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“So… how do we sleep."
It wasn’t really phrased like a question. Light was past the ability to ask questions, past many things, like pretending to put up a good front over this. He’d smiled, and nodded, while his father and his family friends had been in the room.
Now, it was just him, and L, and Light had long since become accustomed not to minding L’s watchful eyes when it came to letting go of the smiles and the personability. He’d been watched, for months, after all, for no reason at all, and now he’d been imprisoned for… how many days?
Light didn’t know. However many days it had been, then his father had shot him—not shot him, not actually, but it was all the same semantically—and now he was done. Dead several times over, with no intention of pretending he was anything otherwise in front of the detective currently wrecking his life.
L’s bare feet scuffed at the floor, and Light stared, in a blank kind of hatred. It was exhausting, to try to work out how he felt about L. He didn’t want to bother. There was a lot of dislike, yet not enough to dismiss as he did his classmates and peers. There was wariness, which he should keep in mind.
Not much else was bothering him. Light was innocent, and he didn’t even care, L should cut him some slack. He should be told what was going to happen, after he’d had to sit with his own thoughts in a cell while L dictated his life. He could continue do it for as long as it took for Light to rewind his bearings in the real world, in the least repayment.
“Well… I will not. But Light-kun is welcome to find a sofa, or-“
“No. Where are we sleeping.”
L froze, finger in his mouth, eyes drifting up from the floor like Light was a weak magnet, pulling him in every time he forgot to keep away.
“This is not when I sleep. Since I am the one depriving Light-kun of his autonomy, I will find some way for him to-“
“No.” Light reached up, to rub his eyes, only for his wrist to catch on the cuff, already warm and intolerable against his skin. Somehow, it was giving him a headache. Maybe L had poisoned it. “No. A bed. And you… don’t do anything.”
He’d cut himself off, before he did something like demand L didn’t watch him. It felt like something he should ask for, and yet, Light was inured. It was a useless hill to die on, since he wasn’t sure it even would bother him.
Perhaps, more to the point, he didn’t even want to pitch the idea, for worry that the loss of the knowledge that L was watching him every minute of every day could result in the loss of one of the few scraps of stability Light currently had.
While Light was wrestling with his inner demons—exhausted, just like him, but restless nonetheless, an inner personification of the demon of a detective he was chained to—he felt another tug on his wrist, the one attached to the hand pressed over his eyes to protect them from the bright lights of the HQ.
The hand that was, deeply reluctantly, yet unprotestingly, pulled away, as if L could puppet him like a marionette, and Light found himself staring into the bottomless void he’d really like to be engulfed in, right now. Maybe then he could get some sleep.
“Ah. My mistake.”
“What now, you-“
L’s fingers wrapped around his. Around the hand suspended int he air, because Light had lacked the impetus to lower it, and now he was having very conflicted feelings about hat slip of self-awareness, because L’s skin was warm, like there really was human blood under that pale flesh, and his own nerves were tingling, remembering warmth, and Light was remembering what a skill self-control was, in a city of heedless barbarians.
Far too late, Light realised that he was seeing darkness, not just in L’s eyes, but everywhere, because his own had closed.
That was… embarrassing.
“Done.” L released his hand, a certain distastefulness in the way he uncurled his fingers. “I hope Light-kun enjoyed that more than I did.”
“No. No- what?”
Light was seeing light again, hitting retinas which had been starved of anything, and he was trying not to let them be drawn back to the black hole in the fabric of the sensible universe that was L.
“Touching people. Is... unpleasant. But, if Light-kun truly wishes, since he is probably experiencing severe adverse effects of long-term isolation, then we can-“
“How long?”
“Fifty days. Exactly. This is your fifty-first under my wardship.”
“Fuck…”
Light wondered if people had missed him. He hadn’t missed them, sure, but there would be some comfort, in knowing his absence was noted. Then again, what would he do with the information? It was neither bring relief nor resentment, school had been nothing more than the byproduct of a necessitated ordinary life before he could move about the world in his own ways.
“Language, Light-kun. As I was saying, since a psychiatrist would probably be of more benefit to Light-kun than I am now, I can try my best to make up the difference.”
Somewhere, deep inside him, beneath the schoolboy and the son and the premature detective and the hostage and the suspect, there was a numb kind of horror. Or perhaps wonder, at what L might have managed to do to him, or not to do, or simply to have made Light aware of, in what was such a small amount of time, in comparison to his life.
He might be insane. He hadn’t spoken to anyone, no one apart from his father and other people who thought he was a mass murderer—which he wasn’t, beside the point, L wouldn’t care to hear and he was the only one here to talk to—and Light hardly knew what was real. This could be another test. This could, actually, genuinely, be another test, another line he was being strung out on to see how far he’d go before he had enough to hang himself with.
L must have felt something. Light wasn’t sure the detective was capable of so much as naming a human emotion, much less recognising one, but whoever was in him felt so far from human it might as well be the same void that filled L’s eyes.
“…There’s three more bedrooms on this floor. Aside from the one Misa-kun is in. There is also one on another floor, which I had intended for Watari to have ready by tomorrow. But it won’t be tonight.”
From somewhere between exhaustion-fuzz and anger-dizziness, Light got a good look at L, just enough to channel pure are you serious through narrowed eyes alone.
“You did have somewhere to sleep.”
“No, I have somewhere for you to sleep, and me to work. And it’s not ready. I overestimated you, Light-kun, I thought you would want to work tonight.”
That was… incredibly targeted. And hurtful. And, frankly, untrue, because it would have been stupid of L to think that his freshly-released and traumatised schoolboy would want to work, rather than cling to some idea of normal routine.
So L had probably fucked up. And was making Light feel inadequate to cover it. Asshole move.
Light could have punched him for it, and considered it, but his muscles didn’t feel up to the task. It was a point he’d considered raising, when L patiently explained the reasons his father had had to shoot—not-shoot—him in the head, that Light wasn’t sure, if he had been Kira, that he’d have been able to move enough to kill his dad. His elbows hurt.
“I. Would like.” Light spelled it out in small words, pressing the heels of his palms to his temples in an effort to squash out the headache the cuff and the bullet in his head from his father had put there. “To sleep. In a bed.”
No point, in a petty without you. Light didn’t want that. He was used, painfully used, used nonetheless, to L being the only presence he knew was constant, and the more he thought on it, the more Light bitterly realised that it would feel wrong, to sleep without L watching him.
So. Bed, dark, L. That was all Light needed, right now, and he’d like to be pointed the right direction and allowed to fall into blissful unconsciousness.
L tugged, and, like the world’s most annoying puppet-master, smiled, yanking on the chain like Light was some grumbling dog to be called to heel.
“And Light-kun can. He seems not in his right mind.”
“Your fault.”
“Correct. This is to tes-“
“It’s not.” Light glared, through his fingers, trying to find new and exciting ways to dim the glare of the lights in here. “It’s not. Where are we sleeping.”
L held up his wrist again, and he wasn’t smiling. That, Light supposed, was the closest he’d get to an apology. The fact that both of them were taking this seriously was the best case scenario. Light doubted it was going to last.
It was a short walk, across the floor. L built a fucking tall building, and a decent wide one, but distances blurred, and Light wasn’t quite paying attention. The metres skipped past like the cars far beneath them, just blurs of light through the tinted glass.
They were alone, up here. Misa, admittedly, was somewhere, but she would be asleep, by now. And Light had faith that L was taking them somewhere as far away as physically possible form her.
When L stopped, Light walked into him, and was shoved back off one-handed, as L scanned his thumbprint beside a doorway. Another lie, then.
“You had a room ready.”
“I had a room. A bedroom is by far the least suspicious place to retreat to when I need space from the Taskforce.”
That made sense. Fuck, that made sense, and Light was busy rubbing his eyes again, when L yanked him through the doorway.
So, he fell onto the detective again. This time, L held him off at a bent-arm’s length, with surprising strength, and left suspended like that, tugged at that dictated distance along until L dropped him onto the bed.
“Do try not to be so clumsy. Some of my equipment is delicate.”
Again, the same retort was on Light’s impulsive tongue. It was L’s fault. It was such a childish way of assigning blame, but the numbness in him was making him feel exhausted in a way he wasn’t sure someone his age should be able to be, and L was the one who’d put him through hell.
“Bastard.”
Light made to sit up, glaring, but L was on the bed beside him, summarily shoving two heaps of uniform fabrics into the floor—his wardrobe, Light numbly concluded, feeling like he was watching a glitch in a bad website as identical white shirts fell in a messy pile.
“Excuse the mess.”
“What part of fuck you isn’t communicating?”
“The swearing, I’m afraid. Light-kun should know now I tend to disregard arguments made passionnément.”
L had acquired a laptop. For a moment, Light stared at it in hatred, before giving up the idea that he’d ever eliminate the detective’s ability to produce a distracting device at the worst possible moment.
Instead, he rolled over, trying to settle himself in some manner. Now he was down, he wasn’t sure he could face ever getting up again, much less in the near future in order to get changed. He’d sat in the same cell, unmoving, for fifty days. He could survive one more night without managing basic human upkeep. Somehow L had managed it for a lifetime.
L didn’t lie down.
“L.”
“Ryuzaki, please, and didn’t Light-kun want to sleep?”
“You too.”
Light would love to say it was because the light of the laptop screen would keep him up. But, truthfully, he wasn’t sure there was anything keeping him conscious but spite, and that was entirely internally fuelled. Spite, and the idea that, maybe, to celebrate his first night somewhat-free, he could spend it not just in the presence, but the company of the one constant in his recent, turbulent life.
“Does Light-kun seek to punish me for his imprisonment? If so, I can remind him it was at his own request.”
“Sleep isn’t a punishment.” Light was face-down in L’s bedsheets, and could hardly care less. There was a bone-deep lethargy, irritation meeting it from where it bloomed inside him, and he had no patience, for any of this. He was going to get what he wanted. Everything else could wait. “Down.”
“Very commanding. Light-kun seems to think that his opinion should become law.”
“Sleep.”
Light had lost most ability of eloquence. He really was going to fall asleep, as soon as this final tether snapped, and he was allowed to crumple fully into a heap, knowing that L, for once, wouldn’t be staring at him, but beside him. That felt like a just comeuppance.
Finally, L conceded. In the sliver of peripheral vision he had left unobstructed, Light watched the laptop screen close, and a blur of darkness move closer to him, detectable mostly by the shifting pressure around his wrist. It felt like a whole new sense, in a way, one tied solely to L.
L, who lay down beside Light like he had never been horizontal on a bed before in his life, and spoke in a child’s play-whisper.
“Should I turn the lights off? If Light-kun… is serious, about this sleeping thing.”
“Yes.”
To all of it. To Light’s relief, he wasn’t dragged off the mattress by L’s forgetfulness, and there must be a switch close by, because the overhead lights flicked off, and he could relax, sheltered by true darkness. L was closer than he’d ever been before, and yet, this was the first time he couldn’t completely see Light.
For a few, blissful moments, Light lay face-down in the dark, and felt sleep begin to circle him like wolves, except wolves he was friend with, wolves he’d really missed.
Then, L fidgeted.
“How long does it take for one to sleep, normally?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Light could hear his own voice’s distortion, as he spoke into a pillow. “I haven’t been sleeping normally since you started stalking me.”
Funny, the mere reappearance of something as mundanely comforting as darkness and a soft bed was giving Light a little energy back, without him even needing to go to sleep just yet. He still had high hopes of doing that very soon, though.
“A teenager our age needs eight to ten hours of sleep per night… and Light-kun went to bed at ten in the evening most nights, to wake up at half past six… which suggests a latency of half an hour…” L trailed off, humming in displeasure, and Light was belatedly realising L was speaking in the same muffled tone as him, like he’d exactly copied Light’s exhausted sleep position. “Seems like a lot of wasted time.”
Light had to be cuffed to L until he proved his innocence.
Already, he was considering the benefits of borrowing the real Kira’s title, just to kill the detective and be rid of him a little quicker.
“Go to sleep, Ryuzaki.”