Death Note Fan Fiction ❯ Going to Marrakesh ❯ Affair ( Chapter 6 )

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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Affair
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In the blue-silver wash of another endless night, he clings close and whispers "You ruined me," and L just smiles at him, because he's been rotten from the start and they're the only ones who know. And this is the best game ever, because he's never been this alive before, and when he says "I love you to death" they both know that it isn't a lie but it isn't the truth, because every lie he tells falls through and the only truth that matters is the truth that they make.

On the long nights that follow the days that are good, he nuzzles his face into L's throat and whispers "I want I want I want give me what I want" and sometimes, just sometimes, L will kiss him, slow and deep and wet like drowning and dying and he doesn't mind it, he doesn't mind it at all, because it's a part of the game, and he's having so much fun he's almost sick with the glee of it, gorged on wit and hate and fighting and playing, always playing, because catching Kira gives him something to live for, and L is now and always will be his favorite person to ever walk the earth.

In odd, abstracted moments, Light thinks he might be happy, and he wonders if that's the reason why his father can't seem to meet his eyes anymore. It's not as if he's changed at all - it's just that his layers are getting stripped down, and even though he'll always be beautiful, he knows he's not exactly what his father wants him to be, has always believed him to be, and he hadn't even realized how much he'd hated it until now.

Soichiro wastes his time blaming L and himself for the change, but all L's done is start to unbind him, like a violation and a caress, and if they weren't watched constantly, it would feel secret and intimate, and maybe then they could be lovers. But it's not, and they're not, and so he fights it, tries to reconstruct his walls as fast as L breaks him down, but the glimpses of truth that keep slipping out just up the number of quiet whispers in the dark: Six percent, Yagami-kun, six percent but we both know the truth and he has to clamp his teeth together and his hands over his ears and squeeze his eyes shut because I don't know I don't know maybe maybe maybe why don't I know why don't I remember I should know this I should know I should -

I don't want to be a murderer.

He wants to catch Kira just to prove him wrong, to have a victory of his own and his freedom again, but if they do win, if they do catch him, what will happen then? L is cold enough to leave men dead in the cause of justice, remote enough that all his yearning barely scratches the surface of his glacial calm, and even if he's the one who first said the words, Light knows that he is his only friend, and absolutely doesn't want to let him go.

They're both selfish, greedy children, and maybe that's why they don't mind Misa, all brightness and blood-dipped sunshine, because she's a child too, grasping and holding on with tooth and nail and claw, the third loop in the noose and slowly strangling them to death. And she knows it too, because for all her flippancy she's not an idiot, and even though she's the only one that the investigation team doesn't fear, they don't understand her, either.

He knows he can't love her, and he knows L can't either - I should be better than this but we're so beautiful and he's so fucked up but I know I'm better than this - but she loves them both and that is enough because she makes it enough. They can both use her, even though they both know they shouldn't, and though he's made his life doing what he should, he's not an idiot either. And she uses them both - Light plays the part of the attentive, adoring boyfriend, and L tugs on her strings, but she plays her role and in her own way, it seems, she is happy.

Once, he asked her if it hurt, and she burrowed her way in between them both and drew furrows in cloth and skin with black-lacquered nails, and neither one of them complained, because morality was flexible and really, in the end, it meant nothing at all. They of all people had no right to criticize her, and though she never pressed them, they all knew it to be true.

"It's okay this way," she murmured, artifice dropped for the sake of the boy she loved, for the stress and wear that was a three-way collision of absolute resolve and obsession that none of them bothered to deny to one another, even if they made an excellent show for everyone else. "Ryuuzaki's a pervert and we'll never catch Kira, but we're happy now, aren't we?"

He laid his cheek against the softness of her hair and thought that it was a pity, thought that it was pathetic to fall this far, this fast, and maybe she deserved better than him but she wouldn't take it even if someone offered, so really, who was to blame?

And he doesn't really mind it, the isolation and his own increasing awareness that his own genius might be tempered by the slightest bit of instability, because these are the only people he has ever known that are at all like him, and though that should be more unsettling than it is - Ishouldbeperfectspecialthebest - there's a twisted comfort in the reassurance that he can duel with L forever, and Misa will always be there because she won't allow anything else.

Sometimes he hates Kira for her fanaticism, and sometimes he hates himself for it, but something quiet whispers she's one of us she'll kill us both and she won't regret it and she's such a sweet thing, to make up for the two of us, and I could never love her but she's a part of this and the only one with a motive that's pure, does that make her our better...?

And that was okay too, because they're not all right and they never will be, but at least they're all alive. It probably won't last long, and they'll probably wind up a double-triple-murder-suicide, but he knows somewhere in the pit of his gut that none of them will ever grow old.

Misa likes it when they kiss her on the nose and on the cheek because in those moments he's not lying even if L is, but her favorite times are when Light dutifully kisses her mouth. Those kisses are soft and girl-sweet and lipstick-slick, and he wonders if he tastes poison because he's going slightly crazy or because she is instead. But it's necessary, and so he does what he has to do, and it's not an unpleasant feeling, attention and desire, and even if being used still bothers him, he knows how to manage this trade, and it's not like she isn't beautiful and clever in her own way.

He likes that she takes his lies as her truth even though she knows he's lying.

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