Chapter Text
Light is known to be a mind-changer when it comes to his best friend, L. Every ounce of him oozed with independence since his earliest days of babbling as a chubby-cheeked baby, but when it came to L, his brain would toddle back a few steps in dumbfounded contemplation, before latching onto the other boy’s preferences with just as much, if not more vigor.
Red was his favorite color, but blue when he was laying beside L in the playground grass, pointing high at the puffed clouds above them.
He hated Coraline in all its button-eyed horror, but lo and behold, shuffled house to house with a trick-or-treat bag in a yellow raincoat alongside his neighborhood pal when Halloween —or “L’s epic birthday”— rolled around. And of course, the latter sported a Wybie costume to match for his favorite film.
“I was six years-old, come on!” Light would say. “It was your idea, I was making you happy. And the movie wasn’t… that bad, alright…”
“Uh huh…”
Light was a loyal friend, a bold child standing up for his peers, albeit truly protective over one in particular. L was known as the weird kid at school— well, one of them at least. But he was a grade level above Light. So while Light reaped the naive popularity and ogling of being friends with an older elementary schooler, L spent most of his time in the classroom getting his long shaggy hair pulled, or being the last to get picked as a math partner, despite his stellar long division skills.
They’ve known each other since first-slash-second grade, when L was taken in by his grandfather, Quillsh, who lived down the street from the Yagami’s first house. In their gated community, Light and L would ride bikes together, play jump rope, not-so-subtly spy on the neighbors and share gossip through their walkie-talkies, and most boyishly of all: pee in places they weren’t supposed to. Let’s just say, they were keeping the dandelions alive in the neighborhood wash at the end of the road…
Light never truly understood his friend’s wacky interests, but he’d still listen to all the tangents regardless and thought nothing more of L’s extensive knowledge in Star Wars besides the fact that it sounded cool and smart. He always thought L was brilliant, but hardly said so outright because it was just so obvious, as if L were constantly waiting for others to keep up with his logic.
Light wanted the same for himself so badly. He earned perfect grades, competed in events L never even participated in, and beamed under the praise of the same teachers who’d say L was too distracted , that he would get further if he really applied himself. It never took away from Light’s awing opinion though, they didn’t know L like he did…
L didn’t even know himself through Light’s eyes. For some reason, this admiration was stowed away in Light as a whispered secret to keep to himself. He wanted to be equal to his friend.
At eight years old, he got the barest hint of what this admiration would entail.
“Guess what,” Light said from under the covers, huddled beside the other boy under the glow in the dark stars cloaked across his bedroom ceiling.
“What?” L asked, twirling that tiny skateboard toy between his fingers like he always did. It was his… thing.
“My mom told me that boys can literally have boyfriends. And not girlfriends.”
“Hm. I already knew that.”
“What the heck, L? Why didn’t you tell me?”
L makes an inquisitive I dunno sound, shrugging his shoulders as he continues to fidget with his toy over the thick blue comforter bundled under his arms. “I didn’t know you wanted to know.”
“It’s just so weird.”
“Really? Why?”
Another moment, this one, where his brain toddles backwards. Why was it weird? “I… I don’t know. I don’t think I would have a boyfriend. Princes go with princesses, and what about moms and dads?”
“Noah in your class has two moms though, remember?”
“Oh yeah…”
His friend seemed more quiet than usual, or maybe it was just the silence in this particular context that shook Light the most, enough to peer closely into his friend’s downcast and faraway gaze, the soft pout of L’s thin lips and his lashes fanned close to soft pale cheeks. He hoped L wasn’t mad at him, but why would he be? They’re the same, they agree on everything!
“Do you think you would have a girlfriend when you grow up, or a boyfriend?”
“Neither,” L answers.
“Come onnnn, be serious. Tell meee..” Light rocks his friend side to side by the shoulder and L squirms like a turtle recoiling back in its shell, his neck especially sensitive.
“I am serious.”
“But if you had to pick one then which one?”
“Probably a boyfriend then.”
Something in Light perked up at that, the same reason he would groan at himself years later for being so damn oblivious. “Okay,” he said. And the rest of the conversation… he doesn’t really remember.
Though apparently, his mother does— at least she remembers what exactly he was feeling right afterward.
“Oh you were bawling to me, bubba. You were so upset it took me almost an hour to calm you down. I said ‘What, honey? What’s wrong? Did something happen with L last night?’. You could barely get it out to me, ‘He said he wants a boyfriend, Mama! What if he doesn’t wanna be best friends anymore? What if he likes his boyfriend more than me?’
Oh god, I tried my best not to laugh, you know. And you cried and cried on my shoulder until falling asleep… Later that day I talked to Quillsh about it, you know, I’d keep him in the loop. You know what he told me? He just laughed and said ‘Light does not have to worry about a thing. L never shuts up about him, he will always be L’s favorite boy.’”
From then on, that story became a regular thing to announce at any family function L attended, to Light’s utter dismay. He wished his mom would just be quiet about it already. He wasn’t the gay one here— Well, he’d insist that much for as long as his awkward adolescence and internalized self resentment would allow.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t last with the one boyfriend I had at Sunrise,” L said to him at fifteen years old, after the umpteenth story-telling by Light’s mother. They both sat on the hammock together in the backyard, sipping out of colored solo cups that were always unpacked during family parties.
Sunrise: the other middle school L attended at their old school district, while Light had to transfer to another when his family moved houses across town.
“What…?”
“What?”
“You had a boyfriend and you never told me?” Light asked, thoroughly offended. What did his friend think, keeping secrets from him like that? Weren’t they supposed to be close? They did grow up together, after all.
L tilted his cup side to side in his hands, rested upon his lap. He wore his usual baggy jeans, along with a light t shirt and dark gray unzipped jacket. His hair was even longer now, to his shoulders, black as the night sky above them with earrings twinkling like stars between loose strands. “Well we weren’t exactly close at the time, remember? You made friends with Ryuk and… yeah.”
Anger boiled in Light’s gut at that. “What do you mean? I still texted you even after meeting Ryuk. Just because I actually made other friends doesn’t mean I was gonna leave you behind.”
“We didn’t hang out as much, I mean. And I have my own friends now, too. You don’t have to be rude, Light.”
“Rude? I’m not trying to be rude it just seems kind of weird to me that all it takes is me leaving for you to suddenly gain interest in everyone else. It’s a two way street, L. I would’ve— I would’ve wanted to know that you have— that you had…”
“A boyfriend? Because clearly that would’ve gone over well like the last time.” And L just had the audacity to smirk at him, like the argument was nothing but amusement for his ego or something. All… older, a teenager, with better hair and the jewelry and this laidback personality that everyone at Sunrise and their current high school just flock around. Cool, Light bitterly thinks when he sees L. He’s cool and he’s so…
“Yeah you know what I wouldn’t have wanted to know,” Light said that night. Nothing could express his absolute anger, that his best friend wouldn’t tell him something so important just because of how he was as a child. He didn’t deserve Light’s friendship. “Shit’s fucking disgusting anyway.”
And he left L… stalked off into his locked bedroom to curl up under the covers and… cry. Hot, hurt tears in the dark.
His mother came in later that night, meaning to scold him as she shared that his dear friend L left abruptly and was actually crying as well. Pity, Light hardly ever saw the boy in the tears as much as himself, at least it proved his words actually meant something… as hateful as they were.
“I taught you better than to say things like that, Light,” his mom had told him. “I don’t know what’s been going on with you lately, if it’s just the teenager stuff or what, but I’ve said you can always come talk to me. You don’t take it out on people like that, especially L. He’s your best friend, he didn’t do anything—“
“Why does it always have to be about L?! Why can’t I be hurt too?”
She sighed, lingering in the open doorway after he unlocked the handle for her before. At the sight of his pout, she caves, and walks over to sit on his bed. “What is it that’s hurting you, honey?”
Everything, it felt like. Each time he’d imagine L with some faceless silhouette of another boy, it pierced him in the heart, sharp and intentional. He could’ve been replaced… he was replaced, that must’ve been why L grew so distant after Light moved to start with.
They weren’t friends anymore for a long time afterward. Light was shameful, knowing that the more he looked back at how the move affected their friendship, the more he realized he hardly reached out to L in favor of the excitement of making new friends at his own middle school. He wasn’t in the other boy’s shadow anymore, didn’t have this other half he felt he couldn’t live up to.
Weirdly enough, as high schoolers, it was different. Seeing the way L operated made Light feel better about himself from afar. His old friend was just a geek in a swarm of thousands of other faces. L didn’t do extracurriculars like Light, he didn’t take the same elective classes either, he always wore essentially the same thing, and was mostly out of sight no matter what parts of campus Light happened to roam to. It’s not like he was… looking for him or anything, anyway.
Except one particularly unfortunate time, he did stumble upon L. Turning in his homework early, knowing he’d have to leave before his last class for tennis that day, Light had visited his Algebra teacher’s classroom during lunch, only for his breath to catch at the sight of a familiar face sat toward the back.
L’s head… resting upon the shoulder of another guy, eyes contently closed as one hand rests upon the desk, awake and fidgeting with a tiny skateboard toy.
“Thank you for remembering! And good luck on the game today, let me know the score tomorrow,” their teacher had said, but Light hardly paid her any mind, his eyes glued to a scene that sent him spiraling against his own will.
L opened his eyes, such convenient timing, and after months apart, Light once again wished he knew what his friend was thinking. He could honestly never tell.
“Yeah… yeah I’ll let you know.”
What the hell?— was all he could think, walking out of that classroom. L wasn’t a touchy person, and the only time he was, was with Light. How stupid… he’s probably so desperate to be as close with his friends as they were. No way could he even manage that given how poor those social skills were, after all, Light was always the one doing the talking between them.
Light earned his current friends through charm and a network of popularity. L though? Heh, that guy probably came from the scraps of other rejects at their school. He didn’t have to worry about them.
(He did. A lot.)
Even throughout his classic, closeted mistake of getting a girlfriend the next year at the height of his denial, he still thought about his friend… almost obsessively. He wasn’t as into Misa as she was him (clearly, in hindsight), though he took every chance he got to hold her hand, tolerate her smothering kisses, and sling his arm over her shoulder for everyone to see in the cafeteria.
Though he couldn’t exactly see the appeal in her past the aesthetic of being taken, Misa functioned to him the way a thoughtless accessory would. He didn’t understand the enjoyment in having a girlfriend beyond what their image together offered. He couldn’t kiss her for long, her interests were hardly… interesting, and they altogether lacked an intellectual connection Light had always sought after in other people when bonding.
He once wondered how his standards became so high, what set this bar that even the prettiest girl in school couldn’t seem to reach— or better yet… who.
L saw Light and Misa together as they waited in the front office for their rides home. It was strange, seeing L again at the beginning of the following school year, since tennis season didn’t keep Light on campus after hours during the fall.
Without noticing, Light’s chin was already pressed to a crown of golden blonde hair, combing the ends between his fingers as he listened to Misa’s pop music through a shared earphone. Misa didn’t feel much like a friend, but she still meant something to him. It was easy to feel desired by her, to allow himself to indulge in the comfort of her touch and guaranteed presence. While she was a grade level above him, like L, he still felt like a guiding figure to her in several ways. And as frustrating as her lack of competency was, their dynamic made him feel… masculine. Needed.
Caught in a moment of… something—intimacy was too bold a word for him to use with girls— his eyes opened to find a pair locked onto his already: a parallel moment to what happened in Algebra the year before. Light tensed on instinct, pulling away, though just in time for Misa to lift off his shoulder and bid goodbye with a kiss since her father’s car pulled up to the front.
First day of school really hit home making an impression on him this time, huh…
Light immediately looked at his phone, anywhere but L’s wide black eyes, clicking through chats that still had him left on delivered, or even reading the boring school newsletter email. Part of him thought he should feel accomplished. Hah, see how it feels? But… See how what feels?
“She’s pretty.”
Light took a moment to glance up from his phone. “Hm?”
“She’s pretty.”
“Wha— Uh— Yeah, she is.” Light pursed his lips in an awkward smile, his curt nod topping off the tense exchange, that familiar face suddenly feeling so foreign it burns in his mind like an insult as they stare at one another.
Who are we now? What have we become?
“I think you should apologize. Have him over for dinner sometime, you know what? Maybe even a sleepover like the old days.”
“It’s just not the same. We weren’t close before and he probably hates my guts now anyway.”
“Don’t say that, bubba. A true friend wouldn’t hate you after one little fight.”
One little fight… And there he was, sitting before L, two years older, feeling like strangers because he couldn’t let go of the conclusion that his best friend didn’t want him anymore. That he wasn’t L’s favorite boy.
They were just getting close again and he… he ruined it.
What if he could change that though?
The thought occurred to him too little too late, it seemed, as L got up the moment Light drew in a breath to potentially ask “How’ve you been?” after all that time.
But it wasn’t his last chance, it turned out.
“See you in Lautner’s.” And L was gone as quick as he came, rolling his skateboard figure along the front office desk on his way out.
Lautner? Like Ms. Lautner? Light sat thinking, dumbfounded.
She was their multimedia teacher that year. Light had her for his last class, but he was late for attendance his first day since he got caught up in the nurse’s office for his daily anxiety medication. His 504 renewal meeting would be later that week but Ms. Lautner was already aware of the circumstances and paid his tardiness no mind when he entered the classroom. She told Light any time he may be overwhelmed, to feel free to grab a camera and step out of class, take a walk around campus with the excuse of “scouting” locations to film at.
Turns out, L was in his class, and he didn’t even notice. Because sure enough, the following day, he saw L sitting behind one of the computers while leaning against the wall, wearing his usual blank, downcast gaze and fidgeting… And the only empty seat happened to be right next to him.