Work Text:
“Does Light-kun experience sexual desire?”
“What?”
When Light looked up, almost praying that he’d passed out from L-induced sleep deprivation, he found his captor staring at him with wide, curious eyes, from his side of the desk.
“Does Light-kun-“
“We’re working.”
“This is my work.” L spun his chair, and tugged insistently on the cuff connecting them. “If I asked in company, you’d refuse due to your father’s presence. If I asked when we weren’t working, you might think I was trying to have sex with you, which would influence your answer. If I asked during the night, the former would occur again, or you would kick me-“
Light punched him. It was always satisfying, and rapidly becoming his first resort. Every time, it brought that spiteful spark of joy, when L had to at least throw up a defence, and Light normally got to cause him a little pain, even if it rapidly dissolved into grappling.
This time, L kicked him back bodily, and Light felt his chair move under him, driving him as far away as he could get before the cuff caught and bit painfully into his skin.
When he recovered, L’s legs were raised in warning, but his expression somehow hadn’t changed from his polite curiosity.
“This is making me think I will get an interesting answer, Light-kun.”
“Keep being interested. I’m working, and you’re a pervert.”
“Misa-kun said that too, and yet, I am going out of my way not to make this a sexual or pressuring encounter.”
“Everything you do pressures me, Ryuzaki, you’re trying to have me executed.”
That made L pout, in the corner of his vision, clearly disappointed that his initial defence hadn’t cleared the way for him. Joke was on him, Light wasn’t devoting even a watt of brain power to the question. He wasn’t even thinking about it.
“I can explain why I want to ask, if that would make you feel more comfortable.”
It would, actually, but the mere offer made Light immediately doubt its trustworthiness. He was getting fed up, with how much time he spent feeling like he was on the defensive, inching away from L’s prying questions. Couldn’t the detective just cut him a break for a few days? It wasn’t like either of them were going anywhere.
“Fine.”
It might make for nice background noise. L’s other environmental sounds had become something of a backdrop, which Light wouldn’t have expected to ever find relaxing. He worked in silence, allowing his full concentration to latch onto whatever task was at hand, and filling the gaps with extra problems. L was always rustling, or typing, or musing. He was loud, and Light was surprised by how much he didn’t miss his silence.
“Firstly, to my knowledge, you haven’t masturbated in our time together.”
Light narrowed his eyes, narrowing his field of vision just to his laptop screen, and clicked through the conference records he was trawling for overlaps and available transcripts. He was just going to ignore L, he didn’t even have to think about any of it.
“Secondly, your use of pornographic magazines to throw me off your scent has never been explained. Clearly, you believed it normal teenage behaviour, but you had to acquire them specially while you were being monitored—since you hid them in a book you had previously been using for other purposes.”
“Bet you liked watching that, you little freak.”
Light’s self-control was failing him. L was goading him, even if it was presented in his prim, scientific terms that suggested this really was no more than an objective interrogation. It was L, which meant he was trying to catch Light out, which meant Light would take everything he ever said as a direct attack
“Thirdly, if you were Kira, then preventing yourself showing such vulnerability as sexual arousal in front of me, your direct threat would be intuitive.”
“And as a normal fucking teenager, I don’t want to show you my dick. Is that enough for you?”
Light could feel the crass words grate on his tongue, as he pulled them from conversations amongst his peers he’d overheard and catalogued for this sort of situation. He didn’t like to use such a speech style, but if it would make him sound emotional enough about the whole affair, it might put L off.
“That is not how you usually speak, Light-kun. Who are you imitating?”
But, of course, he was trapped in literal hell with a demon of a detective who could read his mind. Light would have punched him again, if his wrist wasn’t still smarting.
“Some boys at my school. I’m thinking that talking like a moron might communicate to you how stupid this question is.”
“Not at college, so… high school? How long have you been pretending to feel things your peers do, Light-kun?”
“You presume any of them were getting laid.”
“You don’t need to be having sex to want to. But Light-kun is avoiding the question, so he must know that. How long?”
“Three years. One of the first girls I dated asked to have sex. Before, I… hadn’t thought about it.”
“She asked at fourteen?”
“Yes.”
“You clearly didn’t know your own taste. Common, I believe, in adolescents not developing desires like their peers do.”
Light scowled, giving up entirely on his laptop. He’d gotten distracted, he’d let L lure him into conversation, and now it was hopeless to try to extricate himself. Better to accelerate towards the end.
“I have never wanted to have sex with anyone, firmly including you, Ryuzaki. Is that good enough?”
“No. When you say never, do you mean you have suppressed those urges, that they never materialised, or that you are capable of separating want and need in such a way that you are trying to imply your own currently non-existent virginity?”
Now L had brought his virginity into it, and Light could feel his expression twist in genuine disgust. It was instinctive, a response honed by too many coarse comments and flirty remarks. Him being a virgin was for no reason of provoking sexual interest, in fact, he’d been hoping it would begin to be more of a turn-off for hopeful partners. It had been, once he’d explained his definition of it.
“It exists. And it’s none of your business.”
“Defensive. Have people tried to make it their business?”
“You’re not going to have any more luck than them.”
L’s eyes played over him, his nail tugging along his lip as his other hand moved a sugar cube nimbly between his fingers.
“I am not trying to, Light-kun, as I have said.” L said it like that simple sentence had meaning, a mini-realisation of his own endless interrogations, that Light had somehow made some mistake. “But you believe I am, which means this is a sensitive subject for you. How many people have taken offence to your lack of desire to have sex with them?”
“Enough. I had sex with them anyway. It was nothing personal, and nor is this.”
As Light glared at him in pure, careful restrained fury—because he knew getting overly emotional would just make people think there was a chink in his armour on this—L’s watchful eyes widened. He straightened in his chair, using one hand to balance himself on his heels, and his finger dropped from his mouth.
“Light-kun. Please believe me. I have, in no respect, any desire to have sex with you. At this time.”
“At this time.”
Light wasn’t even surprised, even as his mimicry dripped with derision. Even the great detective just couldn’t leave him alone about this. Maybe this would be the winning strategy to get out of here, to go begging to his father that he feared he was trapped with a sexual predator. If L really was just like all the rest, Light could have no misgivings about such a crude strategy.
“You are very attractive, Light-kun.” L leaned back in his chair, a bit, but there was still that deathly-serious edge to his voice. “I won’t lie to you by saying I haven’t considered your every aspect. But do you really believe that I, like your previous attempted sexual partners, am so low as to not have utmost control over those desires? If I say I don’t want to have sex with you, Light-kun, I mean it.”
If it had been anyone, anyone else in the entire world, Light would have dismissed them with a scoff and blown off any of their further attempts towards him.
But it was L, the only person who had ever matched him, and Light wanted to believe that, for once, even if the detective would keep them chained together and hounding after the idea of him being a murderer, he’d found the one person who’d give up this particular chase without argument.
Light glared, then relaxed, and offered the barest, wary nod.
“Alright. You won’t get anything out of it, either way, so I don’t really care what’s going on in that demented head. Just don’t ask me for any of it.”
Somewhere along the way, they’d blown right over his answer to the initial question. Light had found himself viciously defending his own right to autonomy, without stopping to consider why L really did want all this information.
“I wouldn’t.” L raised his thumb back to his mouth, but there was still something strange in his eyes. “Thank you, Light-kun. I apologise for bring back past traumatic sexual encounters, but this helps both of us the most.”
“I haven’t had any sexual encounters like that.” As per usual, Light couldn’t help himself saying it like he felt guilty, even when he spat it at L with all the hatred in his heart. “And none of them came close to traumatic, if they even existed.”
“Trauma can come in many forms. To me, you’re exhibiting clear signs of stress and irrational responses under the mere hint that someone might be displaying sexual interest in you. In women it’s often dismissed as an entirely inherent trait that should be primarily ignored, but I both have no respect for that theory, and you, Light-kun, are not a woman.”
“You can accept that much, then.”
Light sunk back into his chair, trying to hide a little, as the idea that he’d somewhat embarrassed himself crept up. L was right. He had been irrational, about that.
“I accept everything about you, Light-kun. I am even prepared to accept your guilt, which is more than your father. But you, like most of the female population, exhibit the responses of someone more worried about rebuffing potential unwanted sexual advances than whether they truly exist or not. A true fear response, stemming both from internal asynchronisation with society, and external encounters giving you the associations that this perceived abnormality will not be accepted without your firm self-defence.”
“What are you trying to say, Ryuzaki? That I don’t play nice with people telling me what I should want?”
“I’m saying that you’ve taught yourself to expect danger in the event of displayed sexual interest.”
Light glared. L was watching him, unreadable, and right, which was the constantly infuriating thing about him.
“I have had sex, though. With my girlfriends.”
It felt like a weak defence, at this point, and Light was sure L was about to pick apart to tatters.
“Did you have sex? Or did they?”
L was too smart for this whole conversation. Light wasn’t even sure how he did it, to pin down that semantic difference that held up his own argument and hypocrisy. He would call himself a virgin, because in his opinion, never penetrating another or orgasming during a shared sexual act would constitute the loss of that oddly-reassuring title. But there had been girls who would say that they’d had sex with him, and Light wouldn’t be able to say they were wrong about that, either.
“They did. With me. But I… didn’t.”
“And you still believe yourself a virgin?”
“Yes. It doesn’t really matter, anyway.”
“You’re quite right about that. So, Light-kun.” L shifted forwards, a determined look in his eyes of the sort he got when he was laying out an obvious breakthrough to the rest of them. “Any sexual encounters you have actually had, were entirely for the benefit of the other party, and you do not regard as meaningful enough on your end to classify as sex at all. And any sexual encounters you haven’t had were presented to you in such a way that you feel that they need to be fought off, not merely rejected. And, finally, you do not seem to have even initiated one for your own sexual pleasure.”
“…Correct, yes.” Light settled on a bite of impatience, wanting nothing more than for L to get to the end of this, so they could get back to arguing in more comfortable waters. “And what does this prove to you?”
“Well, if you are Kira,” L watched him, as he always did, but Light was already irate, so he didn’t drag it out. “That internalised threat of lustful society may have driven you to despise people acting on hedonistic urges—sex, violence, murder, and so on. It would also have distanced you from them, making the act of killing seem more palatable, when they and yourself had both told you that you are inherently different to them.”
Light hated how startlingly sound that logic was. L could spin anything into evidence, but for once, he really understood why the detective had been so determined on this line of questioning.
“And if you are not… you are a very guarded young man, Light-kun. And I would respect why. Whether you are or are not Kira, it primarily makes me feel that we are a better fit for each other than I had thus far calculated.”
Again, Light’s hackles shot up, but with L’s earlier analysis still hanging in his ears, he kept his wits about him.
“How so?”
“You,” L pointed at him, and tilted his head to match. “Are used to having to fend off society’s advances from all angles. I have such a disregard for society that I have hardly participated in it for my entire life, helped along by the knowledge that it wouldn’t take kindly to me even if I did try.”
“Do you want me to feel sorry for you?”
“No.” Shrugging, L pushed the sugar cube into his mouth, and bit down on it. “I don’t take kindly to society. Neither of us do.”
“…Not because I’m Kira.”
“Kira, coincidentally, shares this trait.”
Light would take it. That kind of joke meant L was genuinely extending whatever passed for an olive branch, in his strange little mind. And he’d take any distraction from the imagined sensation of sugar crumbling into his mouth like that.
“Alright, then. We both hate other people.”
“They are hell, after all.”
Light found himself smiling, and sighed, grabbing another sugar cube from their desk and throwing it in L’s face.
“Never speak of this in front of my father.”