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Going to Marrakesh
by Edmondia DantesDisclaimer: Not mine.
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Part Three: Best Friend/Crush
* * *It's three in the morning, the sheets are crumpled beneath his belly, and he can't sleep, so he stretches out over the bed and stares in undisguised fascination at the boy sharing his bed. "...you hide," Light says after a moment's observation, chin propped on his folded arms and looking up, "But you don't ever pretend."
"Hm," L replies, and taps lightly at the mouse.
Light watches him placidly, too sleepy to get up and sit properly beside him, and too awake to curl up and go back to sleep. L keeps his eyes and attention on the laptop that is propped at the edge of the bed, but Light isn't interested in the contents of whatever new web page he'd found to scan through. Yotsuba will still be under investigation in the morning, he's tired, and even if L is an insomniac, Light himself doesn't want to be.
"...you're never going to tell me why, are you." It isn't a question, but it wins 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 tells him, biting down on a thumbnail thoughtfully.
Light smiles. "Liar. I'm just the first who's brave enough to try."
"Hm." But it is a smile, faint and unreadable, and it draws 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 retorts easily. "At least you're honest about your dishonesty."
L blinks once. "Oh?"
He shrugs. "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 thinks, but doesn't say, I feel like I'm dreaming and I don't want to wake up.
"There is an 'us'?"
Light chuckles, 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 does sit up then, slow and a little uncertain, because he's been sure that L feels it too, whatever it is that he's 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 grins at him, wry and calculated. "You confused me." He doesn't hesitate in his reply, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows with a cold certainty that L knows something he doesn't, something quiet and awful that he would never speak of, something that could break him, something that he won'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 tells him softly, and he sighs, leaning forward and pressing his fingers to his shoulders. L doesn't react, so he leans over the rest of the way and tilts his head a little, closing his eyes and nuzzling his cheek against his hair, hesitantly because he isn't sure what he's doing, hesitantly because L is fast and L is strong and this close, Light is dangerously vulnerable.
"...I've never been this close to anyone before," he admits, 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 murmurs, breath a soft hot thrill against his neck, and Light trembles faintly, but doesn't deny his assertion. "You don't think anyone is good enough for you."
...but isn't that true? "...no one else is as interesting as we are," Light says 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 feels a little drowned in the unearthly depths of his eyes. "In a way, I'm almost grateful to Kira."
Being this close leaves 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 are only that, and he knows that better than most, even if every last one of L's personal habits irritates him to the point of violence.
"Shame on you, Yagami Light."
"I know," he admits, pressing a little closer, averting his eyes for a moment, feeling oddly shy. Being with L is like being stripped naked by an interested but neutral observer all the time, and he still isn't sure how he feels about it, especially in the intimate silence of their nights together - and that's a thought that makes him shiver all on its own even as he lives it. "But you'd never have noticed me if I weren't a suspect."
"That makes you angry."
"A little." He shrugs, running a careful fingertip over the links of the chain that bind 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 quirk into an unwilling grin, and, not for the first time, he wonders if he's been waiting all his life for this. "I like you. I want you to pay attention to me."
"I always will," L says softly, a promise and a threat in one, utterly sincere and completely terrifying.
"Know thy enemy?" he asks, and closes 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 means that L has gotten to him, again, and maybe he's wanted this forever, because he's never felt like this before, and he knows with a cold hard certainty that the world would revert back to bleakness and boredom if he ever lost him.
"Of course," L answers, and the sweep of dark lashes over his skin feels like a kiss.
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