DN -- Inflammation
Title: Inflammation
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: L, Light
Rating: G
Word Count: 693
Warnings: none in particular
Summary: "There's always a reason with you."
Author's Note: This ficspam needed more L-names!OTP.
INFLAMMATION
L stirs his coffee in a figure-eight pattern, slowly, the spoon clinking against the sides. He sips and swills the mouthful around on his tongue. He swallows, adds another heaping spoonful of sugar to the mug, and starts stirring again.
“Yagami-kun,” he says.
Light doesn’t flinch, let alone cease scanning the endless lines of tiny text on his computer screen. “What?”
L weighs his options. There is no such thing as an unloaded question with the pair of them; words are bullets, and behind the masks they bleed.
But that’s why there’s really nothing to lose. Light has seen him under a microscope lens day after day, the chain bowing between them as the manifestation of a particularly ungraceful metaphor, and L can smell the storm in the air. It’s only a matter of who gets chosen by the lightning.
He drags the spoon back and forth across the bottom of the coffee mug until the scraping sound makes Light shudder. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” he asks.
“No,” Light says, demure as ever. “I’ve never been religious. And I don’t think it should make any difference-I think that we as human beings should do good for its own sake, not because we’re expecting a reward.” He looks over, eyes sharp, face lit from the side by the ghoulish glow of the monitor. “Why?”
“No reason,” L says.
Light’s eyes narrow. “There’s always a reason with you.”
“Maybe I’m trying to keep you on your toes by deliberately unsettling my habitual patterns of logic,” L says.
Extremely-and somewhat impressively-slowly, Light raises an eyebrow. “You think we’re going to die.”
L has experienced a broad range of mixed feelings for Light Yagami since the very beginning of this venture, since before they’d even met. Light’s is a fierce and shining intellect, so brilliant that L has been forced to accept that he will be drawn to it, moth-like and marveling, entirely against his will.
However he may feel at the best of times, he will always despise this boy for that parlor trick-for intuiting his thoughts and stating them as fact. It is all the more galling because Light is never wrong; and because that’s the single feat that L can never duplicate. Light seizes L’s secrets and shrouds his own.
“Of course we’re going to die,” L says. “Unsettling as the prospect may be, it is an inevitable eventuality.”
“You know what I mean,” Light says, faintly irritated, because pride and impatience are his only intertwining flaws. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re a believer now?”
“I believe only in the power of human achievement,” L says. “It is formidable-and my own contributions are not to be disregarded-but I do not flatter myself to think that it will save me.”
He always feels a rush of unholy glee when he catches Light off-guard.
“What are you talking about?” Light asks, unnecessarily both of them know. “Ryuzaki-L-we’re going to beat him. The two of us together are… I mean, even if we don’t, Kira isn’t going to kill you.”
L stares until he looks away.
“Stop that. He won’t, because no one’s ever held a candle to him before, and you’re like a bonfire. He must admire that-I think he probably appreciates it too much to destroy it.”
L sips the coffee. It slithers grittily down his throat. “You’re wrong,” he says. No glee this time.
Light frowns at him and waits, turned away from the computer now, half in shadow.
“When he wins,” L says, crushing some of the undissolved sugar with the spoon, “I am no longer a novelty. I am merely a threat. Kira used to make mistakes, but he has never shown mercy. Whatever I am to him, I am not worth the risk.” He sips again. “It’s quite logical.”
Light is silent for a long moment.
“Would you do the same to him?” he asks.
“I’ve never thought it through,” L says.
“Liar.”
“Perhaps.”
Light smiles thinly. “I still think I’m right.”
L has reached the dregs of the coffee-sludge. “I know.”
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: L, Light
Rating: G
Word Count: 693
Warnings: none in particular
Summary: "There's always a reason with you."
Author's Note: This ficspam needed more L-names!OTP.
INFLAMMATION
L stirs his coffee in a figure-eight pattern, slowly, the spoon clinking against the sides. He sips and swills the mouthful around on his tongue. He swallows, adds another heaping spoonful of sugar to the mug, and starts stirring again.
“Yagami-kun,” he says.
Light doesn’t flinch, let alone cease scanning the endless lines of tiny text on his computer screen. “What?”
L weighs his options. There is no such thing as an unloaded question with the pair of them; words are bullets, and behind the masks they bleed.
But that’s why there’s really nothing to lose. Light has seen him under a microscope lens day after day, the chain bowing between them as the manifestation of a particularly ungraceful metaphor, and L can smell the storm in the air. It’s only a matter of who gets chosen by the lightning.
He drags the spoon back and forth across the bottom of the coffee mug until the scraping sound makes Light shudder. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” he asks.
“No,” Light says, demure as ever. “I’ve never been religious. And I don’t think it should make any difference-I think that we as human beings should do good for its own sake, not because we’re expecting a reward.” He looks over, eyes sharp, face lit from the side by the ghoulish glow of the monitor. “Why?”
“No reason,” L says.
Light’s eyes narrow. “There’s always a reason with you.”
“Maybe I’m trying to keep you on your toes by deliberately unsettling my habitual patterns of logic,” L says.
Extremely-and somewhat impressively-slowly, Light raises an eyebrow. “You think we’re going to die.”
L has experienced a broad range of mixed feelings for Light Yagami since the very beginning of this venture, since before they’d even met. Light’s is a fierce and shining intellect, so brilliant that L has been forced to accept that he will be drawn to it, moth-like and marveling, entirely against his will.
However he may feel at the best of times, he will always despise this boy for that parlor trick-for intuiting his thoughts and stating them as fact. It is all the more galling because Light is never wrong; and because that’s the single feat that L can never duplicate. Light seizes L’s secrets and shrouds his own.
“Of course we’re going to die,” L says. “Unsettling as the prospect may be, it is an inevitable eventuality.”
“You know what I mean,” Light says, faintly irritated, because pride and impatience are his only intertwining flaws. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re a believer now?”
“I believe only in the power of human achievement,” L says. “It is formidable-and my own contributions are not to be disregarded-but I do not flatter myself to think that it will save me.”
He always feels a rush of unholy glee when he catches Light off-guard.
“What are you talking about?” Light asks, unnecessarily both of them know. “Ryuzaki-L-we’re going to beat him. The two of us together are… I mean, even if we don’t, Kira isn’t going to kill you.”
L stares until he looks away.
“Stop that. He won’t, because no one’s ever held a candle to him before, and you’re like a bonfire. He must admire that-I think he probably appreciates it too much to destroy it.”
L sips the coffee. It slithers grittily down his throat. “You’re wrong,” he says. No glee this time.
Light frowns at him and waits, turned away from the computer now, half in shadow.
“When he wins,” L says, crushing some of the undissolved sugar with the spoon, “I am no longer a novelty. I am merely a threat. Kira used to make mistakes, but he has never shown mercy. Whatever I am to him, I am not worth the risk.” He sips again. “It’s quite logical.”
Light is silent for a long moment.
“Would you do the same to him?” he asks.
“I’ve never thought it through,” L says.
“Liar.”
“Perhaps.”
Light smiles thinly. “I still think I’m right.”
L has reached the dregs of the coffee-sludge. “I know.”