Chapter Text
It starts like it ends, with just the two of them. L clamps the handcuffs around Light’s wrist and grins at him, a secret smile hidden from the rest of the task force.
An unfamiliar feeling stirs somewhere in Light’s chest. He stamps it down. “If I am Kira, no amount of observation will be able to prove it,” he says, instead of arguing, mostly for the benefit of the others. “You should know that by now, Ryuzaki.”
“Maybe,” says L. “Either way, I suspect I’ll learn a great deal about you.”
The way he says it sends a shudder down Light’s spine. He’s not Kira. He knows this, knows that he would never go to the extremes Kira goes for his ideals. But given a nudge, and a justification? If he had that sort of power…
He doesn’t want L to know that.
He forces a smile. “I suppose you will.”
The first few hours are bearable, even easy. They’re always together, and even with the cuffs chaining them, there’s not a noticeable difference in their proximity. A foul taste fills Light’s mouth at that observation. He makes a silent note to fix that once the cuffs come off. They shouldn’t stand so close. He shouldn’t be so comfortable leaning over L’s shoulder to look at his computer, or reaching across his lap for a file.
Things grow more complicated when night rolls around and finds them standing in front of the shower.
“You didn’t think about this, did you,” asks Light.
“I think about everything,” L replies noncommittally. He slips the handcuff key out of his pocket, unchaining them just long enough to shrug out of his shirt. Light watches as he pulls it over his head, turns away when the expanse of pale skin sends color rushing into his cheeks. “We’ll have the clothes tailored to avoid removing the handcuffs soon.”
“ Ryuzaki ,” Light snaps, when L starts to remove his pants. “You might not have any decency, but I do. I’d rather not change in front of you.”
“Why?” asks L, stepping into the shower. Light forces his eyes to stay firmly on the opposite wall. “Do you have something to hide?”
“I’m not Kira,” he says. Empty words. He’s said them a thousand times, and he’ll say them a thousand more, but L will never believe him. “I just value my privacy.”
L considers him, his head cocked to the side. “You seem awfully afraid of the male body.”
“What are you implying?” Light asks stiffly. His cheeks burn, and he knows L can see it. “Maybe I just find your body repulsive.”
“No, that’s not it. You’ve got a face specifically for disgust. It’s the one you wear every time you look at Miss Amane. Odd, considering your intimacy.”
“You know how I feel about Misa,” Light snaps. He can’t fathom why he started dating her, why he forced himself to tolerate such an absolute ditzy idiot for so long. Even now, he can’t figure out why he doesn’t just break up with her. Something tells him not to.
“So I thought,” L murmurs. He turns away from Light, steps into the shower.
Light watches the water cascade down over him, flattening his dark hair. He lets the handcuffs drag him closer, huffing in irritation. “At this point, I think I’d rather just be Kira.”
“We all make sacrifices for the case. I suspect, after a few days, this will be the least of your worries.”
He refuses to acknowledge that. In what way is this a necessary sacrifice? And yet when L insists he take a shower too (“I can’t stand the smell of unwashed man. It distracts me”) he does, pretending he can’t feel the detective’s gaze on his back, pretending his chest doesn’t heat at the idea of it. It would be wrong to admit it.
Light rolls over groggily, sometime late at night in their shared bed—another ‘necessary’ sacrifice—blinking at L. He perches next to him, still furiously typing away in the dim blue light of his computer. Light’s watch blinks 2:34AM. “Ryuzaki,” he hisses.
L looks at him. “Am I disturbing you?”
“Do you not sleep at all?”
“I find I only require a few hours of sleep to continue to function. If It’s bothering you—”
“What’s bothering me is that it’s two am and you seem to have no concept of healthiness,” Light gripes, unsure of why he cares. He flips onto his back and yanks on the chain. “Come to sleep.”
“How domestic,” L says softly, snapping his laptop closed.
Light rolls his eyes. “I hope Kira writes your name.”
“Eight percent,” warns L.
“And I hope he does it soon.”
“I don’t think he will,” L replies, a strange contemplation in his voice. Because you’re not Kira, Light’s brain auto-fills for him. Not anymore. Not right now. “I have a few days left.”
“Only a few?”
“Only a few.” L smiles as he lies down, pulling the blankets over himself. Sometimes Light wonders if he would sleep in his clothes if Light wasn’t there to stop him. “Unless Kira changes his mind.”
It feels like a challenge. Like in L’s head Kira is still being replaced with Light, even though all the evidence protests it. Like L is daring him—daring Kira— to let him live, just to prove him wrong.
Light doesn’t back away from a challenge. “Do you think he will?”
“I wonder, sometimes,” L admits. Light twists to face him. The bed is the biggest Watari could provide, and yet it still feels frighteningly small when they’re lying like this, face to face and eye to eye. Close enough to touch. Too far to understand.
“The great detective L, admitting to being unsure of something?” Light laughs quietly. “That’s a first.”
L studies him. “You’ve given me many firsts.”
Light’s face turns red. Does L not realize how that sounds? The blatant innuendo is enough to send him spiraling into exactly the kind of thoughts he feared he’d have, sleeping this close to L. He shakes them away. It’s wrong to think of him like that. He knows it. If he just ignores it, it’ll go away.
“Night, Ryuzaki,” he mumbles, flipping over onto his opposite side.
He can hear L’s smile in his words. “Goodnight, Light.”
And it is domestic, despite the joke evident in L’s words. It could never truly be peaceful, not with their conflicting personalities, not with L side-eyeing Light at every opportunity and Light with the growing realization that he might be Kira. But it’s close enough to peace. They make it work. At night, they shower with the chain resting on the shower bar, to account for Light’s ‘prudish tendencies,’ as L calls them. They brush their teeth in silence, each pretending the other isn’t there, yet brushing longer just to win one small victory. Light’s teeth have never been cleaner.
They fall into bed late at night. Light pretends to sleep for a couple hours, then tugs on the chain in a silent message to L that it’s time to get off his computer. He doesn’t think either of them fall asleep for hours after that, but they lie there silently, something tense and heavy hanging still in the air. They don’t talk about it. Even when they wake up tangled in each other, the chain hopelessly twisted between their arms, they don’t talk about it.
There are many things Light has learned not to talk about. From the students at his school, not to discuss insecurities, flaws, failures. From his dad, to cut off the dark corners of his mind, to sequester away the things he shouldn’t think about, yet always failed to completely vanquish. To ignore the thoughts that come unbidden to his mind in locker rooms, from magazines, from looking too long and too closely at the men in Sayu’s TV dramas. He doesn’t talk about that, and he doesn’t talk about what he feels when he sees L. A simple rule. Yet somehow it feels more and more difficult to follow.
He calls his father. He knows it’s a mistake as soon as the phone starts ringing, but L is, as always, next to him, and to hang up in fear would be the same as admitting his sin to L.
“Hello?”
What to say? What to ask? His head spins, calculating the right number of words, the right tone to be casual yet not too dismissive, interested yet not too obsessed. The words slip from his throat like they’re covered in honey. It’s easy to lie. It always has been.
“What a man does in his own room is no business of mine,” his father replies, voice grating over the phone. Light’s chest feels a little lighter, the knife above his head lifting. Soichiro sounds irritated, like Light’s question is a waste of time, but not mad, and that’s good enough. Isn’t it? “As long as it’s not my son.”
The guillotine comes slamming down again.
He swallows the knot in his throat. “Of course,” he says. He doesn’t look at L. “I agree.”
“Why are you asking?” A hint of suspicion. Light makes up a half-believable excuse and hangs up. His father will believe what he wants to, anyway; he could tell him the truth and he still wouldn’t acknowledge it.
“What was that about?”
Light glances over at L, perched at his desk, cutting up an apple crumble into little pieces. “Just something I saw on TV,” he says easily, “about a state in America legalizing homosexual marriage.”
“I see,” is all L says.
“What do you think?” Light asks despite himself, and with each word he digs his own grave deeper, because it shouldn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter. But he asks regardless.
“I think,” says L, “that you know what I think.”
L pulls a sugary apple slice out of his dessert and bites down on it. His eyes don’t leave Light’s.