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The sharp, curved edge of a shovel slices maybe an inch into the ground.
One perfect lacquer shoe descends on the step and, with his whole weight, he wedges it into the minuscule slit of the dry earth.
It barely goes in.
Light almost starts trashing the shovel.
He might as well have buried L in stone.
Ryuk gave him a white notebook. Said that Light has a tool in his hands and supposedly amusingly overwhelming delusions of grandeur and faith in his own success, and that Light can take any pen and do what he has done dozens of thousands of times.
Write a name.
No price or terms attached.
For someone else’s amusement and his self-fulfilment.
“How many times can I do it?” he asked, tense where he lay on his bed, expecting already to hear some bullshit of Ryuk’s perpetual ignorance or stupidity.
Ryuk grunted with mirth in the mirroring smirk, “As many times as you want.”
Precisely what Light wanted to hear.
“Why?”
“Well…”
Light could feel his heart panging rhythmically from a wildly accelerated pace, in soft midnight.
Ryuk shrugged, “He and you were fun.”
Light didn’t need any more reasons.
The lid is heavy as hell, and when he manages to push it to stand on its side, when he stands above resting L, he feels as if he's on the Hell’s doorstep.
It is his Hell, though.
Still.
For the first time, he writes L’s name himself. It sits all complicated and enveloping on his tongue, something secret and only his until L comes to life.
He is like that. He was. L is a pain and a source of fun, and Light could torment and manipulate him for personal enjoyment; right after Light would get the beginnings of grime off himself.
The rain whispers, caresses him, not powerful enough to remove the filth.
It takes one heartbeat - and L’s chest rises, and then an exhale escapes pale lips.
Light’s hands shake in anticipation, like strong and arrogant in their strength tree branches watching a hurricane subsiding on the horizon.
L opens his eyes to his crazed smirk, and they are glassy and shocked in disorientation.
“I win,” Light hisses, overcome.
L’s face twists - in rage.
And L kicks him off his feet.
Once he hastily and with an inhuman effort, while being strangled by L, muscles in agony, mouth full of salivated soil and curses, manages to write L’s name on the piece of the Death Note, L dies, and Light crawls out of the grave, all pathetic and triumphant and fierce and goes home to wash off and ponder.
L is a bother. No surprise there.
Light can just try to catch - cage - force - tame him - again.
Never before had Light managed to do it, but it’s fine. Whatever.
He rests in soreness for a few days and then grooms himself, breathes.
And goes back to L.
He stands there under the warm blood of the dusk shading his hair red.
At the graveyard of L’s history.
He stands in his black suit. God knows - Light knows - or, more so, does not fucking know - why he put it on again. Probably wanted to show off to L.
L surely must be afraid of him when L wakes up. Although… maybe not when he looks so tired, visibly hot, and all in the depressingly, infuriatingly clumpy graveyard dust.
The place doesn’t have public showers, and Light thinks warily more and more: he should drag L home.
And hope he does not rot.
Water flows down his body and into the white softness of the insides of L’s coffin. Staining it.
He stands there, at the altar of L’s sacrifice for the sake of truth, the altar of Light’s triumph, where L placed himself unwillingly, where L knowingly risked his path would lead, once he put himself in Light’s way.
L looks weak, pliant. Alive. Despite there being no pulse, no calm or catching breath.
Light stopped his heart himself. Only wished he could have his hand on L’s chest - ideally, bare chest - when it did cease beating.
He had to content himself with L’s closing eyes instead.
He is smarter this time. As in, more strategic, and L could never argue with that - since he is the one who outwitted, outplayed, outmanoeuvred L.
He writes L’s name on the pages full of purity and divinity, a blessing to resurrect.
“I win,” he laughs, as planned, in L’s face, the moment L’s bewildered gaze focuses upon waking up.
This time, he anticipates L’s fight and still gets thrown around in the mud before killing him.
Digging is much more difficult than he had thought it would be. He thought he’d be able to dig L up and then throw him back in every day, but the first week proves him wrong.
The first two times he digs L’s wooden leaden sarcophagus out, it takes hours alone. It happens right after the day-long rain soaked L’s little resting place, and Light, smeared in mud, feels more like dirt than a man, and even further away from a deity.
He has to get into the hole; he slips into it, slips inside it, and later his hands slip at its edges as he struggles like an idiot to climb out, and whenever he tries to stabilise himself, his outsoles slide on the coffin lid.
He despises it to the end of the world.
And, nonetheless, when storms pass, and he is left with parched soil, he distantly considers it nice - if rain came back.
This third time, he gets out of the hole rather than bringing L immediately back.
It took so much longer to free the place for him to crawl out. The earth that used to protect him, that Light took, is all crumbled, stone-like formations and dust. The sun has almost set. L’s features are cooler in the first streams of gentle moonlight.
Ryuk said L would never remember past resurrections. Which is great, because Light would not have appreciated L’s intolerable commentary about Light having been ambushed by him like a savage, cornered animal.
L had not been this way until lowered into the grave.
Light writes the smooth lines of his now familiar name.
“Welcome back,” he tells L, counterfeit lack of interest covering his expression, as L stares at him, brain’s processing power visibly drained by astonishment of existing again. “Don’t try anything. I can kill you at any point.”
L stares at him with huge eyes
Light’s chest is tight and airless.
Aflame.
For a second, long and beautiful second, L seems borderline scared.
Light feeds on the view. Memorises it. It is a frame from a dream.
Then L jumps up, grabs his leg with the strength of a monster, and drags him, shouting undignifiably from surprise, down.
Light comes out of a battle later, unravelled and worn.
L does not live beyond a couple of minutes.
On the Japanese land, more than ninety-nine percent of people get cremated - they buried L whole.
Light might have faux-innocently had a strong and controlling hand in this decision, yet he insisted merely that L was European, decently respectful towards traditions, and not theirs to burn.
He did not say L looked nice on the bed of white funeral roses, and Light felt like keeping him as he would a captive and a prize.
Despite how he used to dream of picking L’s bones with chopsticks, on his own.
He could still get them, if he wished to.
If threatened with this, L would surely not rush to pull him down.
“You killed me,” L whispers back the second time Light uses the same words after trying an array of other tactics.
It suddenly dims Light’s satisfaction a notch.
He scoffs, above him as a God casting judgment, “You stood in my way.” It is true.
And truth is what L always claimed to seek and swore to follow and accept.
Slowly, with the difficulty of a person nauseated and with balance impeded and head spinning, L steadies his elbows slightly behind him, and torturously sits up.
“I did,” he agrees, hoarser than Light is used to hearing his clear, softer voice. “But you still merely wanted it.”
“What the fuck,” Light grits out, “is that supposed to mean.”
not threatened me in any way to keep me alive, not plotted to establish a stalemate
Light scoffs, “As if you deserved it.”
For a moment, L is silent, and watches him differently than ever.
Light pointedly does not show a cold shiver down his spine.
L lunges at him from out of the grave.
Light kills him again.
Light wrote the names of all the cemetery staff in the notebook, having sent them to patrol the territory around the clock and let him get his headache out of the grave in peace.
Maybe they worshipped Kira - it doesn’t matter, because all Light has to focus on is L.
He is always dragging L from the depths of his demise and throwing him back and suffering for it, for hatred towards him, and continues to get into exhaustion, anger, and dirt.
Because his obsession is lying down there, all statuesque, holier-than-thou, and clean.
Light learns to only undress once the demeaning part is over and L is awake to watch him in his perfect victory and luxurious shirt.
He bought it with L’s money, as well.
He knows L likely won’t care.
He could try to make him.
Nothing else appears to make L distracted by him anymore.
“Missed me?” Light taunts him, rehearsed, at maybe the tenth time. “Or missed being alive?”
It’s been a month since they blanketed L in the earth, yet even when Light leaves L resting in death for days, L looks like he died seconds ago. It creeps Light out.
Ryuk declared it a gift from Shinigami to Light. Make L all fresh for their theatre of Kira’s life.
Light has… feelings about L’s lips being blue, skin nearly rubbery yet hydrated as the newest layer of a young birch tree. His gaze, when L is up and full of restless need to claw at Light, hating him, is as diamond-sharp and vortex-black as it has ever been, grey eyes shaded with anger.
L keeps attacking him. Worse than Light fought L physically when tethered to him with metal.
Digging L out is a horrible, exhausting, boring chore. The boredom is the worst of it; thankfully, Light is brimming with adrenaline, lighting him up, sparks of fire dense in his veins, having taken over his being.
At least his grave is a pleasing view. Cross reflects sunlight, it liquifies into rose and red gold, and the elegant, thin ridges seem gilded even in the abyss of the night, and lack truly sharp corners.
Like L did.
The curving ends of the gravestone’s arms, shapes reminding him of flowers blooming, make him think of how L’s fingers held onto him.
Light periodically wipes the soil off it.
No words cool L down.
He is hostile. Acting forceful, bold, against logic and in accordance with his appealing, provocative pride.
Calming L in this state of derangement is like catching a forest fire in bare palms, warming him - melting a city-enveloping iceberg with a hold of exposed human hands.
“Not too late to give up to me,” Light groans as L is on top of him, panting with wild, sanity-drained rage, exhaustion settling over them both as neither can give up or give in.
L all but growls at him, “I never will.”
His hands are a vise around Light’s neck, and Light is losing air in panic from it being caught, thinned in his throat.
Thankfully, he succeeded already in writing the last letter of L’s name he saved on a piece of a Death Note.
“Moron,” he forces out raspily right before L is struck by a heart attack and collapses on his chest.
He repeats it nearly line by line, move for move, gaze and hold and laughing and taunting. Twice, three times, four times, until he learns all of L’s attacks and defences.
Learning how alarmingly, unnervingly well Light is managing to dismantle him and force him to the ground, L begins attempting to manipulate him, with words and gaze, aggressive or quiet and reasonable, too reasonable to be real.
“I loved you,” L throws, tense all over, barely managing to breathe, with his face half-pressed into wet earth after rain.
Light’s heart almost stops.
Like L’s did.
“Right,” he says, rolling his eyes, though his fingers unexpectedly feel so weak, throat taut out of nowhere. “You did? Or you do?”
He feels crazy. Absolutely insane.
L fakes composure, dirty and pale, trembling with fury and more than that, and does not appear entirely sure whether the blade of confession is pointing towards and cutting Light or him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he flattens his voice to a dark monotone, yet Light can tell L came up with this weapon on the spot and cannot take it back or defend himself with it - and is barely starting to internalise this understanding. “It did not matter then, and it does not matter now. You won’t keep me. You just want a rush.”
L sounds a little stupid. Light supposes he’d sound a little stupid when fresh from the dead, too.
Because Light brought him back, worked like hell for it, regardless of whether L suspects it or has enough intelligence in stress to suspect it as of this moment.
Light has him, finally, on the ground. Forced to listen if not heed to him.
L’s strength never stopped matching his.
It is a bit exhilarating as well.
Light grabs and pulls his dusty hair, momentarily struck with the electric pleasure of holding it, “What makes you think that?”
L is quicker to respond now, “You want to hurt me. Watari is dead. You must have taken my name.”
Tried to fire bullets of accusations as if they could harm Light.
Light watches him, a bit contemplative, flooding with possibilities with every passing second.
He could, he knows, sweet-talk L - even knowing that L won't be swayed by it. He could make L obey for a single instant, and L would bite his tongue and leave dents on every surface to escape Light’s orders, and L might just crack into a note of somberness if Light articulates how much power he has over him. His life, and his death, and everything he is.
L is under him. All his. To keep.
As Light was planning and trying to.
At last…
He imagines, with unexpected burning vividness, seeing L bound and thrashing, moaning furiously from desire, L’s thin lips bitten by Light or him, and his eyes teary from something other than sadness…
Every step and act were means, and L is the end.
Getting to have him is the end.
Light laughs, “No. I’ll keep you now.”
And L stares, mutely, at him. Realising defeat or powerlessness.
Or leverage, maybe. Light’s…
Or their shared one.
Potential for manipulation gets his mind running - Light can see it clearer than day.
And Light doesn’t care.
Light yanks his head up by his hair and mutters hot air into his ear, words softened and cutting with pleasure, “I know how to keep you.”
L comes almost easily then.
They later make out like hell on the bed, and the floor, and the couch.
It and love are two things in which L does not try to fight him.
Only clutches, bites, and holds him, panting, closer.
Light chants, crazed, the words of victory into his skin, kissing down and nuzzling up.
L, fairer than in his first life, repays him perfectly, passionately, and in kind.
Including with coffee shared and chess under the sun on a balcony.
Light is not kind, but…
He enjoys all those moments.
And L contests only his plans, and not him.
Not openly.
Just at night, on secret laptops they both know and smirk and sleep about.
He sees L in front of him, in angelic light, soft and bittersweet as a memory, as he is dying.
L promised to come with him. Hide. Protect him. Death Note in L’s hands.
L… let? Him get shot.
Light doesn’t know whether L would or had at least avenged him.
L still is enchanting as a mirage.
Having him close helps Light close his eyes with less pain - and more inner peace.
He wakes.
To the open coffin.
He is in.
Throat dried, mind stuck in shock, eyes wide, and body still bloodied and unburned, feeling now nonexistent bullets in his body, hand and shoulder aching, chest phantomly seized inside, obviously too far from his family tomb.
L is above him.
Looking down from the insignificant cliff of six feet, calm and satisfied stare.
Warm-looking skin.
L smiles, "Shall we?"
The sun is enveloping his black hair.