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When Light lifted his pen to write L’s name, his hand trembled with every motion. Memories flooded back as he started writing, the tip of his pen on the page that would damn L.
L.
“You know, Light-kun should come over here. These strawberry tarts are phenomenal .” Light was sitting on the bed, L standing at the dessert cart that the room service of the hotel had left them. And as he looked through the desserts, he shot a smile over his shoulder that took Light’s breath away in a single expression, in a single moment. It was the very first time Light had ever woken up beside someone, and Light didn’t even realize he used to be Kira at the time of the hotel visit.
Light stood up and stepped behind him, wrapping his arms around the dark haired man’s waist, pressing a kiss to the curve of his neck. “Hey,” he murmured, smelling the strawberry flavor in whatever the other had been eating. He had to smile; the other smelled like a dessert. L smiled, enjoying a touch he would normally push off. I don’t really give a damn about the way you touch me when we’re alone.
That memory dissipated as he wrote the next letter.
L.
Another came to him as he finished the letter.
“Light-kun would do well to stop running!” The surprisingly athletic detective was chasing Light around the tennis court, laughing periodically. Light was too, even to his surprise as he was driven onto the grass by the other’s relentless pursuit of him. L threw himself onto Light, letting out periodic chuckles as he brushed his chestnut hair out of his eyes with a slight smirk on his strangely handsome face. Light, both the one in the memory and the one with the pen in his hand, was entranced by the spell of the older. You’re a pond, and I’m an ocean.
“I believe I’ve caught you,” he said softly, a genuine smile overtaking his face as he descended upon Light, closer, closer, their lips were about to brush, he could feel L’s breath on his skin as he laughed and twined his hands in the detective’s dark hair to pull him in, they were so close, they were almost touching, his breath smelled like sweet strawberries…
A.
“I’d like to offer you this ring, Light-kun.” An open box was pushed into his hand with… a ring. Light gazed down at the plain silver band, admiring his reflection in it before he looked up at L, realizing what the other meant by it. With a trembling hand, he slid it onto his right ring finger before leaning in and pressing a kiss to L’s cheek, which the older man touched with an awestruck expression. Light had kissed him countless times before, but never like this, a soft brush of lips against smooth skin, secure in the knowledge that only his hand would ever bear L’s ring. Now I’ve got it, and you can’t have it.
Thank you.
W.
Watari finding out about them, the look of shock on his face when he caught them in the closet that day, bodies pressed together as they kissed. The look of fear in L’s eyes as he detangled himself from Light, pleading with Watari that it wasn’t what it looked like as the older man berated him, belittled him, telling him that he wasn’t the boy he had raised, beseeching him to reconsider, to rethink his choices.
With wide eyes and shame in his handsome face, L lowered his head, but he hadn’t ceded any ground.
When the older man left with a whirlwind of blind disapproval, L looked back at Light over his shoulder. Of course, the brunet braced himself for the worst as his lover’s dark eyes fell on him with a new kind of sadness and heaviness in them. And then, L did something Light could never have predicted.
He smiled. Yes, his smile was tired. Yes, there was a deep sort of hurt in the crinkles around his eyes. Yes, there was pain in his handsome face. But it was a smile, and it said, I’m choosing you, Light.
“You are my only choice, Light. There was never any option besides you.”
He shook those away. He needed to stay focused, needed to stay steady on his goal.
L.
The next one was worse, L and Light in an argument.
“You damn stubborn brat!” Light was seeing red, spitting venom at the detective, his lover, the one across from him, staring at him with those big dark eyes. Of course, he made no effort to yell back, simply watched his boyfriend lose his shit with a slightly amused look in his dark eyes. That sharp look in his eyes shot straight through him. How could you ever be on my level? it seemed to say, curling around his heart and confirming everything he had ever thought.
All my emotions feel like explosions when you are around.
I’ll never be on his level. I’ll never be good enough for the world’s greatest detective.
L found him hours later in their shared bedroom, curled up in the bed with tear tracks streaking his face, seemingly asleep. The harsh detective’s eyes softened, his face growing gentle as he crawled into the bed, curling around the other’s back with an arm around his waist, nose in his slim neck. Light was perhaps the only one he would willingly utter an apology to; he was an infectious lover who made him do things he would never do normally. It’s a curse, and it’s growing.
Believing the other to be asleep, he leaned up to breathe in his ear. “I’m sorry, Light. I didn’t mean any of it.” With closed eyes, he brushed his lips against his cheek, just a whisper of another sweet apology.
He was about to leave when a nicely manicured hand caught his wrist.
“I forgive you.”
The end of the memory made Light’s vision grow blurry with tears, but even so, he started on the next letter, even if every cell in his body screamed for him to stop, to stop, that he couldn’t lose the other, that he didn’t know what he was doing. There was a voice in his head, telling him in his own voice with a slinky undertone, like blood red wine spilling across a white tablecloth.
Do you want your new world? it said, a manipulative, impatient undertone in its voice, then this must be done.
With a trembling hand, he wrote the next letter.
I.
The memory this time made him let out a broken sob as his grip on the fountain pen grew deathly, feeling it creak in warning. Stop. Stop, please, stop, stop, don’t make me kill him, please.
From Light’s perspective, L was sitting by a lake, tears running silently down his pale face, the wet trails glistening like silver gems in the moonlight as Light approached him, an aching heart hammering his chest. I broke all my bones the day I found you, crying at the lake. Was it something I said to make you feel like you’re a burden? L had turned his head to look at his boyfriend, and gave him a weak smile.
“I look stupid,” he had whispered, touching the tear tracks on his face, even as another salty tear ran from his eye down his left cheek, glittering its winking light for a moment before disappearing as if it was never there. L didn’t cry, which was why it only took a second for Light to rush to his side, tears running down his own cheeks freely as he threw himself beside L and pulled him close, hating to see him in pain, hating the fresh agony that showed on his face. They both knew why; they knew that their bliss couldn’t last forever.
The two boys had sobbed together by the lake that day, sharing each others’ pain in a bond only they could ever have.
The next letter was one that Light didn’t even form. His hand just did it, without his permission.
E.
This memory was one that Light remembered vividly. His lover was sitting on a piano bench, graceful hands on the keys as he played a repetitive, two-note melody that Light didn’t understand until the raven-haired man opened his mouth, and suddenly Light’s breath was ripped away.
Oh.
“Isn’t it lovely,
All alone,
Heart made of glass,
My mind of stone.”
The aching, lilting high notes made Light’s eyes widen, his chest becoming a ball of lead as he listened to the song. It held so much aching pain that it made Light’s eyes water as he listened to L sing the aching song in his raspy voice, with a sort of desperation that pulled at him, that compelled him to listen, begged him to hear him.
There was so much agony in the simple notes that it made Light’s heart ache just to hear it.
That was two days before this moment.
Light’s hand trembled as he formed the last letter, watching himself write the last damned letter. He didn’t want to do this, but he was so close, he was almost there…
T .
L LAWLIET. Letter by letter, memory by memory. The pen creaked again, then finally snapped as Light realized what he had done, and gasped, a pain in his chest so sharp that he wondered if he was the one having a heart attack.
L walked in with a smile, completely missing the notebook on the table with his real name written there.
“Hello, my darling,” he said, stepping forward to embrace his beautiful lover just as Light fell apart, sobbing into his arms with his face in his shoulder, babbling almost incoherently.
“I’m sorry, L, I’ve done something so awful, so terrible and I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry and I love you so much, I never wanted this, I never wanted it to end like this and I can’t, it can’t,” he sobbed, holding him close, normally graceful hands gripping L’s shoulders so tightly that the older man winced, but Light didn’t care, didn’t hear it over the rage of the ache in his chest, the last forty seconds with his lover. L, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never meant for it to end like this this can’t be the way it ends I love you I love you I love you so much-
All L did was hold him close, closing his eyes tight as pain sang through his chest like a sharp-placed ache, and he knew what Light had done in that moment as his knees buckled and he fell, landing on his back, taking Light with him, sobbing into his shirt and babbling non sequiturs about how much Light loved him, about how much he regretted becoming Kira, about how much he wished he could take it all back and just be happy with L .
The worst part was that L didn’t even care, that all he did was gaze up at his lover’s eyes, the brown eyes he had come to love, and let a smile hint over his face, a genuine one only Light had ever been able to draw out of him.
To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.
With his last breath, L opened his mouth to speak with a weak smile on his face.
“Darling, if you love me, won’t you please smile for me?”
L Lawliet died that day with the ghost of a smile on his face and his broken lover hunched over him, teardrops staining his shirt as his well manicured hands grabbed bunches of the cotton and clutched it to his face, the smell of strawberries and something indescribably heartbreaking taunting him with what he had taken away from himself.
It didn’t take Light long after to write his own name on the tiny scrap of the Death Note in his watch, pricking his lover with the needle and writing his own name in his lover’s blood.
夜神月.
And with that, the god of the new world, Light Yagami, Kira, died with his head on L Lawliet’s chest.
And if I could take it all back, I swear that I would pull you from the tide.