DN -- Necessity
Title: Necessity
Collection: The Margins
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: L, Watari
Rating: G
Word Count: 333
Warnings: none
Summary: Down the hall he goes.
Author's Note: ♥
NECESSITY
He has regretted the necessity of the stairs for longer than he would like to admit.
There’s a strange majesty in the upright lines of a staircase, and there’s a warm comfort in the frayed runner that clings to it, but all the tennis in his youth has not been kind to his knees, and Quillish is wincing by the time he reaches the second floor.
He pauses, leaning against the wall for leverage, to knead the aching joints gently, each in turn. They’ve got a few good years left in them yet.
Down the hall he goes. The house creaks sympathetically, and he smiles.
He smiles a little wider as he gives the door-ajar, spilling a wedge of yellow light out onto the carpet-a careful push.
L, whose ten short years of intelligence put Quillish’s decades to shame, is asleep on top of the latest printouts, a tall stack of case files beneath his cheek.
Quillish hopes they weren’t printed too recently, or L will have the evidence literally written on his face.
Backwards, as with so many things in this world.
A ballpoint pen has slipped from the boy’s grip and lies, stranded and capless, in the pool of condensation around the crystal ice cream dish.
The ice cream, of course, is gone, as are the sugar cubes and the toffees.
Quillish wonders what the boy dreams, behind the feathery curtain of his hair, beyond the cool sharpness of the wide gray eyes. He wonders what a mind like that would conjure in the night.
His knees protest as he lifts the child and carries his burden to the bed. L stirs but doesn’t wake, and Quillish thinks they’ll want to work on learning to sleep more lightly, because there is no such thing as a surplus of advantages.
They’ll work on it.
But not now.
Now, Quillish stacks the dishes, wipes the desktop, caps the pen, and strokes L’s wild hair twice before he turns out the light.
Collection: The Margins
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: L, Watari
Rating: G
Word Count: 333
Warnings: none
Summary: Down the hall he goes.
Author's Note: ♥
NECESSITY
He has regretted the necessity of the stairs for longer than he would like to admit.
There’s a strange majesty in the upright lines of a staircase, and there’s a warm comfort in the frayed runner that clings to it, but all the tennis in his youth has not been kind to his knees, and Quillish is wincing by the time he reaches the second floor.
He pauses, leaning against the wall for leverage, to knead the aching joints gently, each in turn. They’ve got a few good years left in them yet.
Down the hall he goes. The house creaks sympathetically, and he smiles.
He smiles a little wider as he gives the door-ajar, spilling a wedge of yellow light out onto the carpet-a careful push.
L, whose ten short years of intelligence put Quillish’s decades to shame, is asleep on top of the latest printouts, a tall stack of case files beneath his cheek.
Quillish hopes they weren’t printed too recently, or L will have the evidence literally written on his face.
Backwards, as with so many things in this world.
A ballpoint pen has slipped from the boy’s grip and lies, stranded and capless, in the pool of condensation around the crystal ice cream dish.
The ice cream, of course, is gone, as are the sugar cubes and the toffees.
Quillish wonders what the boy dreams, behind the feathery curtain of his hair, beyond the cool sharpness of the wide gray eyes. He wonders what a mind like that would conjure in the night.
His knees protest as he lifts the child and carries his burden to the bed. L stirs but doesn’t wake, and Quillish thinks they’ll want to work on learning to sleep more lightly, because there is no such thing as a surplus of advantages.
They’ll work on it.
But not now.
Now, Quillish stacks the dishes, wipes the desktop, caps the pen, and strokes L’s wild hair twice before he turns out the light.