Chapter Text
One of the questions most frequently explored by scientists, with all their equipment and paperwork and manners of prying into the unsolved, was always the predicament of soulmates.
Science always sought to explore the world, so science asked: why do soulmates they exist? Why does everyone find themselves attached to one person alone, leading to either a romantic or a platonic bond - a close bond, if named in no other way?
Naturally, the next question right after the first was always how to propel people to find their Ones as fast as possible, to keep the population level healthy. To combat isolation, to fight for love. If not even for love – something , to find that something , and market it as love, a gimmick so powerful that people became willing to march to their graves. History bears witness and unfolds as tribute to the idea that the world found answers to the second question, but not the first.
Lawliet always watched with a cynical eye from the shadows. He was vaguely indifferent to his solitude, at first; it felt like neither a blessing nor a curse, and simply saw it for what it was: more time to solve puzzles. Only in his latest years did he feel the longest stretch, like he was becoming a clock rather than measuring his life by one. If he closed his eyes, he slept for seasons at a time; if he awoke, he worked. He read books, sipped wine with Aceline, and only somewhat expressed a desire that perhaps dying wouldn’t be so bad after all. His way of thinking, his way of being, existing, all changed the moment Light threw him a glance over his shoulder from the lens of a camera perched in a corner of his room and took his hand. Ironically, it was only then, after being introduced formally to his personal reaper, that he felt himself suddenly stirred by a fire he thought had long since died.
Back at Wammy’s House, his thoughts were muddled, flat all along. He was craving something that he didn’t know could exist – the touch of Light falling asleep against his back, the purpose of something that threw him into danger, a cause that drew him deeper into an examination of the character he was throwing himself up against rather than the prospect of victory.
It knifed the question straight into Lawliet's chest, the moment he realized:
Are people soulmates because a bond exists?
Or because there will be one, and our bodies are telling us things we don't yet know?
If there was ever a time to be wrong, it would be now.
They brush their teeth silently in front of the sinks, the mirror precisely clean but almost emptily so. There are handprints over the countertops. Lawliet steals glances at Light, never for too long, knowing that even if Light were to see him watching it would be considered nothing out of the ordinary. But glances now feel different, as though they are built by more than the implications belonging to a detective interested in pure observation alone. Looking over feels like an invasion of privacy, somehow, and although Lawliet isn’t going to shy away from it, he understands trepidation for what it is.
Light, likewise – while always having been more than a mere suspect – is different.
Light Yagami…. Lawliet stares at his own reflection in the mirror, watching the eyes that had watched him for six hundred years. He’d always been bored by his own appearance, but less so now.
You make me feel different. Better and worse all at once.
I hope, for the first time…
“I wonder what Dad has to say,” Light mumbles, tucking his toothbrush into its usual place at the corner of the sink. He turns to face Lawliet head-on, his eyes still unusually bright.
Lawliet is almost caught off guard by the expression, but remains neutral even with a mouth full of toothbrush. “If it weren’t for Watari mentioning police involvement in the case,” he muses after he leans down to rinse his mouth with water, “I’d almost consider it had something to do with…”
He doesn’t have to finish. The two of them bond because of secrets. Lawliet keeps one, Light keeps one, and together they keep one.
Light flashes Lawliet a small, lopsided smile – a ridiculous expression, on such an occasion – and glances back at the mirror. Even without fully spoken articulation, the words he was about to speak are no mysteries.
The parallelism of the moment strikes Lawliet keen and fast, so much that it leaves a hole yawning in him when he considers it. He had always denoted Beyond Birthday as the opposite side of his own reflection in a mirror; perhaps some part of him saw Kira in much the same fashion. But, now, Light Yagami stands on the same side of a mirror, looking back at their opposites.
It’s Lawliet and Light, staring back at L and Kira. All secrets, smoke and mirrors.
“Ryuzaki,” Light says, as he watches Lawliet put the toothbrush down. He slowly leans over, slips his fingers around Lawliet’s thumb, questioning.
Lawliet doesn’t brush him away.
They walk to headquarters with their arms swinging closely together, pinky fingers intertwined – just barely, but enough. It’s a gentle wisp of a movement, but one that drowns and radiates within itself from glowing.
The pacing is vaguely reminiscent of when they had walked through the hospital hallways together, long ago, the smell of floors that had been cleaned with ominous vigor and ghosts of goodbye whispered onto every inch of glassy marble. They had worn tennis shoes then, and left scuffmarks on the ground when cherry blossoms fell from the sky carelessly as dirty rain.
These halls are equally filled with ghosts – the seconds flood to part them, crest above and below their hands. Likewise they swirl around their heads, run fingers along their jawlines.
This is the curse of living in a world with Ones , Lawliet thinks.
Maybe I’d never have touched him, if it meant I could live forever with him.
Before Light, Lawliet had undoubtedly lacked any conceptualization of how time manifested itself – he had locked himself in the rooms of Wammy’s House, read books to make time feel as if it were frozen justifiably. Before Light, he was losing, slowly – it didn’t matter how many cases he solved, or how difficult they were. He was so tired, without knowing it. And, indeed, there would be time for anything he could fathom. So was it Light who had changed the way he opened his eyes, or was it the imminence of death?
Lawliet only notices the changes if he concentrates carefully on thinking back, stripping his memory of each level. And then there are things like –
Every night before he went to sleep, he checked the sides of his temples for grey hair.
Now, he glances to memorize the precise color of Light’s eyes, and not always for the sake of the case; sometimes, his irises look like the color of the most beautiful butterfly’s wings he could imagine. And sometimes, Light is looking over at him too, with the mirage of a smile almost turning his lips at the corners.
And there are undoubtedly ghosts in the hallways – ghosts of pacing through to see Misa Amane, ghosts of walking to see the sunrises and sunsets, ghosts of waiting for coffee to remind him that his veins have blood in them as surely as anyone else’s. Lawliet glances over, tracing Light’s shoulders with his gaze, the stiff posture belied by the way his fingers search for Lawliet’s.
I cannot make decisions based on feeling alone. I never have.
But I cannot imagine being in these hallways without you.
Instinctively, they drop their hands apart when they are standing before headquarters. It’s Light who opens the doors, and they’re almost instantly greeted by the whispers that hover through the space. Everyone is huddled at the front of the room in a tight circle, standing by the desk.
Lawliet can see Aizawa’s brow is furrowed intently, his eyes flashing with a dangerous glare. “We’re doing the most we can,” he says, words coated with only a thin veil of control. Beside Lawliet, Light stiffens visibly; a quick glance to the side reveals his hands are bunched into fists.
What is this?
Soichiro turns back to look at them, his expression somewhat grim. “Good morning,” he says, with an unusual abruptness. “We’ve received news that the police are getting tired of waiting to catch Kira. They want to see results faster.”
Ah…
“What do you mean?” Light fires quickly, stepping forward in an instant only to then lean back, recoiling as if in hesitation. “What do you mean, see results? Don’t they know we’re doing the best we can?”
Soichiro looks at Lawliet, more than a bit deliberately, the glare of his glasses hiding his eyes almost entirely. Likewise, Lawliet feels Aizawa and Matsuda staring at him.
“They don’t understand L’s methods,” Soichiro says, a bit grim. “They don’t understand why he hasn’t been able to solve the case yet. It’s been months of being in the dark.”
Lawliet glances at Matsuda, who is visibly sweating, his lips pressed into a nervous line.
He thinks I haven’t solved it because Light is my One.
Or, at least, the thought has crossed his mind.
“Isn’t that even more proof of the scale of what we’re dealing with?” Light snaps before Lawliet can speak, his usually calm voice raised with indignation. “We’re trying to catch something we can’t even comprehend. How’re we supposed to catch a power that passes from person to person so fast? If it were that easy, we’d have caught Kira long ago!”
“We know,” Aizawa says flatly, raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. He looks frustrated, unabashedly, and he’s rubbing the sole of his shoe into the ground as though he could find answers there. “Try explaining that to the police, then.”
“Mmm… So what happens next?” Lawliet muses, his voice smooth and almost bored as he tucks his hands into his pockets, like a thief hiding what he’d found.
A thief of time, fairly enough.
He also keeps the secrets of what it felt like to hold Light’s hand concealed carefully in his pockets.
“Working longer hours,” says Soichiro in response, tucking his hands into his pockets and bowing his head. He glances at the clock behind them, just above the door – the greatest reaper of all.
“We’re already working nonstop,” Light says thinly, as he gestures to the handcuff around his wrist. “This is ridiculous.”
“I know. But we have to solve this case, whatever it takes.” Soichiro sounds more resigned than anything else.
I know.
“Very well,” says Lawliet, feeling a hole yawning itself wide as if to replace his stomach, as he glances at the floor and away from Light. “We’ll implement longer hours.”
“You’ll hurt yourself if you’re not careful,” says Light, quieter. Lawliet doesn’t look over, but can imagine his precise expression – concerned, but softly so. “You barely sleep as it is.”
I can sleep when I’m dead.
And, then –
Just confess already, Light Yagami. Then we can both –
He thinks of Beyond Birthday, what he said in a dream: that even if Light were Kira, he wouldn’t need to rot in prison. Maybe they could work something out.
If he were to stay with me, to help me solve cases for the rest of our lives…
If it’s certain we’ll die anyway, and his life with me is certainly as damning as if he’d received the aging catalyst…
All of it flashes through his head in just moments, but he simply looks over at Light. “You worry about me, Light?” he asks.
“We all do!” Matsuda cuts in, his words ungraceful and slippery. He keeps a secret, too. “We all do, L – I mean, Ryuzaki. We all want you to be healthy.”
He’s covering the tracks of anything that looks suspicious.
“He’s right,” Light says, perhaps unconsciously raising a hand to his temples. Or maybe it was conscious. Every moment is calculated, with Light. Lawliet reminds himself to never forget it. “We have to end this.”
“Very well then. Back to work,” says Soichiro resignedly, and Aizawa nods terse affirmation. Light, for his part, pulls on the handcuffs gently, so that Lawliet looks over at him. He’s almost swept off his feet by the clarity and gentleness in Light’s eyes, a sharp stinging pulling at the bottom of his stomach.
Almost like he loves me.
Would I believe him, if he…?
But surely it’s still an act. An act by Kira, to get closer to L.
Maybe so. But if that’s the case…
Lawliet steps backwards, as if stricken by something piercing his heart, as the realization dawns on him. Light throws a glance over his shoulder and stares back, with a small smile clearly intended to be reassuring; Lawliet glances over, sees Aizawa watching him, and it’s as though Light has ripped holes all over him by running his teeth along his skin. Light, the inadvertent but perfect siren to Lawliet’s hopeless sailor, replaced all the sugar in his throat with dynamite and poison, lamplight laughter from their bedside table, the window with sunshine or moonlight that was nothing more than silent, jagged claws for all of its rays, and the bleakness of it absorbed into Lawliet’s blood.
Maybe it’s my own fault for falling for it.
The tea party with Misa later in the day is intended to great some sort of difference, but it’s likely to be worth nothing.
Lawliet, having dragged Light along the hallway with the somewhat futile hope that perhaps Misa would say something that could give some sort of clue, had tried to keep his heart out of his throat when Light asked him why they were going.
“You don’t have to do this,” he asked, brushing his fingers fleetingly at the small of Lawliet’s back, leaving a burning warmth at the spot he touches. “She doesn’t have anything more to say, and I’m not Kira. It’s as though you won’t be satisfied unless it’s me who’s Kira.”
“It’s the precise opposite, but I have to expound all the possibilities,” Lawliet says in turn, too quickly. He glances to see Light’s eyes open wider, ever so slightly.
That’s right. I hope you are not Kira, but I have the feeling you were.
Light smiles at him, lowering his head so that his bangs hide the sharpness of his eyes in the dimly lit hall. “Ryuzaki,” he says, quietly, and again reaches out, running his fingers from the base of Lawliet’s spine, to trace circles over his hip and the bit of skin just above the belt loop of his pants. It’s an oddly immediate gesture, one intended to signify closeness that makes Lawliet’s heart race a bit faster in his wrists.
Quillsh can see the videotapes. He’s likely watching.
So it would likely be undesirable, then, if Lawliet were to stop abruptly, gather Light closer to him and kiss him, just for the sake of opening his own eyes to see Light staring back at him – with the void all too immediate and full of fireworks, telling implicit stories of just how fast they could fall. As if Lawliet could kiss him hard enough, or if Light smiled at him just long enough, that they could melt back into sleeping and take away the investigation, if only for a day, so that the mind games wouldn’t win their war.
The question remains if it is a war against each other, or a war against Kira.
Or both, or neither.
When Misa sees them, the smile melts from her face, her pretty lipstick pout turning down to the floor. “Light?” she asks, and Lawliet almost recoils at the way she says it in a nearly accusatory fashion. “You look…different.”
Light smiles, raising an eyebrow loftily. “What makes you say that?” he asks, deflecting the question with nothing more than a verbal brush of his hand. Lawliet glances over, runs his eyes over Light’s profile and neck clinically, and watches the perfect façade unfold.
You are a good liar, Light Yagami. Everything I observe…makes me think you are Kira. I really have no doubt.
“You look more tired,” Misa notes, tilting her head to the side, her hair dancing around her shoulders as she raises a finger to her lips in surprise. “And your forehead is more…”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Misa,” Light says, pushing through the doorway with an air of confidence – one that Lawliet hasn’t seen since before he was voluntarily imprisoned. Misa jumps back from the entrance, squinting at him. “We’ve been working long hours. Of course we’re going to look tired.”
Confident when lying. Noteworthy.
“You’re right,” says Misa, even though she’s still frowning. She glances at Lawliet, narrows her eyes at him. “Have you been keeping him up late? Light’s mine, remember.”
“I’ll tell you again,” Lawliet counters, almost boredly, “I’m not doing this because I want to.”
She doesn’t have to say the word for Lawliet to know she’s thinking it: pervert . Light wanders to the center of the room, crosses his arms – casts a glance over his shoulder to see Lawliet. “Misa, can you make us some tea?” he asks, even as he’s looking at Lawliet with wide eyes that never seem to look away.
Maybe it’s only me who could notice his voice is shaking ever so slightly.
“Of course, Light,” she says, too quickly, almost enough to make Lawliet flinch with the realization of it.
She would do anything for him.
Light moves to sit at the table they usually occupy, the one in the center of the room with the chairs on either side, facing a beautiful view of the city through a window with the sun pouring in unabashedly. And Misa, she brings tea back for both of them. Lawliet leaves his untouched, puts it on the table and watches the reflection of the overhead lights dancing on the surface while trying to refrain from being distracted by Light’s hand lying close to his on the tabletop.
She’ll notice. Careful.
Light smells the slightest bit like vanilla, Lawliet notes, and it almost fogs his mind. He’s sitting close, closer than he ever did before, and Misa’s eyes are flicking down as if to watch, but she doesn’t say anything as she tosses her hair over her shoulder and clicks her tongue, ever so slightly to cut the silence of the room. Lawliet grazes the skin of his thumb with his teeth, and he’s as plainly opened as he is closed.
“This is the worst date I’ve ever been on,” Misa remarks mildly after only a moment, looking at Lawliet with a certain deliberacy. “You’re always close to Light. Is there something weird going on between you two?”
“Misa,” says Light thinly, “you’re being absurd.” He instantly stiffens his posture, sits straighter in his seat.
Lawliet reacts only by tilting his head to the side.
“I’m investigating him under suspicion of being the first Kira,” he says. “Is there a problem?”
“But you can’t leave Light and I alone, just for a minute?”
“Ah. Even if I did, I’d still be watching on camera, anyway.”
“Hmm.” Misa frowns, leans back in her seat.
“We’re close to solving the case,” Light adds.
He always says that.
“Hmm. Sometimes…” She falters, and she suddenly looks like she’s in pain – like she dropped a glass and let the contents pour onto the floor, like she lost something sacred. Lawliet’s chest lurches. “Sometimes I just wonder…”
She looks at Lawliet, her brown eyes filled with questions and implicitly sad. “I’m not sure why I love Light as much as I do,” she says, softer now. “But what matters is that I do. He’s… He’s not my One, is he?”
“I’d have started aging by now,” Light says, even though it’s obvious. He sounds strangely cold.
“It’s likely that your love for him is related to his being Kira and your being the Second Kira,” Lawliet drawls, glancing away to see the window instead. “Even if you don’t remember. But like I’ve said, it almost seems too simple.” He pauses. “Mmm. Time will tell all things. Thank you for the tea.”
He hasn’t touched it.
Misa says nothing, her usually upbeat demeanor vanished into ashes. She bows her head to look at the table.
“Maybe we should go back to work,” Light says quietly.
“Maybe so.”
Lawliet isn’t remiss for it.
Misa looks up, runs a finger along the plate acting as the base for her teacup. Her nails are painted a deep bloodred, almost insinuating something sinister by the color alone. “I’ll see you later for another date soon, Light,” she says cheerily enough, but it’s obviously a charade.
“Sure,” Light says, already standing and turning his back to her.
Misa doesn’t get up to kiss him; she makes no moves at all as Light and Lawliet slowly leave, the chain ringing as it slaps against itself.
Lawliet can’t shake the feeling –
She knows.
Matsuda. Aizawa. Misa…
As soon as the door clicks behind them, Light pauses, bowing his head to the ground and tucking a single hand into his pocket. Lawliet stares, watching his every motion, as everything he does seems to open the world a little wider with the careful cuts of his actions.
“Do you think she’s aware, Light?”
Light glances up, eyes flashing. “She’s not the brightest. But she certainly seems to know something.” He hesitates, averts his gaze from Lawliet’s. “We’re running out of time.”
“Ah, yes. I’m aware.”
Swiftly, Light steps closer to Lawliet, and pushes him gently against the wall. They’re standing so close together that their chests are almost touching, hearts beating equally fast amid the emptiness of the rest of the hall. Light curls his fingers around Lawliet’s wrist, tilts his head to the side, and wholly seems to notice the invisible flutter of wings at Lawliet’s throat even if neither of them makes any move.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Light says simply, his voice lowered to breach only the space between them and nothing more. His face is ashen. “I want this to be over. I don’t care if you only wanted Kira to be me. We’re going to get out of this, and I’ve decided there’s nothing I won’t do to get out of it.”
“Then we’ll have to catch Kira,” says Lawliet, raising an eyebrow and keeping his done dull even when every bit of him is filled with apprehension. “There’s no other way for this to end.”
And… Nothing you won’t do, Light Yagami?
Slowly, Light backs away, staring at the ground. “Come on,” he says, as he moves to leave. There’s a quick coldness in his voice, a tone Lawliet hadn’t recognized before. “Let’s go back to headquarters.”
Slowly, he starts to walk away.
Slowly, he leaves Lawliet aching for something more than the proximity afforded by the handcuffs unfeeling against his wrist.
After that, Light doesn’t touch him for days. They spend most of their time unspeaking, and they don’t share a bath, electing instead to shower and then be done with the matter. The tension is almost palpable, for reasons that are somehow both clear and ambiguous to Lawliet. It’s not unreasonable to conceptualize Light, so firmly believing in his innocence, is indignant at the prospect of Lawliet’s perpetual hesitance and determined suspicion. The question is, rather, what prompts the suddenness of the change.
Light falls asleep with his back facing Lawliet, never turning back or brushing against Lawliet to gain any semblance of protection. When he wakes with nightmares, his breath coming in heavy gasps, Lawliet doesn’t comfort him.
It’s easy enough for Lawliet to act cold, but it doesn’t stop him from considering that it had sometimes been less lonely to fall asleep when physically isolated, before he even knew the name Light Yagami, made to be a puppet dancing into the hands of time.
He barely looks at Light at all. Rather, he focuses his attention on Light’s omnipresent wristwatch, sensing some inexplicable, intuitive storm of dread building in his stomach.
“More heart attacks,” says Aizawa grimly the next morning, shuffling paperwork with calloused hands. Matsuda responds with a chorus of dramatic sighs, going so far as to throw his arms into the air and stomp his feet on the ground. Light glances over, but doesn’t say anything. His lips are pressed into a thin line.
“We’ll keep working,” Lawliet says dryly. It’s the most he’s spoken all morning; Light had been wholly unresponsive upon waking, and continued the chain of silence. Lawliet curls onto his chair, leaving his computer untouched and spinning to face the others.
“Will this ever end?” Matsuda mutters, to which Soichiro makes a noise of disapproval.
“Perhaps,” Lawliet says, and bites his thumb. “Only time can tell. But if things continue like this, there’s a chance Kira could find me before I could find him. And if he does…” He trails off, letting himself catch sight of Light from the corner of his vision before he continues. “Light would be quite capable of succeeding me as L.”
“Ryuzaki,” says Light, except he doesn’t quite say it so much as he hisses it, “where the hell did that come from? We still have plenty of time.”
Lawliet could say he did it to garner a reaction, or to motivate Light into seeing something that could lead them to a successful trail – and perhaps it’s true, but another part of him wanted to hear Light’s voice.
“If I die,” he says again, plainly, “would you take over for me?”
Light looks up. Stares at Lawliet with the most quiet expression, with burning eyes. Shakes his head.
No.
Time stops for Lawliet; he can hear the ticking in his head.
The culmination of their silence erupts in a fight on the fifth day. It’s a conflict that spins and churns with the same verbal violence as the storm raging outside.
I am absolutely certain that you are –
“Kira,” Lawliet says softly, the word like dirty rain crashing onto the forlorn dirt smeared across the unfeeling marble of a grave. It’s worse than the rain slapping against their window at the precise moment, somehow even colder.
And, somehow, I don’t want to do this anymore.
I wanted you to be Kira, but now…
I’m not sure I’d mind if you weren’t.
He gazes at Light’s back, silhouette graceful against the bedroom windowpane. The curve of his neck is lovely as ever.
“I’m not,” Light says, raising his voice and breaking the visual of marble that Lawliet saw in him as his words broke. Anger creases his forehead when he turns, and his cheeks are bright red. He’s visibly trembling, and he moves like lightning. “I’m not. I’ve told you thousands of times. What do I have to do to make you believe me?”
He’s suddenly pushing Lawliet onto the bed, angrily grabbing at Lawliet’s wrists and pinning them to the side in some sort of desperate, faint-sick fevered dream. He’s close, so close, and Lawliet’s breath hitches in his throat.
This again.
It’s not unlike the way Light had pushed him in Misa’s hallway, only hours earlier.
Light’s eyes are heavy amber, filled to the brim with the questions drowning him, and a sort of tiredness – as if to say, can we stop? This isn’t the most important thing.
Lawliet fights the immediate and overwhelming urge to place his hand at the small of Light’s back, to hold him closer with the breath of space between them, eliminate any semblance of a gap holding them apart, but his hands are abruptly cold and he’s incapable of moving. Not only that – he doesn’t want to move. Again, the whispers – touch me – draw him like knives folded into the creases of old tables, like the temptation of six hundred years of anticipation wants to govern him but he’s too afraid to simply be, and he’s more than his instincts. He can only register the arc of Light’s hipbones and the outline of his figure pressed into the gaps of the space – still too much space – they’re closer than they had ever been and still something is missing.
“Light,” Lawliet whispers, almost choked, against his own will.
Remember who the real enemy is –
Light’s eyes are suddenly soft, the harder lines of his body melting into Lawliet’s posture, amber turning to gold. His hands tighten around Lawliet’s.
You’re the only person who could be Kira. It’s only you. Only you could have concealed it for this long. But…
“An eye for an eye, my friend,” Lawliet says quickly, gripping more tightly and turning to roll over so that he’s now on top of the tangled mess of sheets and limbs and the feeling of Light so close to him is nearly overwhelming to the rational part of his mind. He aches at seeing the flush in Light’s cheekbones, lovely and painstaking like the wings of a bird, pinned on a corkboard, picturesque and vibrant but captive.
He doesn’t see you this way and you don’t need it.
Lawliet thinks it’s the curiosity alone that compels the question of a sudden physical response, and he starts to pull away.
This isn’t right. This isn’t you.
“Wait,” Light says suddenly as Lawliet leans away from the embrace, fighting against a physical reaction to Light’s presence, the idea that even a single brush of their skin would send him into some sort of absurd craving to be touched. It was a trap he didn’t need to fall into, one that could only restrain and twist his mind into something unrecognizably and unmistakably human.
Waited six hundred years for this? Is this what everyone always spoke about – want?
His blood is close to the surface of his skin, rushing and singing, and that’s how he knows it’s time to leave.
Go to the bathroom and hide behind the door. He knows he’s hit a new low when he wants to be physically apart from Light, potential of Kira-related activities be damned. He needs the silence of his mind to rationalize and bring him back to earth.
“L.” Light falters like he dropped a glass.
Lawliet pulls away; the sound of the chain against the sheets is an empty hymn. “Don’t call me that.”
Not right now.
“Ryuzaki.”
Lawliet has only a moment to turn before he finds his back pressed against the sheets again, feels Light’s hands on him, tucking careful and warm fingers against his chest.
“Your doing any of this raises the percent likelihood of you being Kira, Light,” Lawliet says, choked, and he’s almost embarrassed by the way he sounds – like someone had knocked the air out of him, like he was filled heavy with desire. He pours the ache into the way he grips the sheets. “You’ve been acting absurdly today.”
Light looks at him intently, as though he hadn’t heard Lawliet’s words. “Ryuzaki,” he repeats, calm and even. “The world’s greatest detective. You are my One.”
“A wise observation.” He’s breathing too heavily. “Sixty percent.”
“You treat me most of the time as though you feel nothing,” Light says quietly, leaning down to brush against Lawliet’s ear with the whisper of it. “But I’ll tell you something, a secret from me to you.”
I love you.
Lawliet clenches his jaw.
“I’m not Kira. It’s like I said earlier. I want to stay with you, after we find the culprit,” Light says quietly, his eyes wide moons, not obscured by dust. He looks at Lawliet so clearly and so unabashedly – an unmistakably intimate moment, like they are being tied together by more than just the cord around their wrists.
“You…” Lawliet trails off. “Seventy percent.”
“Fine,” Light says, almost smiling as he pulls back to look at Lawliet bathed in the dim shadows cast all over the room. “I love you.”
Lawliet stops breathing.
Time stops.
Light leans forward, brushes the hair from Lawliet’s forehead and kisses the smooth skin, leaves small kisses down the bridge of his nose. He hesitates for a moment before leaning forward to press his lips against Lawliet’s. It’s a gentle and quick touch, chaste and warm.
Light pulls away quickly, smiles only slightly, running his hands over Lawliet’s chest and tracing small circles into the skin there. “I had to try it once,” he says, and Lawliet hears him through ears that are suddenly filled with water, dreamlike as if he were on the sea drowning on the shore and Light is the siren calling to him.
“My life changed when I met you,” Light continues evenly, pulling back so that he’s no longer touching Lawliet. “I understand you - or, what I can see of you, anyway. Kira’s ideals are not unlike my own. I know you understand. But before I met you, I was unhappy. I can’t exactly remember all of it.”
“Seventy-five percent,” Lawliet says faintly, but it’s precious more than a formality to say.
This is a ruse, meant to trick me into trusting him.
But even so… This feels honest.
But Light drives on, alone. “Working with you makes me happy,” he says, somewhat flatly. “And I can’t imagine being without you. You are my One, after all. It’s not a difficult concept to imagine. I’m selfish, and staying with you is not unlike coming home. I need you.” He pauses, looks towards the window. “I want to stay with you, after we catch the Yotsuba group. We’re both going to die anyway. I don’t want to die alone.”
Lawliet lies on his back, staring at the ceiling, his skin aching to be touched.
“So save us both,” Light says softly. “I know you can.”
He slides his hand into Lawliet’s.
Time freezes again.
Lawliet thinks of his dream long ago, the one about Light in the field with the butterflies – enough so that he forgot that his One was even human at all.
Time waits for him to respond.
For the first time in months, it waits.
There has never been a greater rush against the clock, but time is infinite in the small square of their room.
Lawliet opens his mouth, imagines that butterflies pour out.
It’s against everything he knows he should say. But he had never been one for following the rules; he solved puzzles not for the rules they created, but rather for the practice of challenging his mind. Perhaps it was no different, for him to break the rules now – just as Light Yagami undoubtedly broke the rules to allow Kira to be born, to solve another puzzle: How do I make the world a better place, in my image? He succumbed to the temptation, made the rules as he went along. And Lawliet is no different, a monster in another light –
“I love you, too.”
It’s impulsive, and almost absurd. He knows the chance of Light believing him – of what they’re both saying holding any truth – is relatively slim. For all it could be worth, it could be nothing more than another level of mind games. And somehow, it doesn’t stop Light from curling as close as he can to Lawliet, running his hand to the crease of Lawliet’s elbow because his shirtsleeve has slipped up to his forearm and so Light traces fingers along the veins and follows the motion until his fingers are clasped tightly in Lawliet’s and they’re altogether a mess of limbs wrapped together underneath the sheets.
Light is far from distant or cold, as he was for the majority of the day. His eyes never leave Lawliet’s, as though he’s concentrating intently. “Ryuzaki,” he says, and he says it again until the word sounds strange and unformulated, like it’s falling apart and dissolving into stars, or champagne bubbles, or individual letters.
Like the letter L. They are both L.
“Light,” Lawliet says evenly, his voice unusually quiet. He tries saying the word without being accusatory. His hands are buzzing.
Adrenaline. Epinephrine.
That’s what made me say –
Light leans forward, kisses Lawliet slowly and clenches his fingernails into the back of Lawliet’s hand, leaving small red half-moons on the skin. The chain of the handcuffs tangles itself in the sheets, whispers their secrets.
How silly, to be drunk on this – after six hundred years – to come to this –
The taste of Light’s kiss still lingers on him, and he leans forward anyway because even though it’s not sickeningly sweet like sugar he still wants more it, or needs it. Somehow, it acts as a reminder that Light should be catching Kira too.
Lawliet’s head is dizzy with desire he doesn’t know how to fight, and he’s barely conscious of himself but he leans over and turns the lamp off where it stands at the bedside table. Their room is cast into darkness broken only by the deep blue glow from the small window at the wall, accompanied by the sound of rain heavy at the window. Light presses even closer, practically lying on top of Lawliet, his ear close to Lawliet’s heart.
“Your heartbeat is fast,” Light says quietly, not bothering to hide a trace of satisfaction. It’s recognizable in him.
“Ah, yes. I suppose so.”
Lawliet brushes the back of Light’s neck with his hand, feels the stray hairs stuck to his skin with sweat, leans forward and kisses the top of his head. Light in turn looks up, his eyes wide and observant as he stares, almost as though there he were observing a sky full of stars rather than the detective handcuffed to him.
There’s still a degree of hesitation, Lawliet notes, as he watches Light without moving. Still the burning question of wondering, why , because it’s simply not enough of an answer to accept that because they are Ones they should be lying together like this, with Light curled on top of him and with his fingers dancing across his stomach, as though playing an old piano idly. Lovingly, even.
It works in Light’s favor to play this way. He seems to always move first. But does that affect how genuinely…
Lawliet freezes.
Just for this one night, love him as if you could swallow and taper through the darker pieces of him, and forgive them.
See what he does from there.
Somehow, it feels like less of a burden, and more of a secretly forbidden grace as he leans forward and reaches to cup Light’s face in his hands. Light’s expression is even, but his cheekbones are unmistakably warmer even in the dim visibility of the room. Lawliet traces the line of his hair against his forehead, leaves a thumb at his temple, and Light closes his eyes to lean into Lawliet’s palm.
“How long,” Light whispers, after a pause, “were you alive?” He pulls away from the embrace to lean closer, and rests in the dip of Lawliet’s collarbone.
Lawliet hesitates, sees the possibilities aching before him and knows them for all their danger. For all he was aware of what could happen, Light could search extensively for him on the Internet based on his lifespan, and find his name. That could put an effective end to their charade, if he were Kira – if he had ever been Kira, or still was, or became Kira again.
“Five hundred years,” he says, softly. His eyes sting, abrupt and quiet. It’s a bit of a lie, but close enough to the truth.
Light tenses against him, undoubtedly surprised, perhaps even beyond the point of being able to conceal it. Gone is the air of confidence he’d emulated earlier in the day, gone are the facades – leaving only a person who seems to start shaking, suddenly gripping Lawliet’s waist even tighter.
“Perhaps it’s you I should be more upset for,” Lawliet says, ignoring the way the room blurs, tilting his head back to face the ceiling. Nothing looks hazy when what’s in your line of sight is monochromatic. “You’ve had so few years. Mmm… Although, it’s noteworthy that some might call you a success story, finding your One so fast.”
Light doesn’t say anything for a moment, still wrapping his arms tightly around Lawliet’s waist. “I was already bored,” he says in a small voice that sounds as though it doesn’t belong to him. “I can’t imagine…five hundred years. You know, there aren’t very many people who live that long.”
He sounds more like himself when he says the last sentence, perhaps because it’s a fact, or because it’s something unique to Lawliet and he’s used to noting unique things about Lawliet.
“Ah. Yes. That’s correct.” Lawliet falters. “Many…” He trails off and thinks of Aceline, her suicide; remembers Beyond’s insanity that enveloped him into flames; thinks of the very day he had first heard about the Kira case, with a morning that found him standing in a graveyard – a cruel realization that now seems more like foreshadowing than anything else. “That’s correct.”
Not many of us last so long.
“We’re not meant to live for long,” Light notes, a bit hesitantly, pressing his lips against Lawliet’s chest. “Population control. We’re supposed to find our Ones and die happily. And be glad to go.”
“That’s a correct observation.”
“And so…” Light leans away, frowning and bowing his head so that his hair covers his eyes. “In a sense, I understand Kira.”
Lawliet feels himself tensing, his hands bunching into fists at his side, but Light quickly turns back and gracefully runs his fingers through Lawliet’s hair. It’s an undeniably nice feeling. “I understand,” Light says quietly, “that the world is filled with people in prisons who haven’t found their Ones, and they get to live and fill the world.”
“So you suggest all criminals should receive the aging catalyst?”
Light’s hand drops to Lawliet’s heart. “No.” He hesitates. “I think it’s a cruel world we live in. It’s a rotten place. I think Kira tried to make the world a better place, and didn’t know how. What he does is evil, but…”
Light Yagami is Kira.
Light Yagami is Kira.
Light Yagami is Kira.
Even he must know. There’s no way it could be anyone else. No one would be smart enough to frame him, and everything fits.
“The only way to make the world better is to die,” Lawliet says coldly, but he lies his hand overtop of Light’s and grasps it tightly, because it’s the only thing left he can feel in spite of himself.
I cannot believe –
Light looks back, and his eyes seem to be slightly red-rimmed, wet beneath the lashes that cast shadows to raze dancing patches of darkness on his face. He’s altogether too beautiful.
There were six hundred years –
There’s no foundation for Lawliet to be thinking such things, but he thinks of them anyway. The foundation is the principle of the thing itself, a childish thought that urges him to hold Light’s hand and leave kisses all over him like small promises that neither of them can justifiably make and expect to uphold.
Without you.
He’d thought more than once of clearing Light completely, and handing the case to Mail and Mihael, or Nate – saving Light, running away, keeping him a secret for the years until they were gone, but it seemed like an anticlimactic form of dying. It seemed absurd in some ways that he’d spent his whole life alone, and he was prepared to die hidden as well. Hidden, if not alone.
How easy would it be, to keep Light chained to him forever? It’s a childish prospect, but there’s a sudden rush of emotion that surges in his chest at the thought. To clear Light – even when he was likely responsible for the mass murder Lawliet had sworn to solve the mystery behind, even if he didn’t remember a trace of it – would be the opposite of everything he had dedicated six hundred years to, a rebellious and impulsive choice made in the face of death.
It’s as though Light is some sort of toy, belonging to a child – Lawliet’s held onto him, and now doesn’t want to let him go, even if he’d never admit it.
How painful would it be, to destroy the mind of someone so bright?
What’s more: to destroy my One? To leave him to rot in some prison corner with strange stains on the floors, to leave him bleeding into puddles, alone and falling to pieces, aging alone and dying without –
The sharp pain Lawliet’s chest cuts him off, unexpectedly severs him from the destruction of his own thoughts. He opens his mouth, finding only that no words come out. Light stares at him, tilting his head as though he were attempting to guess the nature of Lawliet’s thoughts but was unable.
I don’t want to give him away.
“Ah… There is a small chance,” Lawliet says, curling his legs closer to himself so he’s tucked into a ball and Light’s pushed away. The physical space helps clear his thoughts, and he grazes his thumb with his teeth. “There is a small chance, but if you are not Kira, I’d like you to stay and work with me after this is done. You can work with Nate, too.”
Light seems frozen, his eyes wide, but he gains composure quickly. “I’d be honored, Ryuzaki.” He doesn’t ask about the mention of Nate.
Even if…
Even if you are Kira.
I do not want you to go.
He thinks of Aceline, despondent and lost after seeing her One die. The reason Lawliet could never drink wine again.
I’ve spent enough time lost.
I do not want to lose Light Yagami.
Who in the world would be able to judge Kira, fairly?
If the case were brought to trial –
If the case were sent straight past trial, damned right from the beginning –
Would anyone be able to come to a decisive outcome anyway?
If Kira’s power were instead the attempted medium in which to fix a world irreparably broken, the incarnation of someone so broken they were grasping with bloody hands to try to fix it all, would any human be able to judge it with genuine fairness?
It was murder, unquestionably. The work of a corrupted heart, a broken mind –
Created in a moment of weakness –
And, even so…
What it takes to become un-broken, in this world, is to break.
How could anyone pretend to be a fair judge, when everyone is on one side of the coin or another?
Lawliet wonders, absently, if there is a world parallel to this one, in which people were not given soulmates so plainly and easily. Wonders if it would change the way he looks at Light now, eyes tracing the every moment of his hands as he writes songs into Lawliet’s skin, and Lawliet in turn lets the curiosity of it dance on his lips without saying anything at all.
Light kisses him quickly and never in the same place – kisses his eyelashes, kisses the line of his jaw. It’s not precisely a sensual motion; more than anything, it’s further expression of their proximity, something inevitable and welcome. There’s something about it that reflects the apparent depth of emotion that seems to edge towards the surface during the quietest of moments – he’s no longer the shadow from a cigarette charred against concrete. Light Yagami is real.
Lawliet for his part holds himself back, refrains from touching Light further than weaving his fingers through his hair. He remembers Light’s declaration from not long ago, muttered against the sheets covering him up to his neck –
I don’t want to have sex with her. I don’t want to have sex with anybody.
So Lawliet unfurls his smile, lets his fingers stay empty, and lets his guard down as much as he can. He sweeps his own matted bangs from his forehead, chews on his thumb, and practices the art of falling in love so well he might even conceal it from himself. All the while, the rain pours outside and slices the air as it descends, little crystals bringing new life to the world that had been too dry and too hot for too long.
Light falls asleep with fistfuls of Lawliet’s shirt bunched into his hands.
Lawliet thinks to himself, almost whispers:
Tomorrow, let’s catch Kira. Whoever Kira is now. You and I. Light and Lawliet.
Ones.
A real team. Let's stop pretending for one day.
If even only for a day.
I would like to live one authentic day, just to know how it tastes.
As if he could hear Lawliet’s thoughts, Light curls closer into the embrace, unaware of the monsters he was binding his hands and feet with.
Or, perhaps, he is cutting away from his own monsters.
Should I let him?
Lawliet leaves a kiss at the crown of Light's head.
Or otherwise sentence him, pretending I can, and get rid of mine.
Days pass quickly, and all semblance of darkness or cold passes away – even in spite of a world that doesn’t seem to change. Clouds accumulate in the hazy summer sky.
Nothing more and nothing less than this: they kiss each other to sleep every night, hold hands in the halls when there’s no one around, watch the sun set. The outside world is sticky, leaves hair plastered to the backs of their necks. There’s a sweetness, and further still a longing about it that not even Lawliet’s preferred assortment of delicacies can quench.
Light says:
I love you.
Lawliet says nothing sometimes, but squeezes Light’s hand harder. Other times:
I believe you.
Even when he doesn’t.
He said I love you only once, on that first night. He only needed to say it once. Nothing changes on the surface, at least not to anyone else.
Each day, Lawliet’s thoughts drift two distinct places:
I am going to die.
And –
I do not want to give away Light Yagami.
Until, one week after Light first tells Lawliet I love you –
“Ryuzaki.”
“Yes?”
“Come look at this. Look. Look carefully. Isn’t it unbalanced?”
Lawliet flinches back when he notices it, pulling his chair closer to Light’s and staring at the toneless bright of the computer monitor filled with graphs and analytics.
“All three of these victims,” Light murmurs, “were prominent Japanese businessmen. They all died of heart attacks. As a result…”
“Yotsuba’s stock prices rose and those of other companies dropped.”
“They are deaths that are in Yotsuba’s favor. Looking back, there have been thirteen similar deaths in the past three months. Based on this, I can only conclude that Kira is supporting Yotsuba.” Light looks over at Lawliet, his eyes wide and filled with unabashed brightness, even if his smile doesn’t quite reach his lips. “What’re your thoughts?”
“Yes. That could be,” Lawliet murmurs, glancing away.
Light finding this – it’s another way of saying I love you , and I want to stay .
Or, another step closer to the end.
The truth is that Lawliet wants him to stay, too. His heart picks up, even if he’d never betray it out on the outside.
Light is Kira.
And, maybe –
We can fix this, as much as anything can be fixed in this world.
That night, after everyone else is in their rooms and so they sneak away, they kiss with their hands heavy and silent against each other’s necks, flashes from garish skyline lights flickering through the window and quick howls from streetcar sirens hurtling and cutting through the air quickly so as not to interrupt their dancing where Lawliet and Light are on the same plane. There are signs on buildings roughly scratched to say with rather literal graffiti words, “If you love someone, act on it,” and cicadas sing and hum-scream their songs until they’re nothing more than time bombs, but at least summer is still alive with the sounds of the night and Light’s hair is at least matted to the pillow and sticks up, still elegant, somehow, as the stars go out against the fever of the skyline.
Light Yagami is not a god. He’s only a man as fallible as any other, capable of finding a soulmate and capable of dying. Men are nothing more than cicadas, particularly in this world.
This is what Lawliet tells himself when he kisses Light, moves his lips to the hollow of his throat and rests there as he feels Light’s hand cup his own. Indisputably, Light wants L to believe him - the question is if he wants Lawliet to believe him, too. Uncertainty is at war with sympathy, or love, or whatever it could be called.
I can’t let him go. Can’t let him out of the handcuffs.
“This isn’t rational,” Light mumbles at one moment, and Lawliet knows his voice would be more shrill if only they were more awake and not half-melted into the same being.
“Nothing about this has ever been,” L says in turn, pulling back somewhat and chewing on his thumb. “Nothing about my response to you could ever be.” He pauses for a moment. “You see… You are Kira. I’ve spent my whole life being childish.” He accents the words by leaning down and leaving an almost inquisitive kiss on Light’s nose. “Mmm… I suppose there’s no reason to figure I would’ve changed now.”
Violent delights have violent ends.
Lawliet considers Light with an impulsive eye. He wants to say:
Run away with me.
But they're so close.
He's never been able to make his decisions based on feeling alone. He's never cared to; never known how to navigate anything so foreign to him. Now is no exception.
He sees the facts.
Light has no memory of being Kira.
Anyone but Lawliet - the great detective L - would have given up by now.
The fact remains, Lawliet realizes as he stares down, if he keeps Light with him, like this, perfectly unchanged, Kira wouldn't come back.
So it comes down to this:
Do I want Light? Or do I want Kira?
Can they be separated at all?
Lawliet keeps his thoughts quiet, and kisses Light while keeping his eyes open and trained on the splash of dark strawberry red against the crisp ivory of the pillow. Light is strikingly, unabashedly beautiful, and somehow doesn’t look away from Lawliet.
As if in parallel worlds at the same moment, L whispers "I love you" at the same time as Light snaps up, at the same time as he leans forward, and at the same time as L imagines Light’s voice - "I am Kira" - and sickness fills their stomachs at the same times that warmth does.
Rapture flickers through Light's eyes as he stares up at Lawliet with the smallest of smirks dancing across his lips. He looks like he’s stumbled upon an unexpected gift.
“I knew you loved me.”
Lawliet shakes, ever so slightly, as Light pulls at his shirt’s hem.
Love, perhaps not even that. But it’s something.
Lawliet leans down and presses his forehead against the curve of Light’s neck until he becomes a stranger to himself.