Beautiful Liar || L. Lawliet X Reader

6. Resurgence

(A/n)- Song: 'Sleepwalker' by Illenium (Virtu Remix)
{ 03:00- Teito Hotel (Room 1103) }

I woke up in a cold sweat, hands over my throat. Fire still danced in my eyes; replaying vivid  of my subconscious.
Why..? After all these years, why did he visit me in my dreams?

I slowly sat up, and felt Kuromi's warm body on my calf. It was still dark outside, but below me Tokyo was as busy as always, yet another urban landscape. Those neon-stained streets never seemed to rest.
Careful not to disturb Kuromi, I got out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom. I turned on the bathtub faucet, and peeled off my clothes white it filled up. The cold air on my skin tingled coolly, like it was the first time it had been exposed to the cold lights.

A cacophony of scared and confused thoughts swam through my head. I couldn't understand for the life of me, why Beyond Birthday had gotten to my head.

When the tub was about a quarter full, I crawled in and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees in an infantile manner. The water was freezing and chilled me to the core; uncomfortable, but it helped. I was too focused on conserving my body heat to think of much else.

This dream in particular left me unhinged, because I don't get nightmares, you see. I'm not easily troubled, and my dreams are whimsical and vague. This was a disturbing change of pace.

I guess I should explain who I'm talking about.
B, or Beyond Birthday, as he called himself, was my friend back at Wammy's house. Well, maybe the term 'friend' is too simplistic. I believe I mentioned having only loved one person in my entire life. This is the guy I was referring to.

Beyond Birthday was... different, even by my standards. He was in the first generation of L's successors, a generation of failures. He had long black hair that he always tied into a small ponytail, loose strands falling to the side. His eyes were brown but tinted ever so slightly with a red hue, and his gaze was always glass and  distant, as if he was detached from the world.

He was beautiful.

He was always a little strange compared to the rest of us. Quiet, reserved, and always somewhere away from the crowd of people surrounding me, staring off into space or studying. There were plenty of kids like this, but the difference with him was that there was clearly a stain in his soul. He was troubled, and it was clear that his maturity stemmed from a place of trauma and not intellect.
The only time I saw him was during lunch, when everyone would relax in the orchards. He and A lived upstairs, separated from the rest of us.
Eventually I became infautated by him. I'd figured out the minds of everyone else in that orphanage ー even the smartest of them were an open book ー but B was something I'd never come across before..

That mysterious darkness that lingered around him drew me in, and before I knew it I'd started slipping away from my friends when the attention wasn't on me. I began to talk to him, teasing him, trying to grasp the mind of this boy that Wammy's House deemed had the most potential to succeed L.

I found him to be gentle and kind. He had an obsession with riddles and symbolism, and had assigned cryptic nicknames for everyone in the orphanage, though he never told me mine. The more time I spent with him, the more helplessly I was drawn to him. Every Sunday night after everyone else was asleep, we'd sneak out to the small orchard underneath the cover of darkness and talked. At first it was just about simple things ー schoolwork, other kids ー but it soon evolved into something deeper. We both yearned for someone to confide in, someone that seemed to understand.
We had a lot in common. We both came here from the streets, we had both lost our families, and we were both desperately lonely.
I had no idea how to live up to my promise to my mother, and he was under enormous pressure to live up to the impossible expectations Wammy's House had put him under. He and A were cracking under the weight.