Title: Shukumei
Rating: T
Summary: In which, despite fighting and falling and fate, neither lets go. (L x Light, 31 prompts. YAOI.)
Warnings: THIS FIC CONTAINS YAOI. If you don't like this, TURN BACK NOW.
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! You guys brighten my day like none other, and inspire me to write more!
Notes: This last collection is my favorite, I think. I like Scar (#26) the best. And the prompt table originally only had 30 prompts in it, but I couldn't resist writing the last one. Not all of these are L and Light centric, because I also wanted to include some other points of view. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed it so far, and I'm glad if you guys love L and Light as much as I do. In the middle there's a little time skip, hopefully it doesn't confuse you!
Please read and review.
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21. Secret
Yagami Soichiro might be old, but he isn't stupid.
He notices as Light and L's chairs inch closer together day by day, week by week, until after a month the chain that used to be taut hangs pooled on the floor between them.
He notices, as the investigation team begins going out for dinner together occasionally, that Light eats the foods L picks out of his meal, and vice versa.
He notices the number of bathroom breaks that the two take per day slowly increase from two to nine.
He notices that, on rainy days, L tends to rest his chin on Light's shoulder whenever he observes the other boy's monitor for a few minutes. Light only shifts closer.
Most of all he notices (can feel it in the air, can see it in his eyes, a smile that glows whenever they are together) that his only son is the happiest he's ever been.
No, Yagami Soichiro isn't stupid…but it didn't take a genius to realize that Light and L (who were, ironically, geniuses themselves) had a secret.
At first the chief is appalled, and no small amount of disgusted, but Light is grown now and he will let his son make his own decisions.
(Fortunately for L and Light, Chief Yagami is good at keeping secrets.)
One day he returns late to headquarters to retrieve some papers he forgot, and he rounds a corner to find his son holding both of Ryuuzaki's hands and staring the detective aggressively in the eyes. The tension in the air is thick and palpable, even though he has just walked in. The chief quickly ducks around a corner to remain unnoticed, but cannot help himself from pausing to eavesdrop.
"Ryuuzaki, I love you," drifts Light's quiet whisper. "No matter what. You know that, right?"
In the silence that follows, Soichiro finds himself holding his breath. After the longest, most excruciating ten seconds the police chief can ever remember experiencing, L answers.
"Yes, Light."
(And at the sound of Light's tears, all ill feeling toward the relationship melts away from Yagami Soichiro's body like dirt in the rain.)
……………………
22. Remember
Misa jolted awake, shot out of bed, and collapsed in front of the toilet as she threw up.
This feeling…this sick, sick feeling…
Misa thought it was hate, only she had never quite hated anyone this much before. She had hated the man who killed her parents, but not this much. She had hated the man who almost killed her, but not this much.
Only him.
Only Ryuuzaki.
No, that was stupid. Misa pressed a small hand to her forehead and groaned, trying to remember. It had been a dream, that was all. A dream.
(So why did it feel like a memory…?)
She cleaned herself up and went down to the main investigation room, where the team was already hard at work with coffee in hand.
"Light!" she hailed her boyfriend, giving him her sweetest smile and draping her arms over his shoulders. "Good morning! Misa loves you and wants you to work hard today so that Ryuuzaki will let us go out on a date later tonight, okay?"
Light gave a sleepy little yawn, glancing at her and then pushing her off gently. "Good morning, Misa, but I'm trying to work. You know I work hard every day; stuff like that doesn't matter to Ryuuzaki."
There!
With horror, Misa saw it. Saw the way Light's eyes lingered on Ryuuzaki for exactly three times as long as they had lingered on her. As a lump rose in her throat, she had no choice but to turn and sprint to her room immediately before anyone got suspicious.
That week, Misa watched.
She watched as Light looked toward her, and then had his flickering gaze stolen by small movements from Ryuuzaki. She noticed when she began to talk with Light about relationship issues, and Ryuuzaki smoothly cut into the conversation and ruined the moment. She felt Light's firm, toned, relaxed body give no response when she sat in his lap, but tense up when Ryuuzaki brushed the side of his hand.
Misa watched, and Misa hated.
The night that they were all alone in her room, the three of them, she acted out of desperation. Pulling on her skimpiest lingerie, fixing her makeup, and doing her hair took two hours, but it had never failed her before. This always, always had every man she'd ever wanted anything from on his knees at her feet.
She waltzed up to Light without shame, without embarrassment, shifting her hips and thrusting her chest and flipping her hair and doing everything that she had ever learned men found desirable. Light's eyes were wide, amber and molten and perfect, and they were on her, her, they were on Misa and not Ryuuzaki.
(Look at me.)
She felt her heart thudding in her chest as Light watched her body, watched smooth skin and soft curves climb into his lap and press against him.
"Let me give you everything you've ever wanted," she whispered into his ear, ghosting her teeth around the shell and lobe, feeling with her body for anything, anything, that showed Light's acceptance…and then.
"Shall I unlock the handcuffs, Light-kun?"
L's voice was soft, a whisper, hoarse and male and then Misa saw it.
She saw Light's gaze slide to the figure on the other end of the couch, the pale, skinny, deformed, messy, ragged, ugly figure of Ryuuzaki, and Misa's hopes exploded into a thousand shards of glass. As Light stared at Ryuuzaki, his pupils dilated and his breathing sped up. The air around them changed, now heavy and buzzing with the sheer magnitude of Light's wild desire for him, for Ryuuzaki, and Misa hated.
With nothing more than a soft word, a blazing glance, Light was completely entranced and they excused themselves with barely a word of explanation or apology. Ryuuzaki was staring into Light's eyes, staring at Light as if Light were his, as if he loved him, as if Light was the only thing that mattered anymore and Misa hated that Ryuuzaki had found some way to make Light, her Light, feel the same way back.
But when Rem touched a piece of the Death Note to Misa's hand and told her everything, Misa had already made her choice.
"Rem," she said without hesitation, "do you love me?" The shinigami blinked, taken aback, but softened after a moment of silence.
"Yes."
"And you'll do anything to make me happy? Anything I ask?"
Rem did not waver. "Yes."
Misa smiled that brilliant smile of hers, beckoning the shinigami to bend over so she could whisper in her ear.
You see, Misa was all about two things: loving Light, and hating Ryuuzaki.
She knew which feeling was the strongest.
("No matter what, Rem, don't ever kill Ryuuzaki. Promise.")
……………………
23. Rain
Higuchi was captured, the notebook discovered, and all L knows is that it hurts, it hurts because there is suddenly a wall of invisible hatred between them for no reason at all, and L keeps his teeth clenched for the remainder of the day.
The chain clatters to the floor, and L feels an unexplainable chill creep up in his chest.
Light is walking away, he's walking away and it's too far, but the tug of the handcuffs never comes on L's wrist. Light gazes at him from the other side of the room, the first time in months that they have been this far apart, and even though L stares he misses the frightened glint in those honey-colored eyes.
Light goes home with his father and L stays up the whole night as the torrent outside pounds the windows, pacing and biting his nails and hating Light for leaving and for being innocent and for staring at him like the devil stares at an angel this afternoon, like Kira stares at L.
Light is Kira. One hundred percent certainty. Light is Kira and Light is going to kill him.
And he wants to kick himself for staying up all night worrying, wondering, wanting, hoping whatever they had between them will still be there in the morning. It scares him that he is 75.6 percent unsure of what he will do if it was all a game, all a joke, all a means to alleviate boredom.
It scares him even more that the other 24.4 percent is certainty that he will kill Light-Kira and then himself.
He thinks about it for hours and hours, gripped by fear and desperation so real and surreal that his teeth tear a gash in his thumb and the blood oozes down his skin, hot and wet and red.
This was it. Light was Kira and Light was gone and it was over.
But when Light returns the following morning, storm clouds still billowing in the sky and rivers still running in the streets, there are deep bags under his bloodshot eyes. Matsuda asks questions, and Light brushes him off.
"I couldn't sleep," he murmurs.
Honey met coal, and no words were needed.
"It seems that I will have to accompany Light upstairs to catch up on needed rest. Please do your best in our absence, everyone." And with this unceremonious announcement from L, which no one dared to question, Light soon found himself pressed against the wall of the elevator as they clawed each other's clothes off.
"You are Kira," L whispers.
"I love you," Light whispers back.
And as the elevator rises, their hope for a happily ever trails behind them by a thread.
(Unfortunately, this wouldn't be their last day in the rain.)
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24. Tear
It had been coming for a long time.
L watched Light's hackles rise, watched the dangerous flames of fury ignite in his eyes, and oh god as Light dominated him that night it was all he could do to cry out "Light" instead of "Kira."
When both of them are spent and spineless, sprawled out beside each other, there is a tear on Light's cheek. Drifting to sleep, Light pulls L a few inches closer and L licks it off.
It tastes like salt and sweat and rain and is gone before the flavor can fully register, but it was there and that's what counts, that's how L knows the storm is finally here.
(Justice…?)
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25. Thorn
As luck would have it, the only time Ryuk ever gave Light serious advice was when Light wanted to hear it the least.
"If you don't fall out of love with L, you're grand plans for the world are fucked. There's a thorn on every rose, Light."
It isn't sugar-coated or biased. It's the blunt truth, like everything else the shinigami has ever taught his possessee. Ryuk never babies Light.
(Even though, sometimes, Ryuk finds himself feeling more paternal toward the brat than he expected.)
"How unusually poetic of you," Light says as he looks up and raises an eyebrow, sparing the shinigami a snide, somewhat annoyed glance. "But mind your own business."
Ryuk shrugs. "Whatever you say."
The room is quiet for the next few minutes, the low hum of the TV and the scratching of Light's pen barely audible. The brunet reaches for a highlighter, which will make it easier to continue his "work" on the Kira case, when he notices that Ryuk hasn't moved at all for a while. The shinigami is staring at him in a way that almost makes Light shiver. The gaze is penetrating, appraising, and…different, somehow, than how Ryuk has always looked at him before.
"What's with you?" Light is abruptly paying him a lot more attention. Those amber eyes are narrowed suspiciously, and slowly become more unsettled as Ryuk remains silent, staring, the lack of his usual chuckle painfully evident in the ringing silence.
He remains quiet for so long that Light's worry begins to increase exponentially. The boy opens his mouth to snap something, then—
"Light," the shinigami says suddenly, "when you finally get into trouble you can't get out of on your own, I could help you…but I won't."
The look on the police chief's son's face is one of such comic confusion that for a split second Ryuk almost laughs. It quickly melts into an expression of extreme irritation, and Light turns back toward his case files haughtily.
"I already knew that much, Ryuk. You're only in this for yourself. You don't need to remind me."
The barely-there look of disappointment on Ryuk's face — as if Light had completely missed the point — bewilders the brunet more than he lets on.
A long stretch of stillness expands between them again…then Ryuk demands an apple, and the moment passes.
(It isn't until it's too late that Light realizes what Ryuk was telling him that night.)
("I care about myself above everything else, but…I love you, kid. Just a little.")
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26. Scar
The memories were back, along with the power and the paranoia and the pleasure of purging the scar on his perfect world. It was so easy, easy and fun and everyone was tied to his fingers like puppets.
Everyone but L.
Light laughed and cried and acted his heart out, and Light fooled everyone and got everything he ever wanted.
Everything but L.
L knew.
L knew the whole time that Light was selfish and vain and wanted to kill him as much as oh god he wanted to keep him, and L knew that Light was a fraud and a murderer and a dirty little bastard.
L knew, and L fucking loved him anyway.
They cried and they kissed and they gnashed their teeth, fighting like hellcats against each other, against the world, against that bitch called fate that was forever trying to tear them apart.
(And somehow, throughout the holding and the hating and the heartache, life went on.)
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(27. Silence)
He loved L.
He hated L.
He lusted for L, he worried about L, he was enraged by L, he was confused by L, he was repulsed by L, and he held L close every night as he fell asleep.
He respected L.
He needed L.
Gods, how had it come to this? How had one person—one pale, mangy, awe-inspiring, egotistical bastard of a person—become so much to him?
How had L become his everything?
And when he kissed L in the rain that day, he could taste the death that he was bringing upon them both.
L could taste it, too.
"…Light-kun…"
(It's sad, isn't it?)
The sound of bells drifted in the wind.
"Ryuuzaki…Ryuuzaki, I made a mistake."
(You and I will be parting ways soon.)
And when L knelt at his feet, washing them like the lowest of servants, Light felt his lungs tighten as fire burned in his throat. He wanted to scream, to grab L and run away, to leave and never look back.
I'm Kira, I'm Kira and I love you, and if we go now we still have a chance, we can be together and we can be free and we can be happy, happy, L—
But no sound came out.
The dripping of L's hair echoed in the quiet around them; it did not matter that the droplets fell from his eyelashes, not his bangs. L bent down slowly, so slowly, until his lips rested against the top of Light's foot. He kissed the skin tenderly, and a small noise of pain and desperation meekly shivered out of Light's throat.
"Light-kun," L whispered, gazing up at him through tufts of that unruly, silken mop of hair. "What was the mistake?" Ryuuzaki smiled softly, indulgently, a smile he never gave anyone but Light.
Light felt his heart break in half.
"Was it falling?" L continued, dark eyes locked on the amber orbs of his lover, "or…was it not getting back up?"
Light's tears burned tracks down his cheeks as the silence echoed around them.
(And when L's cell phone rang, it was by pure instinct that Light's hand shot out, snatched it from L's contorted grip, and snapped it in half.)
……………………
28. Choices
They watched as the Death Note burned, its ashes swirling up into the atmosphere to be lost forever.
The next day, L found the Death Note missing and Light found himself wearing a new watch.
(Ryuk and Misa both knew that love was bad for making choices.)
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29. Veil
One day, when Light walked down the street and glanced up at the giant TV looming over the square, he almost had a heart attack right in the middle of the crowd.
TSUKI, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
"Oh, how romantic!"
"I wonder who she is? Tsuki must be a very lucky girl!"
"Is someone at the TV station getting married? Sugoi ne!"
"How terrible if Tsuki says 'no' after this!"
To most of the people on the street, the kanji was written as 'moon.' But Light knew. Written as 'moon,' pronounced as 'light.' It was his name. His. And only one person had the power to hijack the TV station like that.
Light had never run to headquarters so fast in his life.
He burst in, panting, and marched straight up to the console. Ignoring the shock and confusion of the other members of the investigation team, he grabbed the back of the chair L was crouched in and spun it around violently.
"Was it you?" Light asked breathlessly, grasping at L's shoulders. For someone who was about to be manhandled by an unstable teenager, L looked surprisingly calm. "You put it up there, didn't you? Ryuuzaki, you're asking me for real?"
"What on earth…?" Soichiro blinked back and forth between the two of them. Matsuda had ducked behind the couch.
"Light's gone crazy!"
"Chief, what should we do?" Aizawa and Mogi half-rose from their chairs uncertainly, but it was too late.
"Correct, Light-kun. I did it," L said softly. Light was frozen. Time seemed to move in slow motion as a pale hand came up, pulling a little velvet box from nowhere and opening it, holding it with two fingers and a bent wrist in a grip as contorted as ever and Light had never been so in love. "If you want to…I think I would very much enjoy spending the rest of my life with you, Light-kun."
The silence in the room was deafening. The entire team was holding their breath as they waited for Light's response. L was still as a statue, staring at Light so intensely that Matsuda thought the younger boy would burst into flames at any moment. Light took a shaking breath.
"Yes," he whispered. The brunet's hands were locked in a death grip around L's biceps. "Yes. Yes yes yes yes—!" And suddenly Light had yanked L out of the chair and into a crushing embrace, actually spinning him around in the air as he began to laugh and cry and shout "Yes!"
Aizawa'a jaw was on the floor next to Mogi's, and Yagami Soichiro was in the midst of an unpleasant moment of dawning comprehension.
Matsuda, in a rare moment of realization that this was the biggest piece of gossip he was ever going to get his hands on, was whipping his head back and forth between the embracing geniuses in the middle of the room and the news channel playing in a small corner of his monitor, telling a story about how someone had hacked the TV screen in one of the city's main squares—
Thus, Matsuda enjoyed a blinding moment of elation and cheered when L stuck his tongue down Light's throat in full view of everyone.
Tthree full-grown men dropped to the floor in a cold faint.
"That's one veil lifted, anyway," L commented thoughtfully as he resurfaced. Light grinned at him.
"I can't wait to lift the other one. You'll look great in a wedding dress."
L smirked. "We'll see who wears the dress."
And thanks to the activities immediately following that statement, the last two in the building with their consciousness still intact—namely, Matsuda and Watari—promptly lost it in a nosebleed.
(And if the investigation team had been hoping to pass it off as a bad dream once they woke up, the golden bands on L and Light's ring fingers allowed no such illusion.)
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30. White
As she stared out the window, she idly noticed how white the clouds were today against the bright blue sky. Even so, she still felt miserably melancholy.
She had known he really didn't like her all that much.
She wasn't blind, after all, so much time having gone by. She had seen the way his smile was strained when he looked at her, the way he seemed so distant when the situation obligated him to talk to her. Still, she had continued to aggressively make him a part of her life, hoping that one day he would love her again as he had once seemed to.
It didn't matter when he didn't pay attention, didn't matter when he didn't come see her, didn't matter when he was wrapped up in the investigation and she wasn't allowed to see him either.
She still smiled, still laughed, still hugged him every chance she got, because she was so proud of him. He was living his dreams; what more could she ask for?
The days went by and she kept on loving him and he kept on ignoring her, until one day (finally) everything changed.
The door opened, and in he walked with his perfect smile and shining amber eyes, radiating happiness like she had never seen before.
"Light?"
And when he saw her he laughed, scooping her up in his arms and spinning her around and she was confused and happy all at once.
"I'm getting married, Sayu," he told her, smiling at her like he hadn't smiled at her since he was twelve and she was six and she had told him she thought he was the best and smartest nii-san in the world. "I'm getting married to Ryuuzaki."
And she could've said "What about Misa?" and she could've said "But he's a boy!" and she could've said "You're getting married to someone you've never even introduced me to?!" but she didn't, because none of that mattered when he was hugging her and grinning at her and loving her like she always remembered. Sayu grinned back, jumping up to ruffle his hair in the way she knew he hated.
"That's awesome, onii-chan! So do I get to be maid of honor or best man?"
(No matter who or where he was, Light would always be her brother.)
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31. Snow
(On that day…it had been snowing.)
Back when he first met Light, L had no idea. Light was intriguing and attractive, certainly, but it wasn't like this.
(Another orphanage. Just like the one before that, and the one before that…)
When he and Light first began to work together on the investigation, L had vague, subconscious notions. They were dynamic together, a formidable team, but it wasn't like this.
(The old man with the mustache had said this one would be different. That this one would be special.)
When Light became handcuffed to his wrist day and night, L suspected. Light made him tease, made him fight, made him smile, but it wasn't like this.
(L didn't want to be special. He just wanted his parents back.)
When their relationship became physical, L was pretty sure. Every time they would hold hands or kiss or fuck, L would consider it in his head…but it wasn't like this.
(But though his cheeks had been pink with the cold and the building seemed to loom before them, intimidating and large, Watari's hand in his had been warm.)
He had never said it before, was never going to until he was absolutely certain.
(He took a deep breath, watching it crystallize in the air before him, and stepped toward Whammy's House.)
It isn't until L wakes up one morning and sees snow falling outside, quiet and gentle, while inside the room the sheets are soft and the bed is warm and Light is spooning him in his sleep and L feels so completely and utterly happy that he never wants to move again…it isn't until then that L knows.
The knowledge brings a such a swell of emotions that L finds himself pressing his face into his pillow, maybe grinning and blushing and doing everything else that he'd never let anyone else see, ring glittering on his finger.
Eventually Light stirs, yawning and stretching and mumbling incoherently as he shifts himself closer to L's warmth. "Ohayo…Ryuuzaki…"
And god, in this moment L doesn't want Light for sex or for sport or for show, he doesn't want anything but to just lay here together and watch the snow fall for a minute longer. It is this utter purity of emotion that lets L know, know and finally admit to himself, how he feels about Yagami Light.
L turns his head, enough to see Light gazing sleepily at him through tousled bangs, and, as usual, L is completely floored by his utter beauty. Light must see something in L's face, because he leans forward to peck him on the lips as he smiles softly.
"You seem to be unusually happy this morning," the brunet murmurs against the side of the detective's mouth. L, completely sure that he is not smiling anymore, keeps his voice a careful deadpan as he replies.
"What makes you think I'm happier than usual this morning, Light-kun?" And when Light chuckles in that husky, heart-warming way of his, L can't help but melt back against him.
"Ryuuzaki, you're glowing."
(The other kids had known he was different, had looked at him strangely. Instead of playing with them, he had grabbed the first book he could find. A mystery novel.)
"I love you, Light-kun."
(That night he stayed up, reading it under the covers with a flashlight until he had finished... Then he went in search of another.)
The room is very quiet and Light is very still, frozen except for the pounding of his heart.
After a moment, L leans forward to kiss him again. As he feels Light's lips trembling, the detective smiles and closes his eyes. They clutch each other close, holding like they'll never let go.
Outside, the snow continues to fall.
(And, well, the rest is history.)
…xOxxOx… Owari ...xOxxOx…