Fic post: The Crackle of the Coming Storm
Jul. 2nd, 2008 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darklunaTitle: The Crackle of the Coming Storm
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: omg, L x Light
Rating: R
Word count: 1700
Summary: Another attempt to stick the knife in and twist it, and Light wonders if that is all there can ever be between them, before wondering why the hell he'd even want to find out.
Notes: This is a present for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wizefics (as a kind of thank you for the awesome, awesome remix she did), and it's my first time attempting her OTP! I am not a fan of Light, so it was an interesting challenge when this decided it wanted to be in his POV. I still wouldn't call myself a fan, but I think I appreciate him as a character better now. Thanks to char_sama for beta-ing and easing my nerves. :D
The Crackle of the Coming Storm
October 2004
10
I wonder what would happen, Light thinks, at least once a day, if I grabbed my end of the chain and pulled.
It's not like he needs to be chained here to stay; since getting out of that cell, he has a personal interest in catching Kira. It will make his mind shut up. It'll make Ryuzaki shut up, which actually sounds even more appealing sometimes.
Light's smart enough to hide the holes in his memory, though he suspects Ryuzaki is more than smart enough to deduce they're there. No one else seems to notice, and all Light's instincts tell him to keep up the façade, because otherwise he might not be allowed to keep working on the case.
That's what he wants. He does remember the fire burning in him when he promised Ryuzaki they'd find Kira together. That's why he stays, and that's why he doesn't give in to temptation and pull, though Ryuzaki is so weird and stubborn that sometimes Light just has to hit him. The fighting is almost a game, testing limits, and they're eerily evenly matched.
Light can't beat him physically, but he might be able to do it mentally, and while Ryuzaki mopes, mourning the loss of his pet theory, Light decides to get over it and make some progress.
He feels a weird mix of emotions when he first notices the pattern of deaths associated with the Yotsuba group. Excitement, of course; pleasure to have caught something Ryuzaki missed; hope that this will be the lever they can use to pry the case open. And, strangest of all, happiness, when Ryuzaki gets caught up in the excitement too.
But they are friends, right?
9
"Who's Watari?" Light asks one day.
"The one I had you think was another L," Ryuzaki says, in the tone Light recognizes as the one that means he should know this.
And right, Ryuzaki is L. Ryuzaki is L, and that's important, but why is one of the things Light has forgotten. He imagines most people would simply be impressed, but he wants to be that good. Better, if he can be.
8
The investigation rolls on, settling into something like a routine. If it can be routine to be stuck with an obsessed genius, career criminals, and a girl who says she's his girlfriend, though Light is pretty sure he didn't do anything to make her think so. Still, she's tied up in the Kira case, so it's best to have her close by.
Not as tied up in it as he is, almost quite literally, he thinks, annoyed all over again. He looks over at L. He doesn’t have to fend off ditzy females.
I guess it’s better to have to fend them off than not.
The other man is holding sugar cubes over his coffee one by one so they suck up the liquid, then crunching them. Disgusting.
I bet he tastes sweet, though. Ugh. He shakes that thought away. He hates this recurring feeling that his mind isn’t entirely his own.
7
Light doesn't remember meeting L, but he remembers playing tennis with him, a back-and-forth battle of more than athletic ability, as everything must be, it seems, between them.
Light won that one.
6
Light's mind keeps circling back to that same disturbing question: is he really that different from Kira? If he had Kira's power, would he have acted the same? Whatever keeps L up at night—and Light is pretty sure it's skating the edge of full-on sugar shock combined with sheer bloody-mindedness—it isn't questions like this.
Light tries to turn it around. If he had that power, if they found Kira and he could snap his fingers or think really hard or whatever, and rid the world of him... would he?
Of course not. If they ever reached a point where they were that certain of Kira's identity, they'd have enough proof to convict him. It's for the courts to decide, not a college student. The public deserves to see Kira properly dealt with.
One of the things Light does remember is how bored he was in high school, how disgusted with the world. But everyone felt that way in high school, right? And now he isn't bored any more, and he's one of the people working to fix the world. He might share some qualities with Kira, but that doesn't mean he could be him.
5
But he can't stop thinking about it, as he gathers data on the Yotsuba Kira and feels scorn bubbling up in him. Kira should not be greedy. He shouldn't be selfish. These latest killings make Light especially angry, because they're pointless. They're the work of the petty and self-serving, and he feels obscurely insulted by association. The person who wielded Kira's power when he was under suspicion was at least trying to make the world a better place, however twisted his reasoning. It was... not too far from what Light might have done, if he had ever been able to accept that he should use the power in the first place.
4
"You could probably become the successor to the L name," he says, and the pleasure that sparks in Light is so deep and fierce that it feels almost... dirty.
He masks it, which is easy enough to do when he sees in the next moment why L really said it. Another attempt to stick the knife in and twist it, and Light wonders if that is all there can ever be between them, before wondering why the hell he'd even want to find out.
3
L has about as much familiarity with the concept of personal space as he does with the idea that food can contain nutrients, and Light has been trying to think of exactly what he can't remember about Misa. They've been edging closer all evening, and Light isn't quite sure which of them started it. He wonders what time-lapse photography would have captured of their necessarily constrained, overlapping movements, if it would look like a slow-motion dance, and if so, who has the lead. He leaned in to read something on L's monitor, and observed both his own heightened awareness and the barely perceptible change in L's breathing. L slid his chair very close just now, when he went back to his idea about Kira transferring his power, and doesn't seem about to wheel away.
"How many times do we have to go over this?" Light says. "I can't believe in such an absurd theory."
"You can accept that it's possible to kill from afar, but not that someone's memories can be selectively removed?"
It feels wrong, and weird, and Light tries to articulate why. "If it's voluntary, what benefit would Kira get from doing it? If it's not, why have we not seen more randomness in Kira's behavior?"
"I think it's clearly voluntary," L says, and there's a strange look in his eyes, that same infuriatingly familiar suspicion, but something else too, something that makes Light wonder again if Misa isn't the only person about whom he's forgotten things.
"You would be happy if it was me."
"I would not be happy. But I would have been right," L says, watching him steadily, and Light thinks, Call it testing an absurd theory, and kisses him.
L's reaction immediately disproves the hypothesis that they've done this before—he sucks in a sharp breath and freezes so completely, Light thinks he might shatter. Then the chain rattles as he lifts a hand to Light's shoulder, just resting it there, neither pulling closer nor pushing away, which is typical.
Maybe it's wanting an even stronger reaction, maybe it's how unexpectedly warm L's lips are, maybe it's the not-yet-wholly-disproved guess about why Misa leaves him cold—for whatever reason, or for all of them, Light leans into the kiss, taking advantage of L's gasp to taste him, and yes, his mouth is sweet.
"That proves nothing," L says when they break apart, and for a moment Light thinks he's read his mind somehow, and is replying to that.
"Can't I just have wanted to?"
L blinks. "No, Yagami-kun. I don't think you could."
2
They fuck like they fight, like they do everything, really: like it's war.
Light isn't sure what battles L fights when he moves in for a kiss and stops just short, making Light meet him halfway; when he presses into him so slowly that Light bites his lip, not to keep from asking for it, but to keep himself from smiling at how obvious it is that L wants to hear it.
Light's battle is to keep from losing himself, something he would have thought impossible once. He marshals his own strategies, advances and retreats, turns words into the knife he'll twist. He tests the limits, and studies his opponent (not partner, never partner) for weaknesses; never mind that he uses them to force pleasure.
"You say I could become L, but you think I'm Kira. Does that mean you could be Kira?" It's probably three in the morning; Light has been keeping L's hours for some time now.
"Never," L says, and though his face is blank and his eyes flat, his voice is taut.
"Under no conceivable circumstances?" Light says, like a caress, bending close enough for his breath to ghost over kiss-swollen lips.
"That is the difference between us." And there's that slow blink that means impatience, that means This time you'll have to take what you want, and Light wonders when he got so good at reading every little shift and hint, before settling back down and taking the not-quite-offered kiss.
And no, there can never be anything more between them, not unless the chain comes off, but when the bed is their battleground, and the sound of his victory the unfeigned moan he can sometimes coax from L, Light can almost admit, if only to himself, that this is something he needs.
1
The helicopter lifts off, and there's a charge in the air that has nothing to do with finally moving on Higuchi. This is the crackle of a coming storm, and Light knows that when it breaks, and the rain comes, everything's going to change.
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: omg, L x Light
Rating: R
Word count: 1700
Summary: Another attempt to stick the knife in and twist it, and Light wonders if that is all there can ever be between them, before wondering why the hell he'd even want to find out.
Notes: This is a present for
wizefics (as a kind of thank you for the awesome, awesome remix she did), and it's my first time attempting her OTP! I am not a fan of Light, so it was an interesting challenge when this decided it wanted to be in his POV. I still wouldn't call myself a fan, but I think I appreciate him as a character better now. Thanks to char_sama for beta-ing and easing my nerves. :DThe Crackle of the Coming Storm
October 2004
10
I wonder what would happen, Light thinks, at least once a day, if I grabbed my end of the chain and pulled.
It's not like he needs to be chained here to stay; since getting out of that cell, he has a personal interest in catching Kira. It will make his mind shut up. It'll make Ryuzaki shut up, which actually sounds even more appealing sometimes.
Light's smart enough to hide the holes in his memory, though he suspects Ryuzaki is more than smart enough to deduce they're there. No one else seems to notice, and all Light's instincts tell him to keep up the façade, because otherwise he might not be allowed to keep working on the case.
That's what he wants. He does remember the fire burning in him when he promised Ryuzaki they'd find Kira together. That's why he stays, and that's why he doesn't give in to temptation and pull, though Ryuzaki is so weird and stubborn that sometimes Light just has to hit him. The fighting is almost a game, testing limits, and they're eerily evenly matched.
Light can't beat him physically, but he might be able to do it mentally, and while Ryuzaki mopes, mourning the loss of his pet theory, Light decides to get over it and make some progress.
He feels a weird mix of emotions when he first notices the pattern of deaths associated with the Yotsuba group. Excitement, of course; pleasure to have caught something Ryuzaki missed; hope that this will be the lever they can use to pry the case open. And, strangest of all, happiness, when Ryuzaki gets caught up in the excitement too.
But they are friends, right?
9
"Who's Watari?" Light asks one day.
"The one I had you think was another L," Ryuzaki says, in the tone Light recognizes as the one that means he should know this.
And right, Ryuzaki is L. Ryuzaki is L, and that's important, but why is one of the things Light has forgotten. He imagines most people would simply be impressed, but he wants to be that good. Better, if he can be.
8
The investigation rolls on, settling into something like a routine. If it can be routine to be stuck with an obsessed genius, career criminals, and a girl who says she's his girlfriend, though Light is pretty sure he didn't do anything to make her think so. Still, she's tied up in the Kira case, so it's best to have her close by.
Not as tied up in it as he is, almost quite literally, he thinks, annoyed all over again. He looks over at L. He doesn’t have to fend off ditzy females.
I guess it’s better to have to fend them off than not.
The other man is holding sugar cubes over his coffee one by one so they suck up the liquid, then crunching them. Disgusting.
I bet he tastes sweet, though. Ugh. He shakes that thought away. He hates this recurring feeling that his mind isn’t entirely his own.
7
Light doesn't remember meeting L, but he remembers playing tennis with him, a back-and-forth battle of more than athletic ability, as everything must be, it seems, between them.
Light won that one.
6
Light's mind keeps circling back to that same disturbing question: is he really that different from Kira? If he had Kira's power, would he have acted the same? Whatever keeps L up at night—and Light is pretty sure it's skating the edge of full-on sugar shock combined with sheer bloody-mindedness—it isn't questions like this.
Light tries to turn it around. If he had that power, if they found Kira and he could snap his fingers or think really hard or whatever, and rid the world of him... would he?
Of course not. If they ever reached a point where they were that certain of Kira's identity, they'd have enough proof to convict him. It's for the courts to decide, not a college student. The public deserves to see Kira properly dealt with.
One of the things Light does remember is how bored he was in high school, how disgusted with the world. But everyone felt that way in high school, right? And now he isn't bored any more, and he's one of the people working to fix the world. He might share some qualities with Kira, but that doesn't mean he could be him.
5
But he can't stop thinking about it, as he gathers data on the Yotsuba Kira and feels scorn bubbling up in him. Kira should not be greedy. He shouldn't be selfish. These latest killings make Light especially angry, because they're pointless. They're the work of the petty and self-serving, and he feels obscurely insulted by association. The person who wielded Kira's power when he was under suspicion was at least trying to make the world a better place, however twisted his reasoning. It was... not too far from what Light might have done, if he had ever been able to accept that he should use the power in the first place.
4
"You could probably become the successor to the L name," he says, and the pleasure that sparks in Light is so deep and fierce that it feels almost... dirty.
He masks it, which is easy enough to do when he sees in the next moment why L really said it. Another attempt to stick the knife in and twist it, and Light wonders if that is all there can ever be between them, before wondering why the hell he'd even want to find out.
3
L has about as much familiarity with the concept of personal space as he does with the idea that food can contain nutrients, and Light has been trying to think of exactly what he can't remember about Misa. They've been edging closer all evening, and Light isn't quite sure which of them started it. He wonders what time-lapse photography would have captured of their necessarily constrained, overlapping movements, if it would look like a slow-motion dance, and if so, who has the lead. He leaned in to read something on L's monitor, and observed both his own heightened awareness and the barely perceptible change in L's breathing. L slid his chair very close just now, when he went back to his idea about Kira transferring his power, and doesn't seem about to wheel away.
"How many times do we have to go over this?" Light says. "I can't believe in such an absurd theory."
"You can accept that it's possible to kill from afar, but not that someone's memories can be selectively removed?"
It feels wrong, and weird, and Light tries to articulate why. "If it's voluntary, what benefit would Kira get from doing it? If it's not, why have we not seen more randomness in Kira's behavior?"
"I think it's clearly voluntary," L says, and there's a strange look in his eyes, that same infuriatingly familiar suspicion, but something else too, something that makes Light wonder again if Misa isn't the only person about whom he's forgotten things.
"You would be happy if it was me."
"I would not be happy. But I would have been right," L says, watching him steadily, and Light thinks, Call it testing an absurd theory, and kisses him.
L's reaction immediately disproves the hypothesis that they've done this before—he sucks in a sharp breath and freezes so completely, Light thinks he might shatter. Then the chain rattles as he lifts a hand to Light's shoulder, just resting it there, neither pulling closer nor pushing away, which is typical.
Maybe it's wanting an even stronger reaction, maybe it's how unexpectedly warm L's lips are, maybe it's the not-yet-wholly-disproved guess about why Misa leaves him cold—for whatever reason, or for all of them, Light leans into the kiss, taking advantage of L's gasp to taste him, and yes, his mouth is sweet.
"That proves nothing," L says when they break apart, and for a moment Light thinks he's read his mind somehow, and is replying to that.
"Can't I just have wanted to?"
L blinks. "No, Yagami-kun. I don't think you could."
2
They fuck like they fight, like they do everything, really: like it's war.
Light isn't sure what battles L fights when he moves in for a kiss and stops just short, making Light meet him halfway; when he presses into him so slowly that Light bites his lip, not to keep from asking for it, but to keep himself from smiling at how obvious it is that L wants to hear it.
Light's battle is to keep from losing himself, something he would have thought impossible once. He marshals his own strategies, advances and retreats, turns words into the knife he'll twist. He tests the limits, and studies his opponent (not partner, never partner) for weaknesses; never mind that he uses them to force pleasure.
"You say I could become L, but you think I'm Kira. Does that mean you could be Kira?" It's probably three in the morning; Light has been keeping L's hours for some time now.
"Never," L says, and though his face is blank and his eyes flat, his voice is taut.
"Under no conceivable circumstances?" Light says, like a caress, bending close enough for his breath to ghost over kiss-swollen lips.
"That is the difference between us." And there's that slow blink that means impatience, that means This time you'll have to take what you want, and Light wonders when he got so good at reading every little shift and hint, before settling back down and taking the not-quite-offered kiss.
And no, there can never be anything more between them, not unless the chain comes off, but when the bed is their battleground, and the sound of his victory the unfeigned moan he can sometimes coax from L, Light can almost admit, if only to himself, that this is something he needs.
1
The helicopter lifts off, and there's a charge in the air that has nothing to do with finally moving on Higuchi. This is the crackle of a coming storm, and Light knows that when it breaks, and the rain comes, everything's going to change.
