Another Life | Lawlight

Chapter 27

L didn't have the strength to push himself up off his bed and trudge back downstairs to continue his search for Light. He'd barely slept or eaten in the last few days, and the adrenaline which kept him going was now slowly disappearing from his system. He felt exhausted and hungry, and he's still nowhere near finding Light. His husband, trapped with Merikh somewhere in Japan and L, the world's greatest detective, couldn't find anything which would lead the task force to finally making an arrest, to bring Merikh to justice. Being without Light made L realise how much he depended on his husband, how often he'd turn to Light for support only to find him not there. Light wasn't just his husband, but a part of himself that he needed to continue functioning as a normal human being. Without Light, L dreads to think what type of person he might be. Would he still be the person he uses to be when they first met, the person Light called him out on.

"You're not as impressive as you believe you are," Kira said. L paused from his incessant typing to look at his roommate, who'd slammed the door shut behind him. "They all look at you as if you hung the stars in the sky because you are the world's greatest detective, but that's all you have to you. Matt can build anything he puts his mind to, A's a mathematical prodigy, whilst all you can do is put a couple of people behind bars. You don't even help the police force who are struggling. All you do is sit at that computer and scroll through cases that interest you and solve them by belittling those you're working with. I'm surprised detective agencies still employ your services. You act as if you're above everyone else here, including your own brother; it's pathetic."

"My behaviour is none of your concern," L said, turning away from Kira. Kira scoffed, storming over to L, yanking his chair away from his desk.

"You sit like you're a constipated frog, for what a little more brainpower or is that you're secret unless you sit like this, you're stupider than the rest of us. The children at Wammy's look up to you as a role model, act like one. If you prefer staying locked away in this room, then maybe you should leave; heaven knows you have enough money to afford your own mansion, let alone a house. People like you don't belong here. Our families have already neglected and hurt us. We don't need the same thing from people who are meant to understand us." with that, Kira turned away from L and stormed out of the room.

L had resented Light for that for many months after. Light at the time didn't know what L and his brother had suffered through at the hands of their parents, and drawing himself away from others had been L's way of protecting himself from making attachments to others and eventually getting hurt from them; he even withdrew from his own brother. L believed he'd never connect with anyone at all, yet Light smashed through his barriers and dragged him from his comfort zone, kicking and screaming. And what could L do but fall in love with him even if at the time L himself wasn't aware of the drastic changes to his feelings for his roommate? The more he thinks about it, the first time L truly realised the extent of his feelings are for his fellow detective (who'd at the time he'd barely been in a friends-with-benefits type relationship for the last six months) was around the time Near came to Wammy's. L himself hadn't been present for the big confrontation between Light and Wammy, for the state Near had turned up in. Still, he had witnessed the ever-growing bond building between them over a matter of days. Then there was the moment L asked Light out. He can remember it so vividly, like it had only happened yesterday; he'd been so nervous. More nervous than he'd been when he proposed.

L had dragged Kira out of Wammy's into London to the London Eye. It wasn't the most romantic place he came up with when he decided he wanted to ask Kira out, but Kira expressed never going on it. It wasn't often children from Wammy's really left the orphanage, so, under the guise of completing something every person who lives or visits London should do. And with the need to keep L's identity safe and secret, Kira didn't bat an eyelash when they get a compartment all to themselves. L planned this to the last detail. Where they'd go, what he's saying and what he'd do, whether Kira said either yes or no. However, staring at Kira, who is looking over the city in awe as they slowly travelled higher and higher. All words escaped him.