#jam-knife

   He lingered a little longer that day but, all the same, disappeared to the far side of the grounds, the only hour and place he found true privacy, in the weeds spared by the grounds keepers; indulging his imagination and giving form to the unrefined thoughts of B and their place in the world.  

`

     A dreaded the day he might be discovered and told it was too dangerous to venture out before dawn…

  It was as though, as his mind was sharpened and expanded, it became equally more wild with possibilities and a thirst for purpose.  Some were fantastical, others bitterly inevitable, but his position left no room for doubt or desire that might take him off course.  Yet, language allowed him to solidify his thoughts, condensed his fears from their monstrous shadows and gave his conflicting fascination with B more form to twist into delicious narratives that no one else had to know…

   Could any of what he imagined in the slow moments of sunrise be mutual … ?   Could Backup’s own expanding mind hold the same spoiled possibilities?

`

  The invitation to revisit old battles was enough for him to incline into the warmth building between them, further kindling a familiar unrest that twisted his dreams into an abstract hunger – pressing into the other’s skin desperately, pulling him blindly into his body like an animal ignorant of sex…

      The shot glass, standing amber and fading to his left, wasn’t spared a glance. But, he neither considered backing down nor felt ready to accept the dare.

`

  His senses were too swept up in the physical actions; It’s only been moments-  

 B’s thighs wound around his body, a hand guiding his fingers - it is like the creak of the window’s ledge under the heel of his hand, reminding him of how close he is to touching the slender, sparkling ice, and that if his intent is already so obvious, that he might as well   have.  i t.  …

  If only for a moment, he allowed possibility of learning what rolling, summer-soaked sex felt like …

Watching barely parted lips, soundless as smoke.

His breath trickles from his open mouth.

  He could almost  feel  it.

`

            “ - B … ”

`

   He hesitates, introspection emerging out of the soft haze, slowing time. Several questions not quite formed,    

‘Why do you want it?’,  

 ‘For what ends?’,   ‘Have you ever- ?’

   ‘Would you ever consider- … me ?’

   – a distracting warmth builds on his face. He can’t tell if it is the heat rising from between their bodies or if allowing himself to ponder asking has caused his inexperience to surface visibly.

  He’s been practicing control over his emotional affect since the day L asked him,

 “Why do you think you are first and Backup is second?”,  

  The question made his blood run cold…

`

     Being readable was being vulnerable.

   A’s skin has always had the thin, delicate quality of alabaster. B’s pin-prick love bites had bruised him painlessly for weeks but had damaged his carefully constructed veneer of invulnerability, drawing low toned whispers from their peers…

  Until then, most assumed he was easily flustered from anger; a manifestation of a temperamental nature under pressure or the years spent with B allowing something to rub off.

 In truth, it was a compromise with his body; if he couldn’t conceal his responses, he would control the message they carried – A sharp glance, the sucking of teeth, the veil of teenage impudence, ‘-tu meurs en premier’  ( You die first ) where nothing else felt strong enough…

`

    Hiding behind animosity had been intentional, but it felt like a betrayal to suppress more of who he was than he already had to, slipping deeper into the skin of his persona until there wasn’t a trace of the person beneath the letter left.

   However, it was a price worth paying, allowing his eyes to wander unscrutinized over polished desks to trace the gentle, verdant veins of the other boy’s arms – his hands, fingers curling around the pages edge gracefully, the tender hiss of skin against paper…  

  Behind the camouflage of disdain, he could drink in the subtly of his closest friend’s voice, it’s cadence maturing into a syrupy, deep resonance; saccharine sound…

`

   … Do other boys do this to themselves ?

`

   A would repeat his words behind closed lips, savoring them, amplifying every morsel by bringing it into his body, into his mouth.  Anything to make the thought more vivid; the memory of B’s breath trickling over his pulse.  

    He can’t remember what was said anymore…

It changes with his mood, the flavor of his dreams, the tone of the moments when he is alone.

He can only remember the wispy susurrations over teeth, the strange awareness of the temporarily of the moment, how teasing close to the line of satisfaction it brought him, leaving him feeling desperately unsated when it was over.

   It keeps him revisiting the confrontation, a pseudo-masochistic fixation with a moment long gone and fading from memory.. But all within the safety of his mind, where no one else would know.

The warmth on his face leaves him feeling exposed, summoning the familiar resentment towards his own body .. though it’s muted, somewhere distant, pricking without sting.

`

He still wants to pull away and hide.

But, the distance between them is so unbearably tight, and unreasonably comfortable…

`

  He leans in closer.

   If he is close enough, B will not be able to distinguish the emerging color from the shadows he casts over his features. But, he can feel the humidity of an exhaled breath pulled into his mouth and the warmth seems to prickle like sparks through his skin.

  The condensing air between their lips is sweltering and silent as the calm before a storm. It tingles with electricity that he pulls deeper into his lungs. It’s charge filling up his chest, until the impossible gravity brings the flush warmth to his mouth without any deliberation - the release of letting himself simply have it allows a sigh to escape, taking with it the uncertainty that’s haunted every previous instance of betrayal by his body.

 The contact is tender, the motion slow, as gentle and inoffensive as it was starved… letting the plush heat and subtle pulse seep into the union of their lips.     Time’s viscosity embellishes the pressure with delicate sensation he’s never been receptive to before, amplified by his famished longing to relive the lustful sincerity of their altercation.

  –    His fingers press into the firm muscles of his friend’s lower back. The contact is so light B could detect the trembling of his hands…    He’s never felt this rawly unguarded before, this honest without regret.

`

 The balmy nirvana of his rival’s lips has an ethereal softness like the satin of rose petals that lingers on the tips of his fingers, something he couldn’t detect in the bruising, hateful kiss they shared years ago.

 But, it meets his senses with a familiarity… from their childhood; the groaning of tree limbs under his weight as he leaned over and allowed the contact as light as moth’s wings meeting mid-flight, guiltless and strangely polite. The sensation was phantom, almost untangle, like if warm velvet and cream could mesh,  living on his lips like they had exchanged something vial and irreversible - leaving an unsatisfied intrigue, the desire to fully grasp the physical impression. They personified the idiom ‘just one more time’ – turning one, a single curious action, into several repeating attempts.

 A sermon on sin lead them to never speak of it again, but his belief in sin had outgrown second hand virtues.  There was nothing virtuous about his intoxicated touch, brushing fingers against his friend’s smooth cheek as he gave himself to it, his eyes sliding closed as he let himself submerge  -  the quiet sanctuary of their room, ‘I-missed-you’ pressed into the lobe of his ear, the warm inflection like a lifetime’s confession -pulled down into B’s body, sliding under him, pulled into Egyptian cotton by his gravity-his fingers lacing into his hair-surrender-as-they-curl-pulling-possessive-’say you’re mine’-the-humiliation-of-his-heel-in-his-back-

  His lips part.

`

  The galvanized air slips into his mouth, tingling as faintly as dust caught on sunlight, sparkling invisibly on his tongue as he inhales. He wants to fill his lungs back up with static, invite the delicate energy into his body, allow the current to saturate his senses.  He wants Beyond’s thunder in his veins.

  Sloping into one another, his fingers guiding the arch of B’s back. The subtle shift of his clothes, pressure through thin layers, and bare caress of skin again skin, the novel sensation of having someone press their aroused body into his. A hitch in his breath, a shiver rolling down his spine.  Everything moves so slowly, the fiction tight, hot in his lap. He can feel the warm weight of B’s thighs and is unable to conceive of anything but the sensation  – a surge like cream icing on his tongue, every nerve telling him he’s on the cusp of what he’s been craving all this time.  

 Each benign shift leaves his mind blank from pure indulgence, relaxing his jaw.   He could yield under that mouth without a second’s regret.

`

 But nothing feels quite enough.

`

  Ensnared in a torrent of want, he presses harder into his friend’s friction but he can’t push it deeply enough into his own body to reach the elusive ache.  The unbearable want is undefinable, evanescent as fists of sand, slipping through his hands -

`

   —  He-brings-his-fingers-to-wrap-around-his-rival’s-throat - his thumbs press into the resistance of cartilage…  

The electricity is burning him from the inside out-

`

  He wants something beneath the relief he’s pursuing, he wants to plead with B for it, but doesn’t know it’s name. It’s not a promise, it’s not his body, it’s not that he wants to ask him to be his friend again-

    He wants something he cannot have.

  He wants the mystery of the second child, the one from the crimson-lit alleys of a country he’s never seen, to hold real magic that will make all of this stay the way it is forever – never knowing who wins, who vanishes from history, what there is left to keep his blood running hot when his opponent is gone, what a decade without his touch to haunt him will feel like–

    But, there is no magic.

   Ice spires hanging like opulent wands would melt in his hands, trying to keep their rivalry forever would be as futile as clutching at sand being pulled in by the tide. You can’t conquer fate or time, they know no mercy or masters and never will.

  B knows that better than he ever could.

 There is no magic but B possesses a curse that never lets him forget the futility of trying to hold onto what was never yours.

`

   But, if either gave into despair over what they could not change, he would not have this to lament that it would be gone one day. A would relish in the fire of their conflict and the heat of B’s body, until time took it from him.  Because it would.

`

 Fragile peace is found so easily when, if he could get any closer, their clothes would merge at the treads and he would be one less layer from reality… Every nerve is ringing with his friend’s friction, the first direct motion causes his eyes flutter, the muscles of his thighs spasm with an intense surge. The carnal hunger is devouring all sense, in his mind, in his mouth, his pulse under his thumbs.

  He squeezes down a bit harder, summoning up the impression of B’s heel at his back with as much vividness as his imagination could manifest -- he could feel the tread bitting into his spine, the sense of defeat, the delicious twinge and tension-

  A breaks the kiss, his gaze softened with ecstasy but darkening with stormy passion.  Each movement was building up to an indeterminate end and he was aching for impact.

`

   “ - Dit-moi que tu m’deteste. ”

          Tell me you  hate me.

`

    Fantasies conjured up with more intensity without need of the usual focus. It was just there, at his lips, between his thighs, and looming over him without threat. His friend’s confession of violent daydreams, had became intertwined with his own.. The fixation with their worst altercation, it was mutual.

`

    “uhhh-h-…”

    If he could feel embarrassed by the meager, straining sounds, it isn’t right now.  The rush comes again with a roll of his hips, A shuts his eyes to yield into it.

It’s cold. 

There’s a sound. A shot. Shit, he thinks. He hopes it’s someone’s exhaust backfiring. There’s too many people around for this. The Mercedes zooms across six lanes of traffic, taking the closest exit. Trying to lose him. 

He follows. He weaves between traffic on his bike, getting to the car, and he sees the other man leaning outside the window with a gun drawn, pointing in his direction. B grips his own, tight in his hand. He can see his steely grey eyes as he approaches, or maybe that’s just another memory. 

B shoots.

The man slumps. Lifeless.

There are lights behind him, red and blue.

A.

The day Light Yagami meets him, he’s wearing the watch his father gave him.

It’s still on Japanese time, where it shows it’s about four in the morning, there. Here, it’s noon. He yawns. He’s restless and jet-lagged, making his way through the customs and the terminal and baggage until he’s out the door and headed to the address he was given. 

5512 Highland Park.

The cab he climbed into forty minutes prior parks along the sidewalk of a rundown street. Apartments and small houses with chain-link fences dot the opposite side of the road; where he’s pulled up, a neon sign hangs, buzzing, the lights flickering and not really noticeable in the LA sun. Light notices the peeling, yellowing paint on the outside, the dead flowers in the flowerbeds, the rusted hinges of the dark green door; apparently, the only new renovation that Maple’s Bar & Grille has made in the past who-knows-how-long. 

Light looks at his watch. The time ticks away. He pays the cabbie, walks through the squeaking door and up the small step, and is quickly greeted by a waitress, who tells him to take a seat wherever.

He spots him.

In the booth off to the side, sipping on a Shirley Temple, with a coke on the side. A brown-haired, flannel-donning fellow staring down at the newspaper. Light can’t discern what the headline says from here, but the photo shows the destruction of a building. It’s from the L.A. Times. It doesn’t matter, he thinks. Light slides across from him in the booth. 

“Hello. Light Yagami.” He extends a hand. The American way. 

The man lifts his head. Takes a sip from the glass of sugar he drinks. His eyes bore into Light’s soul, unsettling him, deep in his core, not acknowledging his hand whatsoever. Light retracts it. 

“I’ve been waiting quite a while, you know.”

Light blinks. He looks away, tearing his gaze from the man sitting opposite him. He looks down at the menu on the sticky table. “The cab driver didn’t know where this place was.” 

“No? This is one of the more popular places around here.” The man looks at the bar, towards a bunch of drunk men, off of work and watching a game on the TV in the upper corner of the room. They don’t even notice them in the booth. Good, he thinks. They don’t need attention. “Call me B.”

2.

B is handcuffed. B is sitting in a chair, alone in a cell, with cement walls and cement floors and fluorescent lights that sting his tired eyes. They buzz. The sound is drowned out by people walking in and out of the jail, police talking, drunk people and others mumbling to themselves. 

He knows why he’s here. It replays in his head, over and over. The sound of gunshots, the squeal of tires, the sound of sirens, so many of them, blaring out along the highway. His ears seem to ring despite the hours that have passed. 

This is temporary. Soon, he knows, he’ll be back to square one. 

Was it worth it?

B.

Light and B meet up everyday for the next few days. It’s always the same restaurant, and the same booth, with varying waitresses, the same water, and the same man sat across from him. Papers have started making their way onto the booth. B looks at them with an intensity Light hasn’t seen before, other than in one person.

The one person they’re trying to take down.

“What’s your connection to him, anyway?” Light asks at this meeting, because for all he knows, this could be as impersonal as flicking one’s cigarette ashes on the floor. He watches B do this as he takes a sip off his water.

“Oh, that’s a little personal, isn’t it? Let’s just say we grew up together.” B replies. 

Light feels a jolt go through him; he didn’t know this. Not the specifics, at least. Proof of his name was enough to go through with this arrangement. “You grew up together? Then why are you doing this?”

“That’s really none of your business,” he snaps. “You’re paying me for a service. Be grateful it’s on the table.”

Which, Light supposes, is fair. He looks down at the newspaper in front of him, its headline emblazoned on the front cover:

L IN CONNECTION WITH INTERPOL; CRACKDOWN ON KIRA GROUP COMING.

3.

L Lawliet.

B hadn’t heard the name in years. Rather, he chose to ignore it, because seeing it now and again in the newspapers or on tv really didn’t help his case.

Too many years were spent left alone in that house. And then, alone in L.A., and then, around the world. And now, sitting in a cell, he counts on his fingers how many times he’s spent his days alone, thinking about him, and thinking about all the fucked up things that led to this point. 

He continues to wonder if it was worth it. He wonders if things could have been different, if L had just listened to him, had stayed, and had not pretended that B just didn’t exist after everything that happened in the house. 

L is dead. 

L is dead because of him. No longer is the World’s Greatest Detective but a corpse in the ground; and here he is, stuck in prison for it, because everyone knows he did it. They saw it. At least, everyone who knew who L really was knew it was him. He hasn’t seen the news at all, and probably won’t. He hopes to God, or the Devil, or any other force out there that can hear him, that L–or his place–doesn’t happen again.

C.

Light Yagami has his ducks in a row.

As a part-time investigator himself, he’s learned to always be one step ahead of the game. He’s learned to pay attention to his surroundings, to organize his thoughts before he speaks, to look at things from all sides. L got involved in the Kira Group case alongside him and the rest of the department he was working in, over in Japan. The L. The one that’s solved countless crimes around the world, some of the hardest, all under a pseudonym. For him to get involved meant he had his suspicions, and he knew where to look; in the very place where the police weren’t looking.

Light Yagami has played his cards right; working with groups like Yotsuba and third-parties, such as The Shinigami. Working between them, they’ve obtained quite a bit of money–here and there, of course, and Light turns a blind eye to the way the money is obtained. He’s only in control of how and where the money goes, of course. The rest is up to Ryuk, to gain it, while the accounts are hidden between Yotsuba’s various company expenses and profits. It works. So much, in fact, that they were able to transfer billions upon billions within a matter of months. 

He isn’t sure what caught L’s eye. Maybe it was a fuck up on Ryuk’s part, or something between Yotsuba, or maybe it was the sudden influx of profit and stocks and the company doing “well” on an international level. Maybe that was it. Light wouldn’t be surprised.

Light isn’t greedy. 

Light is, simply, bored.

It was never his intention to get L onto this case, but it makes for extra fun, he supposes. Doubling and tripling and quadrupling the work he usually does for the Kira Group, all for the sake of laughs, while dollar bills light up in the other’s eyes. And he knows he won’t be caught until L can connect him to any of these groups, which he never will.

Let him have his suspicions. Light knows he’ll get off scot-free.

4.

B remembers the first time he met L.

It was summer, and he was just a kid. Small, maybe around ten, tired from the flight, gripping balling his fists into the sleeves of his shirt. Summer here was colder than home. The mansion was somehow even colder.

It was nighttime. B doesn’t remember the exact time, but he was hungry. He didn’t go down for dinner; instead, he sat at his bed, looking at his minimal belongings. This was his room, now. This was his new home, but it didn’t feel like it. Nothing felt right. Not the windows, not the furniture, not the smell. It was unsettling, being here; like his whole life had been uprooted.

It had, but not because of the change in home.

He refused to think about it. Instead, B trotted out of his room, trying to be as quiet as possible. It was past curfew, and he didn’t want to get in trouble on his very first day. His stomach growled, but he didn’t know where the kitchen was; it wasn’t shown to him on his little tour around the house. He assumed it was past the dining room, somewhere downstairs, and after a little bit of wandering, he found it.

He found another boy there, too. With the man who had picked him up and showed him around. Maybe he was also new. He was eating dinner, soup, at a small table. The elder man smiled; he ladled another bowl for B, setting it across from the other boy. 

Despite how unsettling the day had been, it was comforting. It could be home.

Things weren’t supposed to end up like this.

D.

Light can feel L on his heels. He’s uncomfortably close to the end of this, and it’s suffocating. And thrilling. Scary, but electrifying; being in the same room as him, knowing what he knows, but knowing there’s nothing he can do about it just yet. 

L knows of The Shinigami Group. He’s asked about Ryuk, and has started researching who he is. There’s only so long until contact is made, and Light knows his connection is fairly solid, but not enough; if Ryuk goes down, so does he, and so does Yotsuba. He needs to do something. Anything. 

 Contact with B is a blessing in disguise. He doesn’t know who this B person is, but he claims to know L. He knows enough information that catches Light’s eye; details about his aliases, specific cases, his appearance, even knowledge of Watari’s role. It intrigues Light, because he isn’t sure what this person could possibly want from him, or why he’s contacting him.

He says he can help. He knows L is close to solving this case. Let him help.

Light books a trip to California. It’s sudden, but he says that between school and work, he’s really stressed out. His dad understands, even defends him; he’s working too hard on this case he’s not even technically being paid to do, while trying to figure out how to manage school in between. He needs time to himself to sort things out, and maybe a trip out by himself is what he needs. He wants to visit the forests up north, and maybe explore some of the other cities. A two week trip should be enough time for that.

So he goes. He spends part of the first week up in the Redwoods, goes down to San Francisco, and eventually gets to Los Angeles. 

This means, when L expects him back at headquarters by the weekend, that he really only has seventy-two hours to finalize things with B. They need to settle on a plan. 

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” B starts, sitting across from him in that same booth. Light thinks he must be sweltering under that leather jacket; it isn’t exactly cool in here. “I come back to Japan with you on an earlier flight. You need to find a way to get L out of headquarters. You know, he’s secretly an adrenaline junkie. Get him into the action. Did you already plan on the Yotsuba thing?”

Light nods. He looks down at his watch. Back at B. “Higuchi is greedy, it’ll take no time for him to want to get extra money. I just have to dangle it in front of him in just the right way.”

“Perfect. Arrange it so Higuchi will meet with…whoever, I don’t really give a fuck. Just get him at this location,” he insists, pointing at the Port of Tokyo on the map, “and L will eventually get there, too. I’ll do my job accordingly.”

“Right.” Light responds. “I would like to know more details about that, if you don’t mind.”

Dramatically, B sighs. “Don’t worry yourself. Nothing that a bike and a gun can’t take care of.”

5.

B is ready.

Light is ready.

It’s the day of. Light’s been on edge all day. The whole group has been on edge; they all know they’re on to something big, and they’re about to crack it.

L’s learned of Higuchi, of Yotsuba, of the laundering. At least, part of it, but Light knows better than anyone else here this is just a big red herring. He really thought L would know better. He supposes not, because here he is, taking the bait. Is it for show? Does he really believe it?

He doesn’t know.

It’s close to midnight, and Aizawa and Ide have been tracking Higuchi all day, between the live feed on their screens to monitored calls (thanks to Wedy, who was only there for a few days). L climbs into the front seat on the passenger’s side, where Light can drive. 

Light starts driving to the location. L sits, hands gripping his knees, tense. Police are starting to arrive towards the location; they’re receiving live updates about their statuses throughout.

“Heading south, about twenty minutes from location,” Light says into the receiver.

“Got that. We’re watching Higuchi right now.” Aizawa’s voice reports. “There doesn’t seem to be much going on.”

L hums. Light grips the steering wheel.

“We have enough evidence to arrest him already,” Light says. “Why are we holding off?”

“We need sufficient, hard evidence. This will be enough.” L grits.

“The bank statements aren’t enough?”

B was right. L is an adrenaline junkie. Light sees the way his eyes change, and he knows this isn’t just for evidence; it’s so he can say he did it. So he can say he was right. He caught one of the largest white collar criminals the world has ever seen.

Light looks in the rearview mirror. He sees the bike. He hears a shot. L looks in the side mirror, and sees the same. 

“We’re being followed.”

“Shit,” Light mutters. He speeds up, trying to weave between traffic. His heart is racing. He’s trying to stay calm. “Do you think–”

Another shot. This one hits the car.

L reaches into his pocket and grabs his gun. “Keep driving.”

He leans out the window.

Light hears a shot.

And then, L slumps.

E.

B realizes, far too late, that working with Light was the worst possible thing he could’ve done.

He sees it from behind the bars of his cell. Sentenced to life, sitting in San Quentin State Prison. Found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He’s not surprised in the slightest. He held up his end of the deal.

Light didn’t.

Instead, he let him be arrested. Had his team follow him, get him arrested, extradited back to the States. He got his money, but not for long. He sits alone, biding the rest of the time he has on Earth, eating shitty prison food and fighting with inmates and ending up in solitary for a few weeks. He watches stupid reruns of Law and Order and reads books and occasionally steals a newspaper off of his cellmate.

That’s how he sees Light Yagami come up in the world. He sees him becoming what L used to be. He reads about how Yotsuba was dissolved, but other companies–smaller ones, like Yotsuba once was–grow into the large, influential entities they are. It’s because of him. All of it.

He thought he got what he wanted. It was just another way for business, and it shouldn’t have been personal, but oh, it was. He knew that as soon as he pulled the trigger, as soon as he met Light Yagami at that stupid little restaurant in that stupid, sticky booth.

B didn’t want that. He needed something from L, something permanent to soothe the pain of everything between them, but death was something that stuck; the bullet, an indefinite solution, holding his anger, his resentment, his grief and sadness.

He’s paying for it, now. He knows that well enough.

So B sits.

He thinks of the watch Light Yagami wore.