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“I want to play a game.”
“Hm? Jealous, are we?”
“Maybe.” Light smiled slyly, shifting closer to where L was crouched on the sofa of the private jet they were taking somewhere. He hadn’t bothered to ask where. “You seemed to like the kids an awful lot.”
“Do you want me to kill them?”
That caught him with a hard blow of reality. Light slumped back in his seat, his eyes drifting to the small window in the wall of the plane opposite. It was exactly what he’d been considering, just a day earlier, and now L said it so casually he didn’t even lift his head from where he was taking apart a robotic toy Near had nervously gifted him.
The answer could still very well be yes, and Light wouldn’t even have to worry too hard that he was making the wrong decision. The two were undeniable a threat. But, also, if they were, what was to keep any single child in Wammy House from taking their place in time, and just creating a new cycle of violence?
It would be justified, completely, for Light to be worried about them. He had grand plans of control, but children developed quickly, and their inklings of the truth could wind deeper quicker than their sense of attachment.
Then again, there was L himself, to take into account. L, so easy now, but who had possessed the trappings of genuine nervousness, when he’d introduced Light to his heirs. They meant something to him. They were hardly the pride of his life—no, that honour might go to Light himself—but they represented something important about him. They were a benchmark for how far he himself had come, and Light would understand L viewing them as an extension of himself, in a way.
If it would upset L, to be without them, and they were likely to be replaced anyway, there would be little point arousing suspicion in L’s childhood home. That went for death or discredit, since Light personally held that to destroy what a person held dear was worse than destroying the person.
“No.”
It was sweet, that L had offered to do it himself. Like if he’d really wanted them gone, Light wouldn’t have wanted to do it himself. It hadn’t even been have them killed, it had been a raw, brutal offer to spill his own heirs’ blood.
Maybe L didn’t care so much, if he was never even going to see them come into their true abilities. Heirs were only good after death, after all.
“You think you can control them with my affections.”
So L had caught that. If he was expecting Light to feel guilty about the cruel ploy, he was about to be sorely disappointed. Light smiled, softly, and glanced over at where L was still avoiding his gaze.
“Yes. At least enough to value my own almost as highly.”
“Almost.”
It was a sign that this was affecting him more than he wanted to let on, that L was resorting to mere echoes in search of clarification.
“Almost.” Light’s confirmation came with the barest hint of a teasing edge, but he didn’t want L to think he was taking this too lightly. “You’ll always be the most important person in their lives, but so long as I’m the most important person in yours, they shouldn’t take against me.”
“Provided they truly believe I enjoy your company.”
“Well, that’ll be a difficult lie to tell them, won’t it?”
“Agonising.” L removed the front half of the robot’s head, and began to poke through the LEDs that had made its glowing eyes. “They might turn against me too, of course. Its such a slim possibility, I hardly bother to note it, but…”
“If they decide that my evil outweighs your goodness. Yes. That’s my job, then, I suppose. To convince them that I am, in some small respect, a good person.”
“Now that will be difficult.”
“I turned myself in, didn’t I?”
“Yes, then played on my emotions and relied on me to protect you from the harsh hand of justice.”
“The law, actually. Justice says my rights far outweigh my wrongs.”
“And this, Light-kun, is where we will always differ.” L looked up, pointing his screwdriver accusingly at Light. “Murderer. Therefore, evil.”
“Murderer’s accomplice.” Light tipped his head at L, bouncing back the accusation. “Killer by proxy.”
“A good point. If I am their example of infallible goodness, perhaps it won’t be such a stretch to presume you also decent.”
“There we go. Now you don’t want to kill them either.”
L was half a second away from accepting it unthinking. Then, it caught, and Light watched outrage bloom in real-time, before shrivelling again, as L pouted, and returned to his toy.
“That was mean. Half a win.”
“You don’t want them dead.”
That had been all he’d been trying to prove. He’d never have managed it, without playing wth L’s emotions a little, but it might have been a little underhand. Light could understand the sulkiness.
“Of course I don’t.” L started on the robot’s chest, dissecting out its front panel to reveal a heart of circuit boards and wires. “When you kill me, I’m relying on them to bring you to justice.”
“Justice again, really, can’t we have a reasonable discussion?”
“No.”
“It’s an if, not a when, anyway, and an unlikely if. What are the odds, again?”
L was definitely sulking, now, definitely not appreciating being used as Light’s personal calculator for the sole purpose of proving himself wrong.
“Less than two percent.”
“Exactly.”
“Enough for me to handcuff you again.”
That one was barely above a mutter, but Light’s mood was perking right back up in tandem with L’s increasing sourness.
“At least I’ve spared you that. No more mysteries with me, right?”
“I trust you. My toleration is yet to be seen. I could throw you out of here right now.”
To anyone else, it might have been a joke, but Light didn’t waste the warning on something as stupid as not looking around for emergency airlocks L could push him out of.
It seemed unlikely, even for his detective. Far too elaborate, and there were better ways to deal with someone twenty thousand feet in the air.
“…Lying.”
It was a wary conclusion to throw out, but Light was rewarded with a hum of confirmation, to which he responded like a trained dog with a grin and a sense of satisfaction.
“I have a gas mask under most of the chairs and sedatives ready to be dispensed into the air supply. If you do want to be annoying the whole journey, feel free to give me a chance to test it.”
“How long does the sedative last?”
“It can be replenished depending on how long the journey is. Good try.”
“I do think I should be entitled to know where we’re going.”
“Work it out.” L pulled off one of the robot’s legs, and grinned without warning, moving in to attack the poor toy like a wolf that had caught a glimpse of fresh meat. “Ha.”
“Oh?”
Light watched, for a few moments, as L eviscerated the toy like a carcass he intended to devour down to the bone, before the detective pulled back, holding a tiny, black disc triumphantly.
“Near’s getting better.” L brought it closer to his face, nearly going cross-eyed as he rocked back onto his heels. “This passed the scanners.”
“What is it?”
Light had learnt to be polite. L would have no qualms about withholding frivolous information solely for the sake of torturing him. It brought his detective joy, apparently, to force him to sit and ask nicely for scraps of information he would go insane if he was denied.
“A… tracker, although I won’t know for sure until I take this apart, too. No wire, he clearly learnt from last time.”
“Did you plant one on him then, too?”
“Yes, and waited until I knew he was asleep to listen to the one he planted on me through it to triangulate its location. He put it in my suitcase, then, so he’s clearly moving away from straightforward sneakiness…”
“This must be the first time he’s put it in a gift. I would doubt the great detective L would be caught by the same thing twice.”
“It is, as far as I’m aware, but this isn’t the first gift he’s given me under the guise of childish possessiveness, so either I need to dismantle those too, or he’s learnt how to earn my trust by establishing a baseline of banality.”
“Likely the latter, if he was still planting wires last time.”
“Yes...” L squinted at the tracker a few more times, before picking up a pair of heavy-duty pliers he’d used to test the toy’s joints earlier, and crushing it swiftly between the jaws. “Now he knows where we’re going, too, Light-kun. You’d better catch up.”
It rankled, the implication that he really was being bested by a pre-teen, and it was plenty enough motivation to stimulate Light back Ito actually working. L just couldn’t give him a break, even on what might as well be their honeymoon.
“Right. We took off from a private airstip in England, without a flight plan announcement, and I highly presume without any official documentation.”
“Enough official documentation. I don’t break laws without good reason. But don’t bother trying to find any of it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for overestimating your disregard for the legal system as you continue to give shelter to a mass murderer.”
“And I can stop at any time. Continue, please. It’s calming.”
Light rolled his eyes, at that, and averted his eyes from the window, wanting to see if he could deduce their destination from cognition alone. It should be possible, this was an easy sort of challenge, unless L had been preparing to ask him this the whole way, in which case it was immediately elevated to a truly worthy puzzle.
“We didn’t go far, so we likely took off from the south, and since we took off early morning and the sun was at my eight…ish o’clock-“
“Ugh. Military terms are so unromantic.”
“I like them. So we were heading just west of south, which means we’re probably about halfway across the Atlantic right now.”
L made a noise like a buzzer, and Light paused, working backwards quicker than he could be corrected to find the problem.
“Across, Light-kun? Wouldn’t want you to make the wrong presumptions.”
“They’re not presumptions, its deductions. Okay. Part of the way down the Atlantic, I suppose, if we’re heading… roughly for South America?”
“What country?”
“I’m going to rule the US out, for… obvious reasons?
“Of course. Nothing interesting happens there.”
L’s quick dismissal only served to shoot down Light’s pathetic shot at eking out a little information on the Death Note. He’d have hoped L would be avoiding the US for the sake of keeping him a country away from the thing, but really, it was a worthless assumption that he would have no way of telling apart from L’s standard flippancy.
“And it’s way too far north-west, at this point.”
Light was practically working on guesswork, at this point, and suspecting that L hadn’t designed this as any kind of complicated challenge, but merely a casual puzzle that he was becoming the idiot for taking so seriously. That meant he had to step up his game.
L was only looking for the country, from him. Which Light would say with relative confidence was going to be Brazil, but Ecuador and Columbia could call to some intriguing gang activities. Still, L had said before he didn’t like gangs. Too many loose ends no matter what you did, often too much proof, and the problem usually lay with a preoccupied system. Sometimes, he’d ease the burden, but L liked clear suspects and single answers.
Brazil, then, because it had been a booming economy for the past few years, and that had like given rise to some chance-takers willing to do unusual things to get on top.
But Light reckoned he could narrow it down to a case. He kept an eye on the news still, despite L’s vaguely suspicious glances every time he caught him doing so. They lessened, Light had discovered, if he stopped taking notes on the programs he watched. He only did so out of force of habit, anyway.
Joke was on L, because it had just taught Light to memorise more things, and now, one or two came to mind.
It was, all in all, a simple game, but Light enjoyed laying his guess at L’s feet, sounding out each syllable of the company caught on the wrong side of several border lines at once with no good explanation, yet had somehow entirely evaded judicial punishment. With the brother of the CEO who’d alleged to have died a year ago.
L eyed him, then shrugged, and finished his anti-dismemberment of the poor robot, which had been reconstituted into exactly how it had been before, its heart and mind intact, but missing that crucial pitfall buried in its body.
“Very good. I should make you race Near sometime.”
Clearly not good enough, if L still wasn’t dropping the comparisons. Light understood that it had been a far cry from worthy of reproving himself after L had met with his heirs, but it still left a bad taste in his mouth, nearly bad enough to drive him into some kind of rash decision.
Insulting L was, as a rule, never an undeserved response.
“It wouldn’t be much of a challenge. He’s so like you that he’d probably get distracted by bright colours before he got halfway and call the case closed just because he’d gotten bored of it.”
He really was off his game, today. Still, it seemed to irritate L just enough in return, and Light felt a small rush of satisfaction. It wouldn’t be good form to pull this repeatedly, but going after his heirs seemed an easy route under the detective’s skin, if ever he needed it.
“Near is… far less easily externally distracted than me. His lack of attentiveness comes from inside him, whereas I have a tendency to…” L’s eyes flicked over, trailing down Light’s body almost obscenely, plainly in payback as his gaze pooled somewhere near Light’s navel. “Find more entertaining things in the world around me.”
“Disgusting. At least the child has some self-respect.”
“Oh, I have plenty. I don’t go after innocent souls beneath me.”
L’s thumb tugged at his lower lip, his gaze teasing as Light narrowed his eyes.
“You will really always take issue with me dating women in school, won’t you?”
“Less issue. More curiosity. It’s one of the most fascinating and telling things about you, Kira-kun.”
At that, Light shivered, and a little of the playful air seemed to drain. L did love to use that name on him, when they were both feeling particularly bitey, and he judged the tone lighthearted enough to make Light feel just a little uneasy.
Kira-san would have been fine. Still scary, to hear L call him, and know he was expected to respond, but it was the ease, the camaraderie with which L said it. Like Kira was his friend, just as much as Light was under his thumb.
The scary part was what it represented. There was no Kira, to keep him safe from his detective. L knew every part of him, and Light just had to accept that.
“…Don’t… call me that, L. Please.”
He should like it. He hadn’t renounced his deeds as Kira, merely wished for them to come to an end. Light still wouldn’t say he regretted it, until he’d changed too far to stomach the bold things he’d once been capable of. Love changed a person.
Apparently, no amount of begging from the person he loved would ever change L, who smirked in pure delight as Light’s quiet misery.
“Kira-kun is my partner too, correct? Who’ll do anything I say, because Light-kun owes me his life of his own volition?”
There was no getting out of it. Light had learnt when to just surrender, when L was determined to revisit the dopamine high of victory. It was a small price to pay, to quietly enjoy L’s utter glee, having to suffer a little excess crowing.
“Yes, Lawliet-san.” Just to spite him, Light managed a name-themed jab of his own back, slotted nearly into his deadpan tone as he glared across the sofa. “What will you have me do?”
“Hm…” L rocked backwards and forwards, apparently satisfied with his victory over the toy robot, and considering his next entertainment. “Come pick me up.”
“Oh, anytime.”
Pleased with his own low mutter, Light got to his feet, and crossed between L and Near’s Trojan horse of a gift. It was the work of hardly a moment, to crouch down, and put all the work he’d put into being a star student in every field into slotting their bodies securely together, and hauling his defective into the air like an overaffectionate toddler.
“Happy?”
Light’s hands found a good spot just above the tops of L’s thighs. He wasn’t going to push his luck by touching where he might not be allowed, but it was always a balm to both of their moods, L’s hands hooked securely behind his neck and his eyes alight with glee.
“Very.” L tipped his head, eyeing Light like an interesting specimen he was considering dissecting, and grinned. “I’m going to kiss you.”
“Seriously?”
“Always.”
L still tasted like the candies the hotel had left for them, the caramel having coated the recesses of his mouth. There was straight sugar, too, because his private jet was foolish enough to leave tea sets out and unguarded, but the caramel was the actual taste.
L was still the only person Light had ever kissed who actually tasted of something. Something nice, moreover, and actually identifiable.
Another way he was special.
It felt special, too, to kiss him mid-air, his hands keeping L in place, but L’s tongue curling enthusiastically into Light’s own mouth. Ever the adventurer, his detective.
A small patch of mild turbulence nearly killed both of them, and Light was faintly proud to find that he’d tightened his grip on L even as he broke contact, chest tightening as he pulled his partner closer to himself in near-primal fear.
“Ok- I didn’t like that.”
“I like breathing.”
L’s voice was muffled by Light’s shoulder, but he sounded unhappy enough for Light to loosen his grip a touch. Not that he was intending to let go, while his heart was still racing.
Private planes shouldn’t be allowed to go through turbulence. In another life, it might have been worthy of death, for making Light feel mortal for a single, terrifying moment.
In this one, his trust landed not-unexpectedly in L, and Light had known before the shudders had stopped that L would never have allowed them on a plane he didn’t have utmost confidence in. And the only thing his detective made mistakes with was Light.
Oddly symbolic, for a patch of bad air or a somewhat clumsy pilot.
Light shifted L a little further up his body, making a pretence that he wasn’t going to set him down at all, before pivoting, and dropping the detective bodily back onto soft, waterproof cushions. It was a pleasant sight, L yelping in distaste and landing sprawled across white waxed fabric.
“I’m getting snacks.”
It was an announcement that needed no follow-up, in Light’s mind, and he set off across their room in the sky before L had even recovered his bearings.
L hissed, audibly, as Light walked away, and admittedly, it might have been the coward’s way out. But this was no real fight between them, just a playful spat to pass the time, so he was more than welcome to retreat if he needed a breather.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a scone before now.” Rummaging through the various care packages Rogers had sent them off with, Light found some aforementioned scones for himself, and a child’s plastic snack pot of sticky toffee pudding L had taken mild liking to in the hotel. “You’re broadening my tastes.”
“I can think of something else I can-“
Light turned around, just in time to catch his partner wide-eyed, finger in his mouth, and the end of his innuendo trailing into silence as the apparently unfiltered path between his thoughts and his tongue was interrupted.
“I give you far too much slack with things like that. How would the children have reacted?”
Mocking offence, Light tossed the pot over to L, who caught it smoothly just in time to be handed a matching plastic spoon. The detective took issue with metal cutlery, more often than not. Light had no such qualms, finding a knife to slice the scone down the centre as he settle on the floor to be closer to the table.
“Probably badly. I doubt they think me human enough to have sex.” L was flicking his tongue over the spoon, when Light looked back with raised eyebrows, and gestured incoherently with it in an attempt to explain himself without sounding more insane than he looked. “They are- incredibly gifted children, who have only ever encountered sexual desire as a motive for murder, or otherwise a distraction from the pure logic they already believe most of humanity incapable of. It’s only natural they’d think me above it.”
“And I was the one playing god, a month ago.”
“I could be a god. Do you think I’m a just punishment for you, Light-kun?”
“Undoubtedly.” Light spread a two-millimetre layer of cream with the flat edge of the knife, not deigning to indulge L with any more of his direct attention. “I deserve everything I get, with you.”
Perhaps it was a sign of his own mental dulling, that the collision of L with the back of his shoulders came as enough of a shock Light nearly dropped his knife. The gremlin clung on, hugging him like a murder attempt, and Light forced himself to calm down.
“What are you trying to steal now, Ryuzaki?”
“Your heart.” L’s lips ghosted past his ear, and Light dared to close his eyes for half a second. “And jam.”
As ever, L was faster than Light could hope to match without a sincere amount of unbridled emotion, so he just accepted the loss, and sighed, tugging away from his partner in faux-disappointment.
“I really am just a toy to you.”
“Sexually?” L was eating with his mouth open, staring just as widely at Light with a sincere tone that didn’t match the glint of amusement in his eyes.
“You’re disgusting.”
“You love me.”
For that, L’s strange, overly sincere manner almost worked against him. It came out somewhere between a statement of outright fact and a plea. It caught Light off guard, which L should really stop being able to do, now there were no secrets between them, but he had little hope of ever being free of.
He blinked, and nodded. It felt strange, to return the sentiment. Still, he had this idea that this was another game, that they sere both just using each other.
But he’d handed over the Death Note. He’d stepped out, and L had followed him, and now they had the whole world to explore together.
“I do.”