Death Note Fan Fiction ❯ Going to Marrakesh ❯ Best Friend/Crush ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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Best Friend/Crush
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It was three in the morning, the sheets were crumpled beneath his belly, and he couldn't sleep, so he stretched out over the bed and stared in undisguised fascination at the boy sharing his bed. "...you hide," Light said after a moment's observation, chin propped on his folded arms and looking up, "But you don't ever pretend."

"Hm," L replied, and tapped lightly at the mouse.

Light watched him placidly, too sleepy to get up and sit properly beside him, and too awake to curl up and go back to sleep. L kept his eyes and attention on the laptop that was propped at the edge of the bed, but Light wasn't interested in the contents of whatever new web page he'd found to scan through. Yotsuba would still be under investigation in the morning, he was tired, and even if L was an insomniac, Light himself didn't want to be.

"...you're never going to tell me why, are you." It wasn't a question, but it won him a glance, and then an outright stare, calculating and cool despite the lateness of the hour.

"You're the first to want to know," L told him, biting down on a thumbnail thoughtfully.

Light smiled. "Liar. I'm just the first who's brave enough to try."

"Hm." But it was a smile, faint and unreadable, and it drew a sigh past his own lips, soft and contented and a little confused. "I thought you said I didn't pretend."

"Pretending and lying are two different things," he retorted easily. "At least you're honest about your dishonesty."

L blinked once. "Oh?"

He shrugged. "You lie for a purpose, but I know your purpose, so it's a lie, but it's not. For anyone else, maybe, it would really be a lie, but you don't lie and lie at me, you just lie. It's flattering in a perverse kind of way, although I don't think anyone else would get it. Sometimes even I don't understand us." I feel like I'm dreaming, he thought, but didn't say, I feel like I'm dreaming and I don't want to wake up.

"There is an 'us'?"

Light chuckled, faint and bitter. "You've seen the way they look at us." My father thinks I'm crazy, and he might be right, you know. "You know what I mean."

"...I was unaware that there was an 'us' to us."

He did sit up then, slow and a little uncertain, because he'd been sure that L felt it too, whatever it was that he was feeling, more real than anything he'd ever felt before, bright and vibrant and viciously, ruthlessly alive. "There always has been, to me."

"Oh?" Another slow, slow smile. "Yagami-kun, do you even remember how we met?"

"The Toudai opening ceremony." He grinned at him, wry and calculated. "You confused me." He didn't hesitate in his reply, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew with a cold certainty that L knew something he didn't, something quiet and awful that he would never speak of, something that could break him, something that he wouldn't say because he was too useful to him like this, alive and intelligent and maybe, precious maybe, more than just a tool to be used and then discarded.

"Liar," L told him softly, and he sighed, leaning forward and pressing his fingers to his shoulders. L didn't react, so he leaned over the rest of the way and tilted his head a little, closing his eyes and nuzzling his cheek against his hair, hesitantly because he wasn't sure what he was doing, hesitantly because L was fast and L was strong and this close, he was dangerously vulnerable.

"...I've never been this close to anyone before," he admitted, low-voiced, maybe a little afraid, "No girls. No friends. Not even Misa, though god knows she's tried."

"It's because you're arrogant," L murmured, breath a soft hot thrill against his neck, and he trembled faintly, but didn't deny his assertion. "You don't think anyone is good enough for you."

...but wasn't that true? "...no one else is as interesting as we are," Light said softly, pulling back to look at him again, but leaning his forehead against L's to stay close, relishing the warmth and realness of him, even as he felt a little drowned in the unearthly depths of his eyes. "In a way, I'm almost grateful to Kira."

Being this close left him lightheaded and maybe a little dizzy, and if he were a normal teenager, he might be blushing.

Strange, alien boy, not at all attractive, but appearances were only that, and he knew that better than most, even if every last one of L's personal habits irritated him to the point of violence.

"Shame on you, Yagami Light."

"I know," he admitted, pressing a little closer, averting his eyes for a moment, feeling oddly shy. Being with L was like being stripped naked by an interested but neutral observer all the time, and he still wasn't sure how he felt about it, especially in the intimate silence of their nights together - and that was a thought that made him shiver all on its own even as he lived it. "But you'd never have noticed me if I weren't a suspect."

"That makes you angry."

"A little." He shrugged, running a careful fingertip over the links of the chain that bound them, glancing up to eye him through his bangs for a moment. "But you'd have no reason to, really, so there's no sense to my anger."

"Except your ego."

His lips quirked into an unwilling grin, and not for the first time, he wondered if he'd been waiting all his life for this. "I like you. I want you to pay attention to me."

"I always will," L said softly, a promise and a threat in one, utterly sincere and completely terrifying.

"Know thy enemy?" he asked, and closed his eyes, breathing in slowly, trying to memorize the moment, the low hum of the laptop nearby, nearly a living thing all its own, the feel of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, the soft warmth curling low in his belly and the faint, simmering fury and delight that meant that L had gotten to him, again, and maybe he wanted this forever, because he'd never felt like this before and he knew with a cold hard certainty that the world revert back to bleakness and boredom if he ever lost him.

"Of course," L answered, and the sweep of dark lashes over his skin felt like a kiss.

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