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Despite popular belief, there were many things that the world's greatest detective did not understand. Of course, those few who knew him personally had long ago taken possession of this small fact and wrapped it up in a private part of their mind to take out and shine when he was being particularly obnoxious, or cake-deprived (the two usually went hand-in-hand, anyway). Even they, though, thought it would probably be better if the world at large were left in the dark about the small things that baffled him, the little things. Like the way in which, for example, L Lawliet had never entirely understood the need -- no, the utter fixation -- which so many people had for shoes.
He rocked slightly where he sat, perched on the edge of the bed, his bare toes curling unhappily around the bundled up pair of socks Light had already tossed in his direction, and stared with particular distrust at the pair of too-shiny black shoes which the younger man was currently holding up for his inspection. "I am not going to be wearing them, Light-kun," he said, in a snippier tone than even he usually approved of.
Light Yagami looked briefly disappointed, but not exactly surprised. With a nod, more to himself than to the detective, he dropped them back in their box and then disappeared, just out of L's line of sight, behind the veritable mountain of brightly-coloured shopping bags and paper carry-cartons he'd had lugged into the room with him five minutes earlier. L wondered absently what would happen if the whole pyramid of capitalism were to be pushed over, then decided that he wasn't really in the mood for facing Light's wrath right now, even if it were amusingly cute, and remained seated where he was, toes surreptitiously pushing the socks out of sight beneath the low bed, and listening to the strange hmm-ing noises Light made as he sorted through boxes and tissue paper. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Light re-appeared, hair slightly tousled, and held up another pair of shoes, with the glow of hopeful triumph stamped all over his face.
L narrowed his eyes at them, then mumbled petulantly, "Couldn't I just wear my sneakers?"
Light huffed. "No."
L started reaching for said specimens of scruffy footwear anyway, then made a panicked noise as he realised they were nowhere to be seen. For a moment he just stared at the empty space beside the beside table and then glared slowly up at Light.
...who beamed at him with one of his Impeccably Innocent smiles.
"It's okay, I haven't destroyed them. But I have, ah, temporarily concealed them. Just for tonight. I mean, come on, L, they hardly go with nice clothes, do they?"
L blinked slowly. "Is Light-kun insinuating that the clothes which I usually wear are not nice?" and then, somewhat more alarmed, "And is he implying that I am not going out dressed as I am?"
The younger man rolled his eyes heavenwards, as though begging for some higher authority to intervene and save him from detectives with no sense of style. "It's a Christmas party, L. Take a deep breath, and summon up your adventurous side. Besides, Sayu will slaughter me if we turn up with you looking like you stole your wardrobe from a charity bin, okay? Besides... it's not like we've had much chance to dress up and wind down since the Kira case was closed, is it?"
Light Yagami still used the word 'Kira' cautiously, as though he were concerned that a black notebook were going to drop down out of the ceiling and possess him just by his mentioning it. Innocence has to be re-earnt, after all, and has to be accepted by the one trying to earn it himself, before it becomes real.
L stood up and sighed, just a little dramatically. It was true that Sayu Yagami was a hard task mistress when it came to her guests' dresscodes. It was also true that the detective and his partner-in-crime-solving hadn't had much of a chance to doll themselves up recently (they'd been in Northern Africa for the last seven weeks; a case of precious carvings gone missing) and, while L himself didn't have much interest in the activity, he had to admit that Light-kun did look rather fine in those tight black pants he liked to wear and -- not that L was in a position to admit as much, barely even to himself, let alone to the man in question. It was a joy just having Light Yagami working at his side and he knew well enough not to put that at risk just because the way the man looked (or sat, or moved, or talked, or smiled, or brushed hands when they reached for the same pen) made him feel like a hormonal teenager. And, yes, he had told himself that he'd make a move when Kira had been destroyed but, ultimately, it had seemed too... difficult. Too problematic, and too wrought with potential dangers.
L didn't like to admit it, not even to himself, but he was scared to lose what he already had.
"Besides, I always thought blue suited you," Light was saying, and L realised he hadn't been listening. He nodded vaguely, and meekly accepted the baby blue shirt that the young man handed him; L held it up by the collar, between thumb and finger, and studied it doubtfully.
"Really," he began, "I'm not sur--"
Light scowled. "Oh, for God's sake, Lawliet, we're going to be late!" He stormed across the space between them, and yanked L's white t-shirt upwards and over his head, getting it frustratingly tangled upon elbows and shoulders, until L raised his arms with a look of surprise on his face, and helped.
Light snatched the now-slightly-crumpled blue shirt out of L's hand (seeing as the detective had held onto it amidst the entire process of being de-t-shirted, if one could use the word like that), shook it out with a smart snap of cotton, and started to pull it onto L's bare arms. L was still looking bemused but, again, he helped with the process, mainly because the shirt was the least of his problems, and he was much more interested in plotting a way to get himself into his sneakers rather than whatever shiny abomination Light had chosen. Light seemed to suspect that L's docility wasn't entirely innocent, because he paused for a moment to glare a the detective warningly...
...and his hand brushed against L's collarbone; L shivered.
Light paused a moment, glare vanishing and his pretty eyes darting towards the spot where their skin had met, then back up at the way L's face had gone carefully neutral For a second there was honey-heavy silence and then Light repeated the movement, his thumb hooking over the edge of blue material to stroke deliberately at pale skin.
Again, L shivered, but this time he moved to take the shirt out from Light's hands and into his own control. Light shifted with swift deftness, his hand skipping completely away from cotton, sliding sideways, dragging across and then down, down, unforgivably down in a smooth line through the open halves of the blue shirt and coming to rest, flat-handed and too-warm, over L's bellybutton.
L stared at the hand, then back up at Light.
And found Light staring right back at him.
"What... are you doing?" asked the world's greatest detective, with eyes a little wider than usual, and the slightest, most tentative hint of an accent creeping forth in his uncertain voice.
Light bit his lip, as though he weren't entirely sure how to best answer that question. Then he shook his head slightly, to himself, seemingly, more than to his companion, and moved his hand back up along bare skin, trailing slower now, and watching intently as L trembled beneath his touch.
"I thought..." Light mused, "I thought, you weren't... weren't interested... in that... kind of thing."
"That.. kind of thing?" repeated L, and caught his thumb securely to his own mouth, desperately trying to ground himself, as Light reached out a second hand against L's stomach, and took a step closer, forcing L to step backwards and finding himself caught between the bed and the Japanese detective.
"I thought..." continued Light, as if L had never spoken. "All this time we've been together... back then, with the chain, and now, now still sharing hotel rooms and you never so much as... I thought... I thought you were... I don't know, maybe asexual or something?"
L's eyes narrowed again. "You mean because I don't have fifteen girls, like you did at To-Oh, and I never flirted with Matsuda?"
"I never flirted with Matsuda!" spluttered Light. "I only ever flirted with y--"
He clamped his mouth shut and removed his hands abruptly from L's body, looking sulky.
L could actually feel his own mind processing his thoughts, and it was an unusual sensation. Then he looked at Light and asked, "And would it matter, does it change things, if you know that I'm not?" He took his thumb from his mouth and reached out with it, touched one button on Light's carefully smoothed shirt. Light made a strange noise deep in the back of his throat, and L stared at him, and pressed harder, until the corner of the button started to dig into both his thumb and Light, beneath the heavy silk. L could feel Light's heart beat through the solid surface of the button. When he looked up, Light was gazing at him flushed with disbelief, but, no matter how he stared, L couldn't find that trace of disgust or discomfort he'd been so sure would be...
"Light-kun," he whispered, unsure of what to say, but knowing that something was needed, and that it had to be him who said it, because the air had grown warm and weighted around them, and his were fingers clammy at the front of Light's shirt, and Light's hands were stuck in mid-motion inches from his own body and all L knew was that he wanted them, wanted them, wanted to feel them back upon him, upon him now that he knew, now that he suspected, now that he thought...
"Light-kun," he said softly, "I am not ace. I am... I have... you are..."
Coherency, it seemed, dropped in direct correlation with the speed of one's heartbeat, and the proximity of one's body to a specific other body; he stored the observation away for future consideration, and then, still picking at the Light's shirt button, he waited with a kind of unsteady disbelief to see what Light would say.
Light had to say something, didn't he?
The younger man tilted his head a little to one side, and breathed, and finally finished his hands' movements back towards the detective before him, though they didn't come to rest against L's body like he had hoped but, instead, touched down at his face which, he realised after a second or two, was just as pleasant in its own way. Light's slender fingers stroked their way across L's cheeks and turned L's face up towards his own. For a moment Light just stood there, an eternal, excruciating, agonising moment; a moment that stretched longer than the clock on the wall would allow, and all the rules of time were laid to waste, and L realised just how infinitely inexplicable the universe could really be.
He wondered what Light was looking for, what Light was trying to see in his eyes, wished somehow that, whatever it was, he could express it or show it so that...
Light's fingers tightened, and he leant his head in and down, and touched his mouth to L's. L breathed, gasped, mouth opening, and Light seemed to take that as some kind of message all unto itself because a second later his tongue darted through L's lips, and L's eyes widened, and then stared, and then closed, because oh god this was Light-kun, in his mouth, Light-kun in his mouth, and the taste of him...
"Why didn't you say something?" asked Light some time later, fingers nesting in L's hair where they'd come to rest, on the bed, L's blue shirt still open at his chest, Light's buttons half undone and the silk crushed, and L, L, L beneath the secure weight of that body above his, and flushed, and kissed, and rethinking his views on life itself.
And, right now, rather wishing that Light would forget his questions and just get back to kissing him.
"L?" prompted Light again, clearly unwilling to give in to L's mental prompting, though his right hand began to play tantalising downwards from L's hair, and onto his lips.
L licked at Light's fingers in the hope that that would distract him, and get him back where L wanted him, but Light just grinned knowingly, and pulled his hand back, with an expression in his eyes that clearly said: you speak or we stop.
L sighed, and turned his face away, hiding it in the shadows of the pillows. "I was..." he began, and then glared angrily at the wall beyond.
"Mmmm?" prompted Light, hand returning to its newfound home at L's shoulder, and his face leaning in, lips brushing at L's bare neck. "You were...?" he breathed against L's skin.
"Iwasafraid," admitted the detective, and then turned and glared at Light properly, as though just daring him to request it be said a second time.
But Light didn't dare anything of the sort. Instead he just continued to kiss along L's white neck, asking casually, as he did so, as though the entire affair were more of interest to L's skin than to L himself, "Do you want to know why I thought you were asexual?"
L smiled wryly at the young man resting against his chest, hair faintly red in the light spilling through the bathroom doorway. "Because I've never indulged in a relationship in all the time you've known me?"
Light smiled with his lips around one of L's nipples, making the older man wriggle slightly. "That, yes. But mostly because I couldn't... I couldn't believe you simply weren't attracted to me."
"Light-kun's ego is impressive," suggested L, even as he stroked his hands through that brown hair with its red gleam, mussing it up, removing its perfection, and making it all the more beautiful for that.
Light was silent for a moment. Then, "No," he whispered. "Just.. my heart is fragile. I couldn't cope with the idea. And... I was afraid too, L Lawliet, of what would happen if you just didn't care."
"We're going to miss your sister's Christmas party," managed L after a second, because that was the first thing he could latch onto that didn't involve the words of course I care; I love you, Light-kun.
Still, L had the distinct impression that Light had somehow heard the unspoken words anyway, because the young man just looked up at him, and smiled slowly, a smile that began in his eyes and worked its way slowly across the rest of his face and -- you're being whimsical, L -- into his very hands as they caressed L's skin. "I think she'll survive," Light said. "It's Christmas. Christmas is for giving and taking; it's for indulgence, and wishes coming true..."
And then, before L could even begin to think up a response to something as marvellously insane as hearing those words from Light' Yagami's mouth, and directed at him, the younger man took away his speaking ability all together.
Outside, it began to snow and, when they woke, the word gleamed in at them through glass spun with silver, and L had his arms around Light, and nothing was ever going to be the same again, and nothing had ever sounded better.