Past in Present

Chapter four~ In which Light isn’t the only one to fuck around.

Thank you to everyone who’s read and double thanks to those of you who’ve reviewed! I’m writing this mostly for me… but it’s really really nice to hear you all are enjoying it too!

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L had slipped out of the hotel room while Kira was there – albeit in his room, showering. He left a note, of course. He doubted that Kira would understand, but a note came the closest he could to actual permission.

It wasn’t as if Light couldn’t follow him if he wanted. He could bring all of the bloody country’s police down on L’s head if he wanted. He could also just kill him.

Each thought lent its own special thrill to his leaving. When did he begin to find death preferable to boredom?

Johan had been rumored to be sighted. L had a closer watch on him than Kira realized – he was better at stalking his prey through multiple means. All he needed was a computer and he could patch into security feeds, chatter from all over. He also knew how to recognize recruitment patterns, which was ultimately what lead him here.

This bar was likely. Johan had been meeting a serial rapist here, one who had posted several messages on a particularly unsavory mailing list about his new friend.

L wasn’t disappointed. Perhaps an hour after he arrived and ensconced himself in a quiet, defensible corner, someone unmistakable walked in.

Although he clearly matched the description that Dr. Tenma had given them, it was Johan’s mere presence that clued L in. Almost like the grime of the bar, of the world could never stick to him. He was incandescent, light.

L swallowed, sipping his club soda before taking a breath and approaching him. “Johan.”

Ice blue eyes turned to him, smiling softly as they took him in. L slouched against the bar, thumbs tucked into his pockets.

“Do I know you?” The boy (for he was a boy, for all his cool-edged danger) asked smoothly.

L chose to speak in French, a last-minute decision, but he figured it would be one of the languages they had in common that was less likely to be understood here.

“Perhaps. I’m known as L.”

There was a fractional widening of eyes, a small curve to girlish lips. “The detective?” He answered back in perfectly smooth Parisian French that made L want to close his eyes in appreciation. He did love language.

Instead, he kept his eyes and his tone perfectly flat. “Yes.”

“The papers said you were incarcerated for crimes against Kira.”

“I haven’t been in jail.” The answer was as much a half-hearted test as anything else, and he wasn’t disappointed when Johan’s lips quirked, seeming to get the dodge.

“Are you here to solve a case, L?”

“I’m here to meet you.”

Johan’s expression didn’t change. He exhibited frightening control that rivaled L and Kira’s control – or perhaps he just didn’t care. Maybe his control was born from a deep apathy. L and Kira cared.

Johan nodded once, slowly and caught the bartender’s eyes, ordering two drinks and paying for them. L accepted his, though it felt awkward in his hand. He didn’t drink often and he got the feeling that Johan did not either, that the other was simply going through the motions.

“Tell me about yourself.” Johan’s voice was soft but somehow clear against the murmur of the bar and L caught his breath, feeling something dangerous. It wasn’t the words or even how the other said them. It was his presence. Johan was compelling in a way that L had never really experienced before and suddenly so much made sense.

It would be easy to sink all his secrets into Johan, like throwing them into a dark well. The other man seemed not to crave or dread them – in fact he seemed to understand them instinctively. L wondered if that was just his research talking… the similarities he had noted before twisting his own perceptions.

Johan gave neither too much nor too little, hypnotically listening in a way that made you want to tell him everything, everything. And L trembled with that need, letting himself feel it for a long moment. Sipped the drink deeply, realizing that it was strong alcohol.

“What do you want to know?” He managed to ask after he realized he had been silent far too long.

“Whatever you would like to tell me.”

“And if I don’t wish to tell you anything?” He realized that he countered that question almost too quickly.

“Then you won’t get what you came here for, will you, detective?”

“What did I come here for?” L tapped his fingers on the bar, slowly, looking up at Johan. “Or perhaps more accurately – what do you believe I came here for?”

Johan just smiled in his enigmatic way. L didn’t know how to read it. It was… intriguing. He raised the glass to his lips, tilting it back again. The burn was more familiar, more comforting this time through.

“I could be here to arrest you. After all, I am L.” He shrugged a little, swirling the drink in his hand, concentrating on the clinking of the ice.

“Ah… but are you L the person, or L the detective?”

The question startled him and he could see his own knuckles turning white as he gripped the glass a shade too hard. Perceptive. Oh-so perceptive. “The detective.”

“Wasn’t there a time before that?” Johan asked softly.

“Not really.” L allowed the silence between them to grow pregnant with thought… with both of their respective inner dialogues. Or perhaps only his. Perhaps the other was waiting for him to continue.

Finally Johan spoke. “And who are you now, in Kira’s world?”

L paused in the middle of taking another, much smaller sip of the drink, looking over at Johan thoughtfully.

“I am L.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Johan pointed out with a kind of calm, comforting logic that simultaneously calmed and raised L’s defenses.

“Does it matter?”

“Perhaps I should ask instead… what gives your life meaning now, L?”

Suddenly it struck L that it was bloody ironic that he had chosen French for this conversation, he realized. Irritating in fact. L half-wanted to switch to Czech or German or bloody Japanese. Anything but discuss what was gearing up to be philosophy with a psychopath in French.

“I am still a detective.” He couldn’t keep the tight defensiveness out of his voice.

“But it seems you only are when Kira allows you to be… or have I missed some of your cases in the last few years?”

L stayed silent. Suddenly he realized Johan had taken the (somehow empty) drink from his fingers and gently started guiding him out of the door. He caught his breath. It occurred to him to fight. He doubted Johan could take him by force, L was still quite confident in his own abilities.

Still he didn’t fight, even though some part of him expected to die. Perhaps Johan just wanted to continue the conversation where he wouldn’t get company in the form of a rapist. He ignored the part of him that thrummed in anxious anticipation.

They walked for some time, between buildings and down alleys. L was relieved for the silence, even as they ascended stairs. He wondered if this was what happened with Detective Braun. Was he walking towards his own murder?

The scene was similar. A rooftop with an unparalleled view of the city. Johan left him almost in the middle of it, and seemed to have no problem with climbing up onto the shallow retaining wall. He walked along the edge as if it was nothing more than a streetcurb. It had the feeling of something the other did regularly, to impress. It was less impressive to L.

Johan’s pale eyes were on him in the dark. He could feel the gaze – somehow both impassive and intent. “Come up here. You can see better.”

L scrambled up to join him against the better judgment of the sane half of his brain, taking a deep breath of the cold night air. He stood next to Johan whose hand slid up to his shoulder as they looked down at the glimmer of the city in the night.

“Aren’t you scared?” Johan asked, conversationally.

L shook his head slowly. “Should I be?”

“I could easily push you right now.”

“Kira could easily have killed me any time in the last five years.”

Johan laughed, an almost soundless breath. He stepped down and around, sliding his arms around L’s waist. The wall was only a few inches up, so Johan’s chin nestled well onto his shoulder. It gave both the illusion of safety and the reality of more control in Johan’s hands, but L made no move to avoid it. “You hate that, don’t you?”

L closed his eyes, letting himself relax as much as he ever would. After all, if Johan wanted him dead, he would talk him into it, talk him into losing hope. He would have him jump, himself. Quite sure suddenly that that was what happened with Braun.

“Tell me about it.” Johan’s voice was, as always, damnably persuasive and L found himself letting out a breath.

This was his tactic. L felt certain that this was how he controlled people, situations. But all the same, he wanted to understand Johan. Perhaps that meant letting himself go, just a little. “I sometimes wonder what the point of it is.”

“The point of what?”

“The games Kira and I play.” He leaned back into Johan, who was a solid, reassuring anchor despite it all.

“What games do you play?”

L turned his head, looking into what he could see of Johan’s eyes in the moonlight. He knew that they were blue and cold, but he couldn’t help but feel that illusion of warmth. That was enough to make L lean forward and kiss him – Johan enough like Kira, like Light.

It seemed that Johan was startled by that kiss, because he froze before returning it slowly. He was also awkward, like L imagined Light must have been the first few times he kissed someone. It occurred to L that Johan probably hadn’t done this often.

It didn’t matter. It was what he needed, what he wanted. This was his secret, even if Johan didn’t understand it.

Eventually he drew away from it, opened his eyes to look into Johan’s. Even in the darkness, L could see they were guarded, even more wary than they had been before. Perhaps L had pushed him off guard. It would be a nice side-effect.

Johan’s next words made him shiver though. “Are you in love with him?”

“I do not love Kira.” L’s voice was ice-cold even to himself. Too cold to be believable.

“Ah.. but Kira, like L, is a title. Do you love the man?”

It was infuriating the way that Johan seemed to be able to cut to the heart of the matter with so little to guide him. L fixed his eyes on a point far in the distance and didn’t answer. He didn’t know if he could.

“Then why not join him?”

“What he’s doing is wrong.”

“Wrong?” Johan’s voice sounded amused. “The whole world believes he’s right, now.”

“I don’t.”

“So are you going to sit in moral judgment for the world?” Something about Johan’s phrasing made L catch his breath, made his chest tighten uncomfortably.

“What is right and wrong, anyway?” The smooth, childlike voice continued on, unheeding of L’s clenching heart. “Isn’t it simply decided by the people as a whole?”

L shook his head sharply.

“Does right and wrong exist beyond humans?” Johan’s lips were suddenly on the back of his neck, his teeth just lightly scraping his skin. “Are they inherent in dust?”

“No.” L closed his eyes. He knew where the line of reasoning was going.

“If they have no inherent meaning, then what is the meaning if you were to fall? Is it right? Wrong?” Johan’s voice was smooth in his ear and his arms warm around L’s stomach and he took a breath, looking down at the world.

Literal falling. Symbolic falling. It didn’t matter what Johan meant. “Who says I haven’t?” He turned in Johan’s arms, trusting his balance and the fact that the other’s game wasn’t over yet, wrapping arms around his shoulders.