#shipaholic

It’s day thirty-eight. The air is yellow and L is still not back.

Light sips his coffee. There isn’t much else to do. The monitors have been blank ever since the bomb hit, and the back-up generator hasn’t brought them back online. Venturing beyond the control room in search of a fix has been deemed inadvisable.

So, this is where they’ve holed up. This bland square space filled with non-functioning tech is all that’s available to them. Light considers his good luck, in spite of it all. Of all the places to be when nuclear warfare breaks out, L’s stupid ostentatious building had turned out to be a godsend. Radiation-resistant walls. The backup generator whirs along and keeps the lights on and the kettle working. A water filter, for L’s million cups of tea. Gas masks.

The only exit to the room is the exit to the building. L goes out to get supplies. Mostly other people’s radios and televisions he’s deconstructed. They don’t need food, for now - the kitchen is well-stocked, and Light has drawn up a plan for rations, just in case. Neither of them suffers easily from cabin-fever. Light learned that about himself during his fifty days’ confinement. As for L, Light wonders if his stint at university was his first time out of doors.

Light takes another sip of coffee. The handcuff chain clinks against the arm of his chair.

Ah, yes. Those. Light had really, really hoped he’d seen the back of those.

L had disillusioned him the first day he’d decided one of them would need to go outside.

—

“Kira cannot be trusted on his own.”

Light had stared at the twin loops dangling from L’s crabbed, pinched thumb and forefinger. He’d pushed down the urge to scream.

“We proved my innocence. You stared at those rules for hours and you couldn’t think of a loophole.”

“I think we’re beyond proof now, Kira-kun. Hold out your arm.”

“I am not Kira. It is impossible for me to be Kira. The policemen of my country have determined that I am innocent. I don’t have to do anything you say.”

L sighed. Light laughed. The sound was sharp and echoing in the metal box they now called home.

“You must be overjoyed, now it’s just the two of us. Nobody can stop you tormenting me now. It was never really about proof, was it? You know I didn’t do it, and that’s why you’re out to get me - because I showed you up. I showed everyone The Great L was wrong. You want to punish me for not being Kira.”

L’s jawline twitched. It was the first time Light had seen an emotion force its way onto his face.

“I went easy on you before, Light.” There is no pleasure on L’s plain, tired face; only immovable dislike. “During our fistfights. A trained martial artist versus a teen with a handful of high-school boxing lessons under his belt? Don’t fool yourself into thinking we were evenly matched. If I’d fought back with no care to your safety, I would have done you a serious injury. Now, I could spend the next few hours laying out why you are Kira, and why those rules in the Death Note are fake, and how you have engineered this situation to provide yourself an alibi. But I am tired, and we are out of time. Hold out your arm.”

Light laughed again. It was hard to hold back, in this new ruined world. His laugh rolled around and around the room.

He refused.

It was a miscalculation.

—

That was weeks ago.

Light rubs his jaw with the hand not holding coffee. It still twinges when he presses too hard.

In the end, he can’t stop L doing what he wants. A small light of rage burns within him, replenishing every time he looks at L, every hour he spends tied to this chair. But it isn’t defeat, not really. L is just as trapped as he is.

Footsteps sound in the corridor outside.

Whenever L comes back, Light has a shameful urge to prick up his ears and lean towards the entrance, like a dog. He only does it because nothing else happens here. But for an instant that flame of rage gets directed at himself, for feeling anything at L’s comings and goings. Light’s priority is to ensure he stays alive and L dies, and the latter will happen as soon as the former is assured.

The door sweeps open, and a yellow astronaut steps into the room.

The astronaut places a backpack carefully on the ground. It straightens up and removes its helmet. Underneath is L’s head, smaller than usual with his body covered in bulky hazmat-wear.

Light lets out a breath. He hates the feeling of relief creeping up inside him. If L became a shambling radiated zombie, or got his head bashed open by some desperate person, Light’s only reason to mourn would be for his own odds of survival.

“You were gone overnight. I was worried,” he said out loud.

L starts to wriggle out of the hazmat suit. No doubt it’ll be left in a pile on the floor until the next trip. “Apologies, Light. I found an office that was still accessible on the ground floor. It made sense to work through the night.” Just as Light knew he would, he discards his suit on the ground like an old skin. L crouches on the floor and unzips the backpack.

“Well, I’m glad you’re alive. I could do with another coffee when you’ve got a moment.” Light watches L pull bits of deconstructed computer out of the backpack. Unusually for him, he has remembered Light’s request for more toothpaste. A bright pink, half-empty bottle of shampoo, obviously stolen from some teenage girl’s bathroom, is crammed at the bottom. And so are… condoms.

Light blinks as L lays the little box on the floor with the other personal items. Definitely condoms. There’s no reason Light would hallucinate that.

“That’s a little presumptuous,” he says.

L lifts his huge eyes. His dark circles are worse than ever. If he stayed up all of last night, Light calculates he must be nearing hour eighty without sleep.

“It is still possible there are other survivors. In case we end up accommodating more people, I am trying to prepare as broad a range of supplies as possible. These don’t expire for another five years, so that gives us plenty of time.”

Light wants to laugh, but he feels too exasperated. “L, quite besides the fact that no-one else in Tokyo is likely to have been inside, effectively, a nuclear bunker when a bomb was dropped on them with no warning -”

“Breathe, Light,” L mutters.

“- And besides the fact that we now live in a single room, which while spacious, does not provide for privacy or sound-proofing -” Light does pause for breath at that point. L inspires a lot of run-on sentences - “I doubt anyone with the dubious luck of being alive in this hell on earth has sex on their mind.”

“Oh well. I’ll put them with the spare batteries.” L sets the condoms aside.

Light watches him as he sorts through the guts of the computers he’s shredded. He feels vaguely rattled, though he doesn’t know why. It isn’t just because he spent the night chained to a chair, while L was apparently raiding strangers’ night stands for sex aids.

“You’re lying to me,” he says, half to himself.

L’s nimble fingers stop sorting bits of metal. Light’s always found them interesting to watch, the strange crabbed way L holds them at odds with their dexterity. They remind him of spindly pale insects he once saw in a nature documentary.

“I regret, due to the nature of my work, I am frequently lying to you, Light-kun. As ever, I pray you won’t take it personally.”

“Oh, spare me,” Light snaps. “It’s the goddamn apocalypse. Nobody has a job any more.”

The words surprise him. The concept of an apocalypse feels straight out of comic books. It’s not a word he would normally reach for. Still, he realises that this is how it feels. Not just that Tokyo has ended, but the world has.

His New World has died, right when he’d begun to shape it for the better.

L gives him a look, but doesn’t comment on his odd word choice. “As far as I am concerned, L is a job for life. It’s not as if I was drawing a salary. I am still working a case, even as the circumstances I am working in become… highly irregular.”

“Ah, the case.” Light rolls his eyes and tips his chair back. “Some might call it selfish to fixate on catching one murderer when millions are dead and the world is in shambles.”

“What an abrupt change in Light-kun’s attitude.” L’s voice is sharp. “I recall you giving me a black eye the last time I lost focus on the Kira case.”

“Well, what can I say. Statistically, Kira is probably dead. And if not, he must be having a job locating new victims at the moment.” Light sets his empty cup down on the ground. His eye catches the condom packet and he almost loses his train of thought. “But far be it for me to question your priorities, L. One: acquire as much junk as you can carry. Two: provide for the sex lives of hypothetical guests. Three: chain up the one person who could help you and call them a murderer. Four -”

L drops the bit of piping in his hand to the tiled floor. The crash rings throughout the room.

Light almost jumps out of his skin. He stares from the pipe on the ground to L’s tightly drawn mouth.

“Light. Shut up.”

Light’s mouth snaps shut. He has never seen L lose his temper.

L resumes picking through his stack of parts, while Light’s brain whirs into overtime. It is the condoms that’s bothering him. L’s explanation makes no sense. And everything he does is calculated. Dropping them in front of Light like that… it was a provocation.

The conclusion drops neatly into Light’s head like the answer to a test. He smiles.

“You’re lonely,” he says.

L pauses. He doesn’t look up.

Light’s voice brims with satisfaction. “You’re afraid you’re going to die. So you’re hoping for a pity-fuck.”

L still says nothing. Light doesn’t need him to. His smile widens.