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L looks at Yagami Light and drowns. There is no other way to put it. As the days pass and blend into weeks, L looks at Yagami Light sitting next to him, the harsh lines of his face creased and determined, and he swallows water.
L looks at Yagami Light and he cannot breathe.
He’s not sure if this is normal and deep down he might even know it is not, but he’s never had someone who spoke to him with familiarity, never had someone treat him the way Light did, with understanding and something akin to companionship — L knows he’s not normal, knows he’s an outcast, a loner, a problem sometimes even, and though L could solve any case in the world by the age of fourteen he could never solve himself.
Light operates on the same frequency as him. They are one and the same, and if his theory of Light being Kira was something to be believed then he knew that they were also yin and yang. Sometimes, just being in the same room as Light made him feel uncomfortable, as though they were two entities that were never meant to interact. But he wanders wonders dreams, jumps to the porcelain skin of Light’s hands when he should be thinking, ponders what the callouses on his palms could come from. Tennis…?
Light is also young. Normally, L would never have been made uncomfortable by the fact that he was older than someone else, but Light was 18 when they’d really gotten to meet, and he was 6 years older than him, and felt that age like a weight in his belly.
As he watches Light sift intently through files, stacking papers up neatly without so much as glancing at them, he worries about the stone in his throat. He’s never worried before.
He puts it down to being afraid, and when Light turns to him with those honey dripping eyes and the saccharine tone to his voice, sweet as sugar, he struggles to swallow.
It is when Light has been in his cell for three weeks that L realises he’s in love with Light. L has never shied away from his own personal observations. He’s in love with Light, and that’s just fine. He promises to never do anything about it, and buries it deep within him as he has buried everything else before it.
Being in love meant nothing to L, not that he would stiffen when Light brushed his shoulder, or find himself reaching out to hear more of L’s candy-soaked words. Perhaps it’s why he’s so harsh on Misa, can hear her helium voice crying out Light, being allowed to do that, being tolerated — ah, he wonders lingers loses, and he watches Light through the camera screen, watches him fall apart, and thinks why must it be like this?
L wishes he’d never met Light. Light is too much for him. He’s too bright, too daring, too wiling to challenge everything L ever stood for. Light makes him want to tell him his full name, if only to hear Light say, in his cruelly kind tone, “Lawliet,” and drip his faux kindness all over his name like a poison.
Because L isn’t good — he’s not pure, or kind, or remotely honourable, he does what he does because he can — and Kira is obviously bad but L just hides his, let’s his evil sit in his basement and simper and linger and stew in it’s own toxic waste until it’s a monster L can barely bring himself to look at. But he knows what justice is, and it is not at the hands of a man who thinks he can play at being a god. If there was a god — L knows thinking about it won’t help, so he doesn’t.
Light looks up at the camera. His forehead is creased in a way that is unnatural. “L,” he calls out.
“Yes?”
Light bites the inside of his mouth. “I’m lonely,” he admits, and L feels the wind get knocked out of him in a sure blow.
“You volunteered for this, Light-kun,” L reminds him. His voice is neutral. His expression never wavers. Why should it? “I can talk to you, for a bit. Misa has fallen asleep.”
Light laughs. “Never mind me, Ryuuzaki,” he abruptly changes his mind. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth. L wonders if he knows. “You must have work to do, or get some rest. You never sleep enough.”
“Why are you worrying about me? You should consider your own situation, Light-kun,” L throws away this comment carelessly, but down there in the rotten excuse for a heart he has, it sings. L reminds himself that Light — Kira, he has to be Kira, for his own existence makes L feel putrid yet cleansed — and Kira cannot care for anyone, but he wishes and dreams.
Watari hands him a scoop of ice cream. “L,” he says, very softly. His eyes are kind, they’ve always been. “It will pass.”
L scrutinises him, but takes the ice cream. A line of it rolls down the cone and stains his hand, and L watches, in fascination, as the ice cream melts in his hands and drip drips onto the carpet below.
He knew being handcuffed to Light was not the best idea for him, but he also knows that he has to. Yet he’s underestimated what being in such close contact with Light would do to him, and it’s tripping him up as Light drops off to sleep and L is awake, staring at the ceiling, the earliest he’s ever tried to sleep in perhaps his entire adult life.
He’s 25. The boy is 18.
Light’s breathing is steady behind him. L reaches out for him, reaches out a hand for his face — what is he trying to do — and snatches it back just as quickly as he’d moved. Light is a quiet sleeper. He does not snore, grind his teeth, or roll around. He sleeps like he is when he is awake — calculative, never a wasted breath.
He looks tranquil in the night ambiance, and so youthful and innocent he could almost be believed to not be Kira. As the facts start to move in the opposite direction from his theory, L wonders why he clings so desperately to this idea, as though he needs to know that Light is Kira so he can end the feelings he has for him.
The night air becomes oppressive. L shuts his eyes against the darkness, and Light shifts in his sleep and mumbles out, “L.” His name is a thunderbolt in the night.
L sighs. He opens his eyes again and turns to look at the boy.
“Light-kun,” he replies, and feels foolish. Turning to his bedside he takes his computer and turns it back on. The harsh light illuminates Light’s face, but he doesn’t wake up, just turns away from it. Light — he’s very beautiful, isn’t he?
L can hear church bells in the distance. They’re harsh and giving him a headache, and as he stands on the rain soaked roof and hears the distant rumble of thunder, he can almost picture the scene. Someone is getting married. They’re happy, see, and they’re in love, something L cannot have, because he’s in love with a boy who seems to be both very good and very bad, and he never looks at L twice.
“You’re not making much sense,” Light tells him. His shirt is getting drenched, turning translucent. L’s eyes wander. His hair is sticking flat to his forehead. L chokes on the rainwater, feels it soak and seep into his very bones.
He might, he thinks, go loving Light to the grave, because Lights’s touch is gentle as he guides him indoors and hands him a towel, and L feels overwhelmed with the need to touch, so he does.
Light’s feet are smooth. He feels like he’s tainting them, but Light lets his head roll back on his shoulders and gives an appreciative hum as L continues to massage. It’s the closest sound he’ll ever get, so he takes it and wraps it around his heart — a blanket, or a barb, you choose. L doesn’t know.
Light’s hands are kind as he dries L’s hair for him, and in this lighting —this stormy, grey, light that tells him tomorrow will never arrive, L realises he holds everything in his hands, and that Light has never looked more beautiful than he has now.
But L doesn’t do anything about it. He leaves, and though some part of him tells him this is the last chance he’d ever get, he can’t do anything more.
Light is — not for him.
When Watari wipes the data, L’s mind goes blank. For the first time since he could remember, L has never had nothing to say.
Light comes over to stand by him — and then his heart seizes, and something tightens way in there. So he does have a heart, he thinks, quite comically, as he falls out of the chair. Some part of him braces for impact, but then Light has thrown himself over and caught him,
HIs mouth is open, his face is flushed. L stares at him silently.
“Ryuuzaki,” he whispers. One hand comes up to brush at his face, over his cheekbones, pushing his hair behind his eyes. The affection turns to poison in Light’s hands, because his face curls into a nightmare grin. “Ryuuzaki,” he says again, this time triumphantly.
Ah, he thinks, over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. So nothing Light has ever said was true.
Light is Kira. L should’ve been more forward about it, shouldn’t he?
He watches the beautiful man smile down at him as though his death is somethign to be celebrated. His good, kind, gentle man, the one who said couldn’t play a girl’s feelings and couldn’t hold a gun, has eyes the colour of blood. Every L looks, he can only see that rust stain clinging to him.
Oh, why did it have to turn out this way? L tries to reach a hand up, wants to caress his face, just once, just once, please, L has been good all his life, always upheld justice, always did as he was told, and as he should — but he can’t even have this.
L’s hand thuds to the ground.
His eyes close.
L dies loving Light. The last thing L sees is the psychotic grin of the only person he ever loved — and perhaps, maybe, he imagines as he passes, in another life where L was more adjusted and Light had never found the notebook, they could’ve loved each other too, with warm endearments and kindness and Light says his name every day and L learns to bake for him.
But that is not this life.
Death is surprisingly cold.