Title: Hush (1,047 WC)
Pairing: L/Light/L (reversible)
Warnings: Implied sex, unbeta'dness
Rating: Quasi-M
Disclaimer: Do not own.
A/N: First DN fic. Slightly nervous here.
HUSH
This lie is a glass house
Promise to protect this home
Fragile to the foundation
We are the masters of illusion
The makers of rainbows
As drab reality is refracted inside
Turned iridescent through the kaleidoscope.
We cannot raise our voices
—Let them hear our illicit screams
We cannot shatter the walls
We must tread carefully
Or our passion will become homeless.
Like most skyscrapers, the Kira Investigation Headquarters was built from concrete, iron, and steel. A monolith of unyielding columns and girders, it imperiously gazed upon the streets below like a parent, standing tall with the pride of countless architects and engineers. The building, in its streamlined, modern glory, was a testimony to the strength of human travail and technology.
But there was a window in time—when the day yawned, punched out on the clock, and resigned its post to the darkness of evening—that, in the minds of two young men, the structure seemed no more than a house of cards. That even the tiniest of words could cause that Fortress of Man to crumble around them, dare it encroach the silence of their room, dare it so callously introduce reality where nothing mattered.
Both L and Kira acquiesced that, past two in the morning, words were of poor taste. Their battle grew fatigued with their minds, so they would retire for the night, discarding their pretenses and reputations like they shucked the clothes on their bodies. Lawliet and Raito would be left in their stead, wordless and unadorned, their pieces on the game board abandoned until the alarm sounded on the nightstand, hauling in the new day with its trials.
The night welcomed a blissful nothingness. In this time—when the rushing of the tires and the honking of horns died down to an occasional murmur; when the odd cocktail of moonlight and the glare from neon billboards dripped through the windows; when the two were lulled into peace by the sound of each other breathing—they were given a chance to be ignorant and to simply be human. The night had no expectations of them. There was nothing trivial, no cunning or wariness or purpose required as they gave into that unsophisticated human wonderment, lying on their sides and looking into each other's eyes.
The human that was Yagami Raito traced the pad of his thumb over the other man's brow, displacing some of the wild bangs in the wake of his hand. The eyes of the human that was Lawliet flickered shut only briefly at the touch, but it was a rarity all the same to see the sooty depths of his irises hide from their surroundings. The inverse normally held true, and Raito, in that moment, felt...blessed to have witnessed it. In return, Lawliet pressed a soft palm to the subtle curve Raito's jaw, almost as if to query why "Raito-kun's jaw came to be that way," but it was never spoken. Neither Lawliet nor Raito wanted to see where words would take them. That was L and Kira's job.
Their gazes met again, child-like smiles aglow on their faces. The bright light from the windows, mitigated by the sheers that hung like ghosts, cast a bluish luminescence onto the expanse of skin and shadows on the furrowed sheets. Just for now, they could be angels, unsullied by their counterparts' ambitions and misdeeds as they relished in the closeness with idiot joy. Just for now, this room was the world and they were existence—everything outside was relative, insignificant. Who they were in actuality held no weight in this place. The only necessary details were the ones wrought from their senses, the ones salvaged from their hands as they explored each other.
Raito found a sumptuous swell of muscle on the back of Lawliet's thigh and a small birthmark on the gentle slope from his hipbone—small secrets kept under wraps during the day by L's worn blue jeans. Lawliet's long fingers stumbled upon the shallow dimples that formed parentheses around the small of Raito's back, treasures kept hidden under Kira's dress shirts and suit jackets. They felt dizzy with exhilaration at their discoveries in the night, like paleontologists unearthing age-old mysteries buried in the world. They felt possessive of their finds and felt the powerful need to stake a claim on each other, to preserve the haven stitched so carefully together by their denial.
Love and impulsivity—human "weaknesses" that L and Kira tried to hamper to reach their ends—were things that Lawliet and Raito could indulge, unattached to responsibility and free to experience being. Neither had ever felt so alive as they felt each other's pulses beat under their hands, heard the life pounding in each other's chests, inhaling and exhaling in time. The unspoken and the unknown made so much sense, limbs hopelessly tangled, souls hopelessly knitted like the two fitting puzzle pieces they were.
As they moved with each other, they would ignore the faint jingle of the chain, the hard realness that lay cold on their wrists. They would ignore the mechanical eyes and ears that hid in ambush at every corner of the room. Raito and Lawliet would ignore the mnemonics sent from the outside, reminders of Kira and L. They wouldn't sanction words and their sounds of gratification were no more than a hush for fear of the house of cards collapsing.
There was something about dawn peeking over the horizon that incited a certain tightness behind their eyes and in their hearts. It felt like…the end as the sky lightened and the new day came for its shift—the apocalypse of their world as the alarm neared detonation. In the last moments, Raito and Lawliet would drink in each other through glassy vision, praying to God that Kira and L would spare both of them until the next night, when their world could be reborn.
The alarm rang, and it was goodbye. Kira and L would meet the day and return to the investigation team downstairs. Though they wouldn't admit it, they couldn't help but feel the irony when Raito pulled on his dress shirt and Lawliet his worn blue jeans. Because in their heart of hearts, no matter how locked away, they knew they were at their most beautiful when nothing mattered.
FIN