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Tonight doesn’t feel like a particularly special night. Light is watching the news, arms crossed over his chest, frowning slightly. Perhaps it’s the moonlight. Gentle, it falls into the room graciously. Light always seems a bit more himself, illuminated by his namesake.
L, sitting at the dining table, is content just watching him.
It took time for them to get here. For L to see anything past the solution of his case. For Light to let himself be seen, too. They don’t regret it, how long it took. How stubborn they have both been in this pursuit of each other. For all their strategizing, neither one has ever been very direct.
They could very well have drowned in it, let their distaste for losing become the foundation of their relationship, but meeting each other in the flesh provided something new. Something unexpected.
Relief.
A relief so foreign, they had needed to sit with it in discomfort while it melted through the cracks of their rehearsed apathy.
As L watches the moonlight pool in the folds of Light’s sweater, he feels calm. For the first time in his life, he can actually watch and see something beautiful. He does not have to deconstruct what he sees into a problem to solve. He does not have to predict, to run things through the internal circuit he has spent years building inside himself. He does not have to understand, because he already does, because there was never anything to understand in the first place.
In the ways that it matters, they are the same. In the ways that it doesn’t… they don’t let it get between them.
Only sometimes.
Softly.
The death note rests on the coffee table between them. It is, there is no way around it, boring. Excessively so. It has made Kira less interesting, and for that, L resents it. He misses the mystery, the hours of sleep willingly abandoned to speculation… Their relationship has never been one of partnership so much as provocation. What they like is challenging each other — it keeps the complacency from destroying their spirits. And so, L has never missed Kira more than once they started sharing dinner, their knees touching under the table.
And yet, L does not feel loss. Light has shown him that time will not run out of his life without atoning for its dullness. The future has become his friend. This is the greatest gift that anyone could ever have given him.
Light is good at keeping secrets, but they are better at keeping them together.
Light turns off the news. He stands, and the moonlight shifts around him. He rearranges the throw over the couch exactly as it was before, then walks over to L. He rests a hand on his shoulder and leans in gently to kiss his cheek.
“Thank you,” he says.
It is softly spoken.
Light is quiet with the things he loves. It’s in the way he makes his tea in the morning, stretching like a cat while the tea steeps undisturbed. It’s in the way his shoulders relax after a day spent working long hours. It’s in the way he drags his fingertips across the pages of his notebook, and how he traces the shape of L’s body in the same way. Light likes to touch things rather than possess them. He is not attached to the things in the world but to his perception of them, and L is not always sure how he fits in this picture but Light is quieter with him around, in his body and in his mind, and L cannot think of a better consequence to companionship.
There is no context for tonight’s gratitude. Just two words seldom passed between the two of them. They like it this way; they share an unfounded fear of wearing each other out with too much overt kindness. It’s childish. It’s reassuring. They still have many games left to play.
But this, here, now, is not a game. Light is still standing by L’s side, waiting. They look at each other wordlessly for a moment before Light takes his hand right when L gets up to face him. Their fingers intertwine; Light traces the familiar shape of L’s hand as if discovering it for the first time. It is slow and gentle, and the intimacy of it makes L want to close his eyes and so he does. He leans into Light’s chest, resting his cheek in the hollow of his neck. Light smells like vetiver and lavender and something faintly like coriander but above all he smells like home. They wrap their arms around each other and they say nothing. They recharge in this embrace, unhurried, making up for all the times they’ve rushed before. Light’s body relaxes as he brings L closer to him, and the silence that surrounds them invites a comfort so genuine that they cease to know anything except the way they feel with each other.
They stay like this, speaking to each other without their words.
Then Light asks for sleep and they part but not really.
Lulled by the warmth of their bodies resting quietly under the blanket, L lets his thoughts speak to him softly. He dreams of knees touching under the table, of names written in the dark, a glimmer of gold catching the rays of the moonlight.
The next morning, he looks at Light holding his teacup with both hands and tries to guess how he might feel about wearing a ring.