pull free, or at least to tense up, unnerved by the contact and the proximity, but… he didn’t. Instead, he settled on Light’s crossed ankles, nestling closer, and released his next breath as a warm, soft, contented sigh.
“That’s nice, Light-kun,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
It was because L couldn’t look at him. It was because anything that happened in the midst of nothingness was perfectly deniable. It was because they were alone, and even the one and only L needed a little human contact sometimes.
Light touched a delicate finger to a meticulously even crescent-shaped laceration on L’s cheek. “So he thinks that the more he abuses you,” he surmised slowly, “the more money Watari will be willing to offer for your return. Your ‘safe’ return. The more you’ll ask Watari to offer, it sounds like.”
“Precisely right,” L remarked, a note of approval in amongst the resignation.
“But-he wouldn’t kill you,” Light sputtered. “I mean-would he?”
He heard a smile in L’s soft voice.
“Have you ever been in love, Light-kun?”
It was a complete non sequitur, but all Light could think was that L didn’t say fallen. He said been.
“I-” All the grit and dust of a thousand Saharas had conspired and coalesced to block his throat. “-don’t-know…”
It couldn’t mean what it ought to. What it had to. What he wanted it to mean.
He scrabbled after thoughts like dandelion seeds on the breeze, but they were gone. His head rang hollow.
“It was very stupid, really,” L remarked. “The moment that I realized.”
He was having trouble breathing. The world was moving too fast; somebody needed to tell whoever was running this show to slow it the hell down, because he was going to fall off and hurt himself.
“Do you remember,” L asked, “when you asked me if I wanted the strawberry on your slice of cake?”
If he’d had a brain, he might have tried to rack it for the sliver of information, but his skull ached with its own emptiness, and there was nothing decipherable written on its walls.
“No,” he said, feeling the blood throb in his fingertips where they rested against L’s skin.
“Well,” L replied, smiling faintly again by the sound of things, “you did.”
His mind was an Arctic wasteland, everything swathed and silenced by a blinding white that burned in contrast with the dark that hemmed him here.
“And-you-realized…?”
“No,” was the correction, still smiling. “I realized when I said, ‘I’d rather you have it,’ and discovered that I meant it.”
Fucking strawberries. Fucking strawberries had no right to change everything when the status quo was so, so wonderfully secure. Light understood how to operate in a world where L was distant, aloof, untouchable, and unmoved-when he was a god-angel hovering just beyond the limits of accessibility, when he was more than human, when his preternatural reasoning and his ethereal form together proved that he existed in a separate sphere entirely. But this-confessions, admissions, what might have been truths-this wasn’t L. This couldn’t be L. This couldn’t be L, because it wasn’t safe to love him if there was a chance in heaven-hell that he loved back.
Light held his double-knotted tongue and petted L’s hair with shaking hands. There was blood on them, not just his blood, but L’s too. L wasn’t supposed to bleed. If he could bleed, he could break, and if L broke, the world did.
L lay still for a long moment before clearing his throat. “I believe this is the part,” he noted, “where you inform me first that I am a stalker and second that you are into women.”
“You’re not,” he retorted immediately, because defending L and disagreeing with him were both reflexive and frequently contradictory. “And-and I’m not. I mean-I’m not into women, but not really men either. It’s not about a gender; it’s about… people. Specific people.” He swallowed and closed his eyes, to an identical darkness that at least was self-imposed. “You.”
L breathed, and Light stroked his bangs back from his forehead.
“I’m not easy to get along with, Light-kun.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“The fact that you persist so far makes me optimistic.”
“You’re worth it.”
“My modi operandi are… abnormal…”
“You also have a propensity for getting in way over your head.”
“Yes.”
Light traced a heretofore-mythical eyebrow. “Yes,” he said.
L was silent for a moment. “If you’re willing to try,” he decided, “then I will do everything I can.”
“If we survive this part,” Light replied.
“Light-kun’s sanguine outlook is positively inspiring.”
“You’re a sarcastic bitch.”
“And a kettle of a rich ebony, Light-kun.”
Light smiled, leaned down, and kissed his forehead. “And that,” he said.
[chapter ii] [chapter iv]