Girl on Film

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/67894266.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Relationships: L/Yagami Light, Amane Misa/Yagami Light, L & Yagami Light
Characters: L (Death Note), Yagami Light, Amane Misa, Watari | Quillsh Wammy,
Ryuk (Death Note), Rem (Death Note), Misora Naomi, Takada Kiyomi,
Mikami Teru, Aizawa Shuuichi, Matsuda Touta, Ukita Hirokazu
Additional Tags: Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Psychological Warfare, Obsession,
Power Dynamics, Sexual Tension, Alternate Universe - Fashion &
Models, Modeling, Secret Identity, Surveillance, Voyeurism, Erotic
Power Play, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Manipulation, Yagami
Light is Kira, Morally Ambiguous Character, Reimagining Canon
Events, emotional suppression, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, he
wants that cookie so bad, Fighting As Foreplay, Yagami Light is a Little
Shit, Yagami Light is a Model, Switch L (Death Note), Bottom Yagami
Light, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2025-07-21 Words: 19,061 Chapters: 7/?
 Girl on Film
by ParasiteLover

Summary

"He had seen the face of God.

And he was wearing silk."

Light Yagami is untouchable. Flawless, ethereal, and ascending faster than anyone can
follow. Japan’s brightest rising model and its most elusive threat. The god of the new world,
hiding behind lenses and flashbulbs.

L is his most powerful investor and his most dangerous enemy. Under the alias Lucien Vale,
the world’s greatest detective steps into Tokyo’s fashion underworld not just to catch Kira,
but to unmask the boy behind the cameras. To see what might be lurking beneath the mask.

The chase unfolds: voyeurism becomes obsession, obsession becomes need. One seeks
justice. The other hungers for control.

But when the chase becomes intimate-when masks slip and hands tremble-what unravels
first: the case, or the men entangled in it?

Notes
See the end of the work for notes
 The Face of God.

The flashbulb cracked like a gunshot without a sound, tearing the air open in a violent breath.
A white wall. A glossy floor. Light Yagami stood at the center of it all, draped in a pale silk,
skin catching like soft porcelain.

He didn’t blink.

The set was minimalistic, set to mimic the precision and purity of an art gallery. He was the
main exhibit. A god carved in real time.

The photographer circled him like a devout priest before an altar. The lens circled him slowly.
Every angle was a kind of worship, the click of the shutter almost like a whispered prayer.
Assistants moved around him quietly, mummering instructions, never directly at him. No one
told Light what to do—they suggested, adjusted lights, and held their breath as a collective.
He moved when it pleased him to, when he desired to. He shifted the angle of his face,
extended his hand, and let his sleeve fall enough to expose more of his pale flesh.

Another flash. Another kiss in devotion. Another immortal image.

He knew what they saw. They saw perfection, of course, but there was something more than
that. Even if they didn’t know how to place it or describe it, it throbbed beneath their
adoration. Light wasn’t merely handsome. He was transcendent. Untouchable. A creator
tugged by rules that they would never be able to comprehend.

Behind his eyes, no emotion stirred. A face without windows. Eyes focused, yet vacant. Like
a theater curtain pulled closed, hiding something still moving behind it. His thoughts washed
through his mind smoothly, his expression never tugged by them.

I’ve already killed three people this morning.

A routine purge. A minor politician accused of decades worth of abuse who thought to smirk
at a press conference. A child trafficker bailed out because of a lame excuse and a generous
payout. A journalist who mocked victims online, dismissing their cruelty under the guise of a
“debate”.
All of them had been held for trial and found guilty. No audience. No testimony. Just ink. Pen
on paper, the written syllables of their names becoming silent graves.

They all died in the appropriate, symbolic way their crimes called for, a heart attack. A staple
for Kira. A rupture in the rhythm of life, collapsing the old order one less beat at a time. Just
as many creations had begun with the void, a storm, a violent beginning, he would do the
same. A divine intervention. There is a sacred moment of decision in the silence where the
heart stills and struggles. The moment he decided. Reshaping the world with more intention,
intensity, and humility than this filth could manage.

A failure of their own hearts. As if their souls are revolting against the weight of their sins.
A quiet and absolute end. In a world so saturated with noise and corruption, I give them
silence. Finality.

“Light,” the director called out to him, breaking his musing. “Chin a little higher. Yes.
Perfect. Hold that.”

He did so, eyelids lowering just slightly. Light’s face held something just short of divine
arrogance. The outfit he wore was draped over him in creamy flowing layers like he was a
Greek statue. Draping off his back and exposing his shoulder blades just slightly. The cream
fabric was cinched at the waist with a band of matte gold fabric, making it cling to his hips as
the rest cascaded down in folds. Every fold was a soft ripple of motion, a contrast to the
intensity of Light’s gaze.

The camera snapped.

He thought about the forums and threads online. The message boards. The live feeds dissect
his every appearance. Some loved him while others loathed him. Some worshipped him.
None of it mattered to him. Their attention was only useful, not essential.

But Kira, that was completely different.

Kira was a myth made flesh; the echo of his legend grew louder every week. Became a
roaring sound to his ears. People lit candles in his name. Protesters waved signs in support of
his “judgment.” People in crowds cheered his name when another criminal was laid to rest by
his pen. Anonymous accounts praised him as a necessary evil. A divine justice sent from
above to cleanse the world of evil and punish those who commit injustice. Some had even
begun to call him God.

He didn’t correct them.

Not because he believed their words were true, not entirely, but because they weren’t quite
enough.

I am not your god, he thought as he shifted poses, letting his shoulder slip down and his
waist twist to reveal the curve of his back. I am your reckoning.

He held the pose, eyes narrowed. Just enough softness in his mouth to keep the allure and
mystery of Light alive. The stylist adjusted the ring on his finger and brushed a stray strand
of hair from his eye.

Across the studio, two assistants were whispering to each other.

“-And did you see the footage from this morning? That criminal died during a live stream-”

“People are saying it’s Kira again.”

“Of course it is, Kira, who else could it be? With that guy clutching his chest like that? They
haven’t announced what killed him yet, but it's undeniable.”

“It’s creepy, though, isn’t it? Like…whoever it is, they know us. It’s like they’re
everywhere.”
Light exhaled slowly through his nose, allowing the next shot to catch him mid-breath.
Angelic. Thoughtful.

They feared him without knowing they were in the presence of their executioner.

The shoot continued for another hour. A few different looks. A sharp black ensemble with a
high collar and gloves that creaked and gleamed as he moved. A light blue vest with pearls
dangling from him like he had drowned in the sea’s treasure. Hard, angular poses. Lights
shifted. Eyeliner painting his waterline. Light became shadow. He became myth.

By the end of the day, his bones ached in an invisible way the camera demanded from every
model in the industry. Light lingered an extra ten minutes for beauty shots. Posed with his
face lifted to the ceiling, lips parted slightly.

“Perfect,” the photographer said through a sigh.”You’re unreal, light.”

You have no idea.

He walked off set like leaving the fuzziness of a dream, designer jacket slung over his
shoulder, boots striking the floor with a satisfying click. No one dared ask for retakes.

He left behind the flashes and starving stylists and lingering perfume, stepping into a dark
SUV. Sinking back into the leather with a long exhale and a slight limpness. His leg crossed
over the other as he lifted a hand to his throat. Wiping some power that still hung to the line
of his jaw.

His eyes flicked out to the city as the vehicle started forward. Water droplets started to
sprinkle down from the gray evening sky. He looked over the skyline of the city. Half-
shadowed in storm clouds, half-lit from the glow of billboards and neon signs. He had work
to do. More names to write, history to reshape, a god to create.

Gods don’t sleep. They pose.

_____________________________

The rain hadn’t stopped since the sun had set. It murmured at the windows of L’s penthouse,
soft and constant, like a lullaby for the damned.

L sat like a gargoyle on the edge of his armchair, hunched over a teacup filled with sugary
tea, knees folded up to his chest. Sugar cubes sat on the arm of his chair, stacked perfectly,
one on top of the other. He pressed his face against his knees in thought. His desk behind him
was a chaos of screens, open case files, and crumbs from sweets long since devoured. The
TV, mostly background noise, rolled through late-night news and celebrity filler. Economic
downfalls, another protest, and memorial services for the Kira victims. The world muttered
and mourned equally. Always gloomy.

He wasn’t really watching. Not fully. Just letting the drama crawl and scratch his periphery.
Allowing the noise to be the background track to the gears in his mind. Allowing himself to
be distantly away from himself for the moment—that is, until he heard the name.

“Tonight we’re joined by Light Yagami, Tokyo’s golden boy and the face of Lysander’s new
campaign—’Heaven Sent’”

L didn’t look up immediately. Just listened.

The host was laughing. “I swear, Light, you don’t age. What’s your skincare routine? Or have
you just found the secret to eternal life?”

A soft smile. “Unfortunately, I can’t give away any divine secrets. But rest, hydration, and a
strict schedule helps.”

The audience, charmed, giggled and laughed.

L didn’t laugh. He slowly turned towards the screen. The bluish white light caught the edge
of his cheek as he narrowed his dark eyes.

Light Yagami sat in the studio’s sleek white set with crossed legs and an unbothered posture,
dressed in tailored muted colors. He looked flawless.

L leaned forward, squinting. Like looking through a mirror and seeing through. The way
Light’s eyes remained perfectly still while the corners of his mouth moved. The way he
adjusted his sleeves wasn’t for comfort, but a visual touch for the audience. A performer who
rehearsed every breath.

“Do you ever worry about being too famous? The host asked lightly. “Seriously. Do you ever
get creeped out? I mean, you’ve got this…” The host struggled for words, flicking his hand in
the air as he seemingly tried to catch them. “Untouchable aura that many of your fans find
ethereal. There’s this whole conspiracy theory that suspects you’re Kira.”

Light smiled slowly. Not startled or amused, but composed. He tilted his head, inhaling.

Something flickered in his eyes. Calculation?

“I think it says more about the state of justice than it does about me,” he said. “When systems
fail, people look for something divine to save them. People are frightened. Fear makes us
desperate for control. Kira represents a sort of fantasy— absolute safety that doesn’t really
exist. Not law or democracy. Judgment. It’s seductive. People want someone to draw the line.
Of course, people will project that fantasy onto any face. Even mine.”

The host nodded along, oblivious.

L wasn’t.

People will project that fantasy onto any face. Even mine.
The phrasing was perfect. The rhythm was precise. There wasn’t a single flicker of doubt, not
a shake in his voice.

But L saw something.

Not in the words, but the space between them.

A perfect stillness that didn’t belong to someone his age. A sense of tranquility that isn’t
learned but cultivated. Performed. Practiced.

The precision of his speech caught him. Made him pause. He couldn’t place it. Maybe it was
the way Light’s eyes scanned the interviewer before answering, not for a connection, but for
weakness. Maybe it was the way his smile lingered not a fraction longer than needed. Maybe
it was the way he shifted in his chair, just so the audience felt like he was just human enough.
Just like them.

L leaned forwards, his neck poking out as he put the weight of his elbows on his knees,
letting his overly sweetened tea go cold.

There was something about Light that L latched onto. Something about how Light curated
himself, as if watching from outside himself. Making adjustments. Taking mental notes.
Adapting. That wasn’t stage presence. It was distance. A space wedged between Light and
everyone around him.

And it felt– familiar.

Onscreen, the interviewer continued. Questions about upcoming shoots, a brief comment on
Light's favorite designers, a closing thanks, and a wave goodbye to the audience. Light never
once faltered.
When it ended and the commercials started to roll, L was still staring at the screen for a long
time afterwards. He had seen countless killers, psychopaths, and sociopaths. He knew what
he was looking for: fear, rage, trauma, inconsistencies.

But this?

This wasn’t the energy of someone who was unraveling at the seams. There was no whirling
pool, no spiral, no end. This was containment. Poise sharpened into armor that could cut with
a single look. The kind of control that could be executed with surgical calmness and
awareness.

Light Yagami was lying.

L was sure of it. Not in what he said, but in the very fact of him. His existence.

He was the kind of lie you couldn’t measure. Too perfectly blended to see where it first
began. You had to recognize it for what it was. You had to see yourself in it. L had spent
years building walls inside his mind, polishing his intellect into crystal clear ice. Detachment,
focus, control.

He knew what it looked like when a person shed humanity like a winter coat. He knew what
it looked like to sculpt yourself into something palatable. Something easily digestible, easy to
swallow, to fit beside the other garnished identities humanity set out to taste.

So did Light.

So did Kira.

The TV faded to the background once more. He finally stood, slowly and barefoot, and
walked to the window. Rain smeared the skyline into wet streaks of neon and shadows.
Somewhere out there, people were dying by an invisible hand. Somewhere out there, Kira
was still killing, and he still didn't have any clues as to how.
L pressed a palm against the cold glass.

Light is Kira.

There was no longer any doubt in his mind, only a sense of gravity.

And if he wasn’t, L would find out either way. No matter what he had to do.

He exhaled.

He didn't have any other leads. The only thing he had was a hunch.

He had seen the face of God.

And he was wearing silk.

 A Shadow Behind the Curtain
Chapter Summary

L steps into Light’s world as his biggest investor- all for the investigation, of course. Or
so he says. Meanwhile, Light doesn’t mind the attention; a mysterious admirer is just
another trophy, not a threat... definitely not.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

L had come up with the idea sometime after midnight.

Sat in his chair with a chocolate parfait in his hands. A smudge of chocolate on the corner of
his lips that he hadn’t licked away yet. The idea hadn’t arrived as a revelation. More like the
last click of a safe as it unlocked. A soft and inevitable sound.

Lucien Vale. Operates through encrypted channels, shell corporations, and high-powered
assistants who handle all communications. A quiet spender. Someone willing to buy with
little in return.

Becoming Light Yagami’s largest investor would put him exactly where he needed to be. Not
in the spotlight, not beside him, but behind the curtain. Among the dust, strings, and
shadows. A perfect place to watch someone like Light.

Someone who didn’t flinch when a spotlight was cast down on him.

The most effective disguise is one that no one questions. L looked all over the internet. He
watched the public fall at Light’s feet for the entirety of his career. In less than a few years,
the world adored him. Not because he was beautiful, even though he was. Not because he
was intelligent or brilliant, even though the industry couldn’t help but gush over it constantly.
It was because no one could ever agree on what exactly Light was.
He said all the right things and revealed nothing of himself. Every moment, every sound,
every photo was controlled. It wasn’t protective, L could tell that much. It was clear that
Light wasn’t afraid of being seen.

He was afraid of being known.

L had spent dozens of hours cataloging him since his realization. Every interview and
photoshoot. The way Light made eye contact with the camera, but never with the person
behind the lens. He spoke with certainty and conviction but never any passion. He was
dazzling on stage but ever absent in private. An actor stuck in their part long after the curtain
had fallen and the auditorium had emptied.

But it was possible that Light was merely the product of a lavish and polished upbringing.
Full of expectation and pressure to succeed. A boy trained so ruthlessly for perfection that he
no longer recognized sincerity.

Though it was also possible that he was hiding something.

L was never one in believing coincidences.

He would ask for access. Not to Light’s creative work or his finances. Not even to his public
appearances. He didn’t want credit. He didn’t need recognition. He wanted to be near the
edges. Next to the raw footage. The dressing rooms, the rides between shows, meetings, and
negotiations. He wanted eyes in the parts of Light’s world where people dropped the act.

He wanted to see if there was ever a point where Light broke character. Where the costume
slipped off, and the actor came into view. No more script. No more acts. One audience
member to bear witness.

L dialed the number directly.

Katura Shion. Creative Director and Image Strategist for Lysander.

_____________________________

“I don’t think that it’s a good idea,” Shion said. His voice wavered with a type of laconic
professionalism that only came into existence when someone knew they couldn’t say no, but
still wanted credit for trying.

“I’m not saying we’re not open to serious proposals,” the man on the screen added after a
second, swallowing hard as he folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “But we don’t
typically accept anonymous buy-ins from shell companies that don’t have a visible board or
any associates.”

Shion’s eyes glanced around his screen, having no face to stare back at. At L’s request, not to
show himself on camera. The silence that met him made him uneasy, L could tell.

L didn’t answer at first as he took a long sip of a strawberry milkshake that sat on his desk.
His neck stuck out past his knees to reach it, cheeks hollowing slightly with effort. He sat
back with a sigh, swirling the straw in lazy circles to soften the shake. He licked a bit of
whipped cream that clung to his thumb.

He looked at the computer screen in front of him. Leaning back further into his desk chair,
the leather creaking beneath his limbs. He regarded the older man on the screen with the
same scrutiny he would to crime scene photos and decaying flowers.

The man was handsome in the way that successful people often are. Well-fitted jacket,
polished voice, hair that most likely cost more than some people’s rent. There was a museum-
sized, limited edition, black and white portrait of Light Yagami mounted on the wall behind
him. The subject of their discussion, hovering over them like a wraith, was internally
tranquil. The man whom L was speaking to worked for Light’s management group; his
official title fluctuated depending on the context. Director, executive handler, branding
architect.

Gatekeeper.
“Why not?” L asked softly, finally giving the other a response. Tapping his straw against the
bottom of his glass, trying to shake a chunk of strawberry off his straw.

The Director hesitated. “It’s just– Light is… particular about his partnerships. He’s very
selective. We’ve already declined quite a few offers this season, and we’re currently
navigating a certain brand arc right now. If this becomes public–”

“I don’t want it to become public,” L replied shortly.

Shion froze, his face polite, but betraying his shock. He blinked.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

The silence between them stretched. L smiled faintly to himself. He didn’t want to be unkind
to Katsura Shion. The man had taste. Taste enough to find Light Yagami when he was a
gleaming blade in an expensive school uniform. Barely seventeen and already sharper than
most men twice his age. He had taken that blade and polished it until it cut with just a look.
Now, Light was the face of three major luxury companies and the body of desire for half of
the world. But even more than that, he was untouched.

Too composed. Too elegant. His success had polished him into something alright. Something
that no longer needed to breathe.

L slurped his shake.

Shion shifted in his seat. “Then why him? Why this? You’d get more publicity backing a
fragrance campaign.” The man readjusted his suit.
“I’m not interested in fragrance, and again I am not interested in publicity,” L replied. “I am
interested in potential. And Mr. Yagami has quite a lot of it.”

“You understand how- why this is…odd?”

“I do.”

“And you still want access?”

“I wouldn’t have come if not.”

The director laughed, paper thin with a touch of nervousness. “Are you buying him then?”

L tilted his head. “You can’t buy a god. No one can. But you can sponsor his temple.”

The older man stiffened, a tight smile on his face. Obviously, he didn’t like the implication. It
didn’t matter. He would accept the money. It wasn’t out of greed, but out of instinct. Even a
man like Shion knew better than to say no to something he didn’t understand.

“I see.” He said finally. “I’ll send the terms. If your team accepts them, we’ll move forward.”

The screen went dark, and L didn’t move right away.

He sat still for a long moment, taking a final sip of his sweet strawberry froth. Then he slowly
returned to the case files spread across his monitors. Every known Kira victim. Every
recorded anomaly in the justice system. Every flight record, public appearance, press quote,
tax return, and timestamp ever attached to the name ‘Light Yagami’.
L had spent months combing through them. No contradictions. No slips. No inconsistencies
that weren’t already accounted for. Light was clean. Too clean.

L’s fingers glided across the keyboard, cycling through different databases at an unusually
fast pace. Surveillance archives from hotels and studios, and overseas fashion events, social
media metabases, FashionUnited.

Nothing.

There were no recorded vulnerabilities. No ex-lovers. No leaked breakdowns. No lawsuits.

Not even a photo of him blinking with both eyes closed.

Real people fractured. Somewhere. Somehow. Even if they didn’t fall apart in public, they
buckled in private. They made mistakes. They reached out. Leaving fingerprints of their
humanity. With Light…There were no fingerprints. No DNA left on the glass. Light had
friends. Colleagues. Admiration. But not a single person has ever spoken about him in a way
that felt close or personal.

L leaned back in his chair. Staring at Light’s most recent editorial shoot. Bare shoulders, high
contrast, that mouth not quite smiling. A halo of light caught on the edge of one of his
cheekbones, like the curve of a blade.

He narrowed his eyes.

This is Kira?

Kira was a type after all: Narcissistic, authoritarian, omnipotent, untouchable. Light was all
of these things.

But…What if he wasn’t?
Maybe he was just a boy polished into something inhuman. Raised to succeed and trained for
admiration. What if Light Yagami was just a man carved into a statue? Sculpted so cleanly
for the pedestal that he’d forgotten how to sit among others.

What if he wasn’t hiding? What if there was nothing left to hide? What if he was just…
Empty?

That thought disturbed L more than Light's guilt ever would have.

If Light wasn’t Kira, then he was something worse. A human so adapted to survival in the
spotlight that he no longer registered as a human at all. L didn’t know what to do with that.
But he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. He’d invest anyway. Gain access. Quietly. No
headlines. Just permission, behind-the-scenes cuts, direct interactions, and footage most
investors never cared to see.

He opened a window on his desktop. The terms from Shion came through. He barely glanced
through them before he reached the end. He typed a short message into the private note field
attached to the transaction. Then sent in the full amount and some.

No other aliases, no spectacle. Just a digital trail that led straight back to Lucien Vale.

Next to him, a soft ring announced an incoming call on his discarded headset. He reached for
it blindly. His fingers brushed against the headset before he grabbed it fully, placing it in his
ear. “Watari.”

“I see the transaction went through.”

L tilted his head slightly, eye drifting to the edge of one monitor where Light’s eyes stared
back from the screen. Framed in black, caught in a mid-turn, unreadable.

“Yes.”
There was a pause.

Then Watari, in a careful tone he reserved for moments just a bit short of concern. “So…it’s
no longer a theory.”

L’s fingers brushed the keyboard, thinking. “No. It’s still just a theory. But now it’s a theory
with access.”

‘You’ve never gone this far on a maybe. Or should I say…spent this much on a maybe.”

“I’ve never had a maybe like this.”

Another pause. “And if you are wrong?”

L’s gaze didn’t shift from the screen. “Then I am investigating a narcissist with an
immaculate bone structure.”

Watari exhaled, a quiet amusement behind it. “And if you are right?”

“Then I am closer than anyone has ever been.”

There was no answer for that. Just a faint click of the line disconnecting,

A collage of images still held onto the monitors in front of L. Light’s face, frozen, in the
middle of a laugh in one, eyes lowered in another. Too smooth. Too consistent. Too perfect.
It wasn’t natural, but it wasn’t proof either. There were moments when L had to admit the
possibility that he truly did have no killer at all. A creature born of admiration, not malice.
Empty, but not evil. Lonely, even. L could understand that. He would watch, closer now.

If Light were Kira, he’d slip. If Light were Kira, he would catch him.

And if he wasn’t? He wasn’t sure what scared him more. The screens before him slowly went
dark. L did not move.

_____________________________

Light didn’t look up when Takada entered.

“I assume that’s for me,” he said coolly. Still tumbling through an editorial draft on his
phone. A folder landed on the table with a low thud.

“Big investor. Quiet type.”

That earned a glance. He picked up the folder and started to flip through it. His name was
stamped at the top of every page. Terms. Amounts. Transactions. Access requests. And…

“Lucien Vale,” He read it aloud. ‘I don’t recognize the name.”

“You won’t,” Takada answered, sinking into the armchair opposite him. “The transfer came
through a private shell company. But it’s clean, no obvious red flags.”

“No such thing as clean money,” Light murmured, turning to the next page in the folder.

She tilted her head. “You sound just like your father.”
Light didn’t respond. He continued to flip through the pages of the folder. “Did they ask for
contact?” He asked quietly.

“No.” Takada propped herself up on her elbow. “No calls. No interviews. The director tried to
block it…then Vale doubled the offer.”

Light allowed the silence to stretch. Light’s fingers stilled. Not outwardly, but in the smallest
possible way. A shift in his hand, the tension in his knuckles. Of course he did.

That certainty didn’t come from an impulse. It came from knowledge. Understanding. But
there was no signature beyond the alias. No board to investigate. No one to follow. Just an
invisible hand, placing itself into Light’s world. Like a coin dropped silently into water.

He didn’t like being studied. He liked even less not knowing by whom. Most men with this
kind of money want to be seen. Lucien Vale did not, and that in itself was a message. He
closed the folder slowly.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Takada hesitated before reaching into her coat pocket. “Well…there was something included
with the package. No signature. Just this.” She placed a sealed envelope on the table.

Light picked it up, opening it gently.

Inside, it was a single photo. Not one of the final selections. Not a print from his current
campaign. It was untouched. No changes from when the lens first caught him. A mid-shot.
An image from between poses, when he thought the camera had dropped. His expression was
half-worn to say the least. His mouth slightly parted.

Deliberate.
He turned it over. On the back, printed in dark and precise handwriting:

Before one can pass judgment on the world, one first must be judged by it. Even the
greatest judges must stand where the guilty once knelt.

A line.

No name.

No need.

Light’s fingers curled tighter around the edge of the photo. Across from him, Takada watched
him curiously, but he didn’t meet her gaze. His eyes flicked up only once, an unreadable dark
pool. A faint shift in his posture, barely perceptible. The bracing of his back against the chair.
Tension was settling into his muscles like something cold.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just sat with the weight of it pressing at the back of his skull.

There was no signature, but Light knew. He knew the kind of person who sent messages like
that. Knew the arrogance in it. The intimacy.

As if they’d already looked into him and come back with conclusions. It wasn’t just an
investment.

It was a provocation.

He stared down at the picture again, jaw tight, the weight of his gaze was heavy. As if he
could set it aflame with just sheer will.
A warning? A threat?

No.

This was a test.

It wasn’t a declaration. It was an expectation.

And Light Yagami hadn’t let himself be expected of in a long time.

He inhaled. Slow and precise. The kind of breath taken not to stay calm, but to contain
oneself. With as much care as he could, he set the photo back down on the table. Fingers
uncurled, and his face was placid.

“I assume that the deal is final?” he said, his voice flatter than usual, although he doubted that
Takada noticed the shift.

She nodded. “The funds cleared this morning. It’s legit.”

“Then leave it,” He said, flicking his hand. “I’ll handle the rest.”

Takada stared for a moment. Silent.

“Understood.”

She stood. Letting herself out of the room, the doors shut behind her with a soft click. Only
then did Light reach for the photo again.
 He picked it up slowly, no hesitation, just purpose. Contemplating. Calculating. He held it
between two fingers, not like something precious, but something toxic. It was burning
through his skin with each passing moment.

A whisper of heat climbed beneath his skin. Prickling the back of his neck. Controlled and
measured. Simmering. Not anger. Not fear. Something colder. Darker.

He turned the image over.

Before one can pass judgment on the world, one first must be judged by it. Even the
greatest judges must stand where the guilty once knelt.

He read the message again. And again. And again. And again.

Over and over.

Then he tucked it neatly back into the envelope, each movement was crisp and exact. Not
rushing. Not fumbling.

Finally, Light let a smile bloom across his lips. Small, sharp, unnerving.

It didn’t reach his eyes.

Chapter End Notes

This came to me in a dream. I thought about it on a 5-hour bus ride. ☆

 The Itch Beneath the Skin
Chapter Summary

Light is a control freak. L is also a freak.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

A thread snagged.

That was the only way Light could describe it. Like tugging silk through a needle only to feel
it bunch. Delicate in the beginning, then resistance. Something jammed deep within the inner
workings. A hitch.

Lucien Vale.

A name that didn’t exist, until it did. No birth record. No previous investments. No scandals,
no success story, no legacy. He turned it over in his mind, again and again, as if repetition
would reveal something new. A banker, maybe? A bored aristocrat? Some kid playing
anonymity like a game. It never shifted. Never unraveled. It just sat there, gleaming,
impenetrable, and wrong.

There were no records. No consistent addresses. No photos. He’d pulled every single trick he
knew. Still, the fabric refused to lie flat. Every string he pulled came back frayed and empty.

No stitches to pick at.

There were articles, mentions of Lucien Vale as a fashion critic, a performance artist, and a
photographer. But none matched. None had photos. None held long enough in the public eye
to establish a steady foothold. Fabricated. Or maybe borrowed.
Like everything else about the man.

Not that Light would say it out loud, but there was something exhilarating about the silence
on the other end of the thread. The resistance of a string pulled taut. As if the person on the
other end wasn’t trying to stay hidden, but as if they had no intention of being found at all.

Or maybe something even worse, as if they wanted to be searched for.

Light sat motionless in his chair, fingers pressed against the bridge of his nose, his spine too
straight. He hated not knowing. His laptop was open in front of him, a spreadsheet of fake
names and false credentials was glaring back at him. Each name was more extravagant and
elaborate than the last.

The chair creaked as he shifted. One leg pulled up slightly, then dropped again. He was
restless. His glass desk was cold, smudged where he’d been tapping his fingers for the last
two hours. He was starting to feel something growing in his chest. That tightness– Like
something was caught. Light’s design was flawless. Always. But this guy? Had bunched it.

It didn’t make sense.

Usually, when Light wanted to find someone, he found them. Quickly. Pulling strings and
using his connections to be as efficient as he could. He leaned back, closing his eyes for a
moment. It felt like something was crawling underneath his skin. He was being watched, or
measured, or toyed with. But he didn’t know by who.

Lucien Vale.

He stared down at the envelope on his desk, untouched since the first day he received it.

He was thrown.
And that never happened.

If this person had sent a message to flatter, they had failed. If they had intended to strike fear,
they would be greatly disappointed.

It had worked only one way. It made him itch.

He closed his laptop with a sharp click. The screen had been opened on a half-translated
forum thread speculating about old shell companies long discarded. He could keep looking.
But it would keep circling back to the same thing.

He didn't know who Vale was.

But until he did, he couldn’t kill him. He reached for the edge of the envelope and grabbed
the picture from inside once more. Reading the note left for him on the back. He stared
intensely.

“You’re brooding again,” Ryuk chuckled, biting into another apple from an open fruit bowl,
juice running down his fingers.

Light didn’t look at him.

“You usually look more pleased with yourself by now,” Ryuk said, hanging upside down, as
usual. Light didn’t bother to look at him.

Ryuk scoffed, turning. “At least it’s not like that awful sulking you used to do in high
school,” Ryuk went on, amused. “But I have to say– I have never seen you rattled like this.”

“Shut up,” Light said quietly.

“Must be love,” Ryuk grinned, teeth sharp and gleaming. Shoving the rest of the apple in his
mouth.

“Shut up,” Light said more firmly.

Light went to stand. His fist clenched as he stopped himself. His legs twitched. He stayed sat
in his chair, letting his hand rest on the table, knuckles white. He couldn’t give this- thing
satisfaction.

Lucien Vale. Whoever he was. Wherever he came from. Light was going to find him.

Even if he had to pull up every floorboard in Tokyo to do so.

_____________________________

Across the darkened city, L sat hunched over a long table cluttered with files, photos,
monitors, and small plates of powdered donut holes. Powder and crumbs dropping onto the
files with every bite.

He hadn’t blinked in at least a minute.

On the monitor in front of him was on a new gallery upload. Light Yagami. Wearing…well-
basically nothing.

A sheer robe. White silk. Feathers at the cuffs. Open chest. Lighting soft and flattering. One
hand delicately reaching for a glass that sparkled. His collarbones on display along with most
of his chest. The robe had slipped just enough to look unintentional. Everything was soft,
expensive, and alluring.
L shifted slightly as he popped another sweet into his mouth.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he was searching for, but he knew he hadn’t found it yet.

Technically, this was part of his profile workup. His interest in Light had begun before his
investment, but this- it was all data now. Necessary follow-ups. Routine.

He clicked another frame. Light from the back, head turned over his shoulder, robe clinging
just below the small of his back. Eyes sharp. A coy smile.

He was trying to understand something. Light wasn’t just a product; he was a creator of his
own image. He made himself visible in certain ways while keeping his personal self invisible
to others. Crafted personas. Light was a brand and a mask at the same time.

The edges of the mask were beginning to fascinate him.

But– This wasn’t attraction. His eyes drifted to Light's chest. Smooth and pale. It was…
Information. There was something layered there that L hadn’t quite cracked. It bothered him
more than he would ever admit.

The fourth image was a better shot. Closer. Just Light’s hand resting on his thigh, fingers
barely brushing the fabric of his robe. L squinted. Zooming in.

His forehead nearly grazed the screen.

That’s when the door opened, and Watari stepped into the room.

Watari paused, clearly taking in the scene before him: Multiple monitors aglow, each one
displaying different images of Light.
“...Sir?” Watari said carefully, slowly.

L clicked once on a screen. Zooming in further.

“Yes?”

“I.. noticed that you hadn’t moved in quite some time. I assumed you might be…analyzing.”

“I am.”

Watari nodded hesitantly. There was a small pause. L reached forward again, adjusting the
brightness of the image he was working on. Light’s face glowed a bit more under the new
setting. His eyes stared back at L, shining like glass. Nothing behind them ever truly reaching
the surface.

“...Would you like me to compile more materials for your review?” Watari asked, his tone
was extremely polite.

L was still leaning in. “There’s no need. This data will suffice.”

Another pause.

Watari approached a few steps. “And the... research goal?”

“There is something in these images,” L said, zooming in a bit more on the image before him.
The photo turned more pixelated as he continued to zoom. “A pattern. His presence is
intentional, but not always consistent. Some of it feels like it's coded. Symbolic. I believe it
may be a form of messaging. Perhaps for an audience that isn’t the public. Someone clever
enough to read it.”
“I see,” Watari said, with a practiced calm. “So, this is…strategic decoding?”

“Yes.”

“Not just…personal interest?”

L blinked once, slowly. “Why would it be?”

“No reason.”

Watari lingered a moment longer, watching as L opened a new folder. Loading more photos
into it. Some were just pictures of Light’s hands. Others were of his neck, spine, the curl of
his dampened hair at the edge of a pool.

L leaned in again, humming faintly to himself in thought.

“I will…leave you to it,” Watari said after a long moment. “For research.” He lingered in the
doorway for a moment longer, as if considering saying something else. He thought better of
it, his mouth pressing into a line.

L didn’t notice. Or if he did, he didn’t react.

Watari could just barely be heard clearing his throat. Then silence. Then the quiet click of the
door shutting.

Still, L didn’t move.

His thumb hovered over the keyboard, his whole posture fixed like a statue. His eyes flicked
over the monitor again and again. Analyzing something he couldn’t quite name.
 He thought about patterns. About messages encoded in beauty. About masks that didn’t look
like masks.

He opened up a new folder, titled it “Light_Yagami_BodyLanguage,” and began to catalog

each new gesture. Frame by frame.

For research.

Obviously.

Chapter End Notes

I have been kinda hoarding these chapters to myself. Don't mind me posting so many
chapters in a row. ☆
 Compliments of the Investor
Chapter Summary

L is Light's Sugar Daddy

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

L’s monitor glowed faintly in the low light of his workspace.

A row of meticulously labeled folders lined the edge of his screen. His posture was
unchanged from hours ago. Curled slightly, one knee tucked up to his chest, his eyes moving
with a mechanical focus as he scolded through the latest image set from Light’s latest concept
shoot. “Ascension”.

Light Yagami stood in a soft shadow, lips parted, fabric being blown by a fan billowing
gently behind him. It was mythical. Cinematic. Transparent silk kissed by a low light.

“Pretentious,” L murmured.

He clicked and dragged the image into a new folder titled ‘Perception control’. L leaned
back, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth in thought.

Light crafted his image like a weapon.

An idea he had learned shortly after looking into the man. Not in a way that all models or
people in the public eye do, which is passively, but in a way that was as deliberate and clean
as a practiced executioner. L had always respected weapons. They don’t lie. A knife doesn’t
pretend it won’t cut you. A gun doesn’t promise you mercy. But Light? He is something so
much worse.
He’s beautiful and moral. Or so that’s what he wants you to think. Making him one of the
most dangerous weapons of all. A weapon that believes it is justice.

So, he started to plan.

Subtle intrusions. A slip of something completely planned. Curated. A new element to slide
between Light and his control of the world.

Gifts.

Elegant ones. Distinct. Each one was selected to say something specific. Something only Kira
would find unsettling.

A silk neck tie, blood-red, no tags. Sent with a singular note: “For the throat that never
trembles.”

An ornate antique pocket watch with a gold trim, the hands a dark red. The note read : “The
judges of men never believe they will be judged in turn. But time levels all thrones
eventually.”

A rare Montblanc fountain pen, glossy obsidian outside with a red ink cartridge hidden
beneath the standard black. A new message: “Power isn’t declared. It’s signed, written, and
underlined. Though, I imagine you know this already.”

Each gift was delivered through Watari’s carefully cleaned channels. Each gift was supposed
to be a tool. Psychological weapons, carefully, strategically chosen to unsettle. He’d picked
each one with the same precision he used when tracing the spending habits of a suspect. That
red tie, the watch, the pen. Each had a note to accompany it. An intrusion on Light’s stage.
His perfect narrative.

But somewhere between choosing paper weights and looking through vintage photography
books, L had found himself wondering which scent would suit Light the best. He had nearly
typed in “Cologne”.

That made him pause.

A kettle from another room clicked off.

Watari approached silently, a porcelain cup balanced in each of his hands. He placed one
beside L without a word. L murmured a thank-you as he still focused on the computer
screens.

Watari lingered. Still, he didn’t look up.

“Ryuuzaki,” the older man said with a sigh, measured and as mild as possible, “Your
spending this month has tripled the budget projection we had set for this investigation.”

“I am investing,” L replied, grabbing his teacup. Ripping open some sugar packets, dumping
in one after another, a pile of wrappers accumulating next to him.

Watari gave a small and patient smile. “Of course. But I do have to ask… are you attempting
to arrest him? Or seduce him?”

L froze, in the middle of raising his glass to his lips. He blinked slowly. His eyes flicked over
to the side, then back to the screens. It was subtle, barely noticeable, but it happened. He set
his cup down without taking a sip.

“I fail to see how gifts and psychological pressure come off as seduction,” L replied, very
flatly.

“Of course,” Watari said once again, his voice dry. He turned to go and was almost at the
door when he turned to look over his shoulder. Quietly adding, “I’ll adjust the budget.”
The door clicked shut behind him. L was picking at his fingernail.

He had started to notice something with his messages to Light. Though he wouldn’t say so
aloud. The notes he sent became longer. Less detached. Less clinical. And every time he
wrote one…He felt a little less like the hand of justice and more like– He didn’t know.

Some part of him, the smallest part, knew that the line between his investigation and attention
was no longer as clean as he needed it to be. His focus slipped in strange directions. His goal
was still the chase, but the path to it was getting slippery. L closed the image window, letting
his screens go black. His reflection stared back at him before he used one of his legs to spin
his chair around slowly. Every trap he was laying was a bit too personal. Every message
carried a little too much of him in it.

His hands were folded.

“This isn’t about desire,” he murmured to the air.

He spun his chair back around and went back to his tasks.

Online forums. Threads devoted to Light’s career. Fans dissecting every move he made,
every outfit he wore, every campaign he touched. It was a bit impressive. L read through
them all, his expression was blank. The more ridiculous the theory, the more valuable the
psychology was behind it. People could smell power. Could feel it. Even if they didn’t know
how to name it. How to see it.

Some were absurd. Others had more insight than L couldn’t believe a normal fan could have.

One user had written: “There is just something about his eyes. It is like he’s already decided
who deserves to live.”
L had stared at that comment a bit longer than others. Then he opened another tab.

This time, he was investigating himself. More like the shell company he’d used to invest in
Light’s brand. His identity. A name he had invented. Constructed. The false trails Watari had
helped him lay were like a fresh coat of snow over footprints.

He scrubbed through them again. The trail was clean. But not entirely impossible to follow.
He made sure of that. There were traces left behind, just faint enough. A trace, just faint
enough. Nothing to give him away to the world. But to Light? Maybe. And that was the
point.

He wanted to know if Light would follow it. If he even could.

If I bait him with enough attention, he’ll turn to follow the source. If he’s Kira…curiosity will
undo him.

But if he wasn’t…L would know that too. He would see it the moment Light realized he was
being watched. Not by a devoted worshipper, but something far more dangerous.

An equal.

Or a mirror.

L went still, finger lingering over his mouse. Because somewhere in his mind, he heard his
own voice. Reluctant and real. So faint it could barely be heard over the gears grinding in his
mind.

If I feed this narcissist the right attention, he’ll turn to see where the source is. Where it came
from. And then I will be able to see his eyes. See him. And if he is God…I want to know what
God sees in return.
He let the words settle over him like a fine dust. The line hadn’t completely blurred just yet.
But the smudges were there. Prints of what was left of L’s humanity. Once they were noticed,
they could not be unseen. He pulled up another folder and resumed his scrolling.

Quiet and reserved. Composed.

But inside him, a weight was starting to build.

__________________________

The gifts were still coming.

Lucien Vale.

The name on all the note cards. Crips, ivory rectangles, placed on top of each gift like a bow.
A pen from a century-old boutique with red ink. A blood red silk tie. An intricate pocket
watch with golden trim. All very tasteful. All flattering. All perfectly curated. Perfect for
him.

Too perfect.

Light sat quietly in his dressing room. The newest gift lay out across the counter in front of
him. A silk tie dyed a deep blood red, hand stitched, soft and smooth texture. His fingers
moved along the fabric slowly, his eyes boring into it. The note that had come with it said:

“For the throat that never trembles. –L.V.”

It was aggravating.

The tone of it. Half-flirtation, half challenge. Every gift was a strike. Nothing generic.
Nothing careless. He had spent years being studied, measured, and photographed. It had all
been under his control. But no one had ever made him feel examined .

Until now.

He tapped the fancy pen against the bottom of his lip. Lying back on his bed. Staring to the
side at his mirror. His expression gave nothing away, but there was tension in his manner.
Like a taut cord ready to split. His reflection stared back at him, composed and impassive,
but in his head, his mind moved like a blade on glass.

Who was Lucien Vale?

He had pulled every card from his deck. Contacts and back-channels. He had Ryuk floating
above him, giggling and cackling while he scoured old donation lists, shell company offers,
and listings, tax filings. Nothing. The name didn’t hold a place anywhere. It slipped between
the cracks and away from him like water. Never pooling in one spot. Never where it should.

It was all wrong.

Light was used to pull strings. Watching the world dance at his fingertips. He had done so
successfully without any issue for over 5 years. But this time, the string had tangled, and
suddenly the dance wasn’t his anymore.

It made him burn.

His jaw tightened, and he pressed his thumb into the polished edge of the pen cap; he
couldn’t stop thinking. The notes weren’t threats. They weren’t praise. They were prods.
Careful nudging. Pushing him toward something.
He stood and walked to his desk. The pen discarded on his bed. He pulled open a drawer.
Inside was a small stack of notes. Every single one Vale had sent. He read through them
again. Each one, a mirror being held up to him. Dissecting him. Picking at something no one
else seemed to notice underneath the veneer of his lie.

His fingers hovered over the Death Note on his desk. He froze for a second. His fingers
clenching

No real name. No face. No justice.

Not yet.

He put the Death Note away. Closing away all the notes safely back in his drawer.

Later that night, lying awake, the dark surrounding him, Light let his thoughts spiral. Who
was this man? What did he want? Not fame. No attention. There was no public angle that
Light could get a hold on. He wasn’t doing this out of greed. Power? Maybe? But if it was
power, it wasn’t normal. It was personal. Intimate.

Ryuk was floating somewhere in the dark. Light could see the black void of his outline
against the dark. Could see a faint red glow of his eyes. His teeth glimmered. Light wasn’t
startled. His rough voice crushed the calm, quiet Light had settled into. “He’s got you
thinking in circles,” the shinigami snickered. “Most humans get gifts and fan mail and think,
‘Oh look, I’m special.’ You get gifts and think, ‘Who do I kill?’ ”

Light didn’t reply, letting his eyes fall shut. Hoping sleep would claim him soon enough.

If this man wanted to play, he’d give him the arena. He’d call the bluff. Light didn’t lose. He
didn’t wait to be seen; he orchestrated the gaze. Controlled the frame. There was only one
way to find Lucien Vale.
He would draw him closer.

_______________________________

The next morning, Light sat with his manager across a quiet cafe table.

“I need you to reach out to the investor,” He said, voice collected and smooth. “Invite him to
the set. Frame it as a thank you. Make it seem like it was your idea.”

Takada looked up from her coffee, blinking. “You want him there? On set?”

“I want to know who I am working with. He’s already inserted himself into my world. Better
to direct the access than pretend as if it isn’t happening.”

Takada hesitated. “I can tell him it’s a courtesy from the agency. Gratitude for his
generosity.”

Light nodded. “Good. Make it seem like a reward.”

She raised an eyebrow. Light had never wanted someone to come to his set willingly. She
was taken aback by his directness in getting an investor closer. “Anything else?”

“Just make sure he thinks it was your idea,” Light said, returning to his espresso. “Don’t let
him suspect it came from me.” Light took a sip of his coffee.

He didn’t look up.

He could feel the shift in the room. Light was drawing Vale in.
 And soon, Lucien Vale would have to step out of the shadows.

Chapter End Notes

They are my guilty pleasure. ☆

 The God Who Looked Back
Chapter Summary

One of my favorite chapters so far. I love seeing Light in silly little outfits.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Thick black drapes covered the walls, cascading in heavy folds from scaffolding above,
pooling on the cold marble floor. Candles flickered in ornate gold holders, their flames
licking against the still air. Long shadows bled into every crevice produced by their light.
Somewhere music played, a cello humming. Low and mournful beneath the chatter of
assistants preparing for the shoot. Making sure the stage was set.

Light had arrived early.

He usually wasn’t the first to step into hair and makeup, but today he had. Gliding into the
space with a flick of his coat and a slight curve to his mouth. His eyes had drunk in the set
design like it was a gift made up just for him. Decadent, gothic, funereal. Sexy in the way
that old cathedrals were. Meant for worship and sin.

He didn’t need confirmation.

There had been no response to the invitation he had sent out. No call, no message, no cryptic
gift wrapped in silk paper. But Light knew.

It wasn’t just suspicion. There was something primal about the feeling that made Light nearly
giddy.

He could feel it in the way the hair at the back of his neck stood up when he stepped into the
lights. It was in the air, charged and intimate. He was being watched. Not by the cameras, not
by the stylists, but by him. The man behind the name. The ghost hidden under the veil.
“You’re here,” Light whispered to no one, a coy smile on his lips. What fun this would be.

____________________________

L hadn’t meant to come in person. He had originally planned to watch remotely. He had been
arranging a private room hidden away above the soundstage. Heavily curtained, light and
soundproofed, lined with screens and a direct feed from below. But something about the set,
the candles, the velvet, the promise of something raw, drew him in like a tide. He sat in a
forgotten nook above the stage, half disguised by lighting rigs and trailing fabric. His legs
curled up to his chest, and locks of black hair drooped over his face. He wore a hoodie pulled
over his head, and a pair of dark glasses rested on his face. His feet were bare as usual.

The shoot began with a slow confidence, beginning like a ritual.

First : A hush. Reverence from the audience. Incense and smoke curling in the air like a
serpent winding towards the heavens.

Then : Light.

Light moved across the set like a spirit, gliding and twisting, pausing with his hands half
raised like an angel in mid-descent.

A frilly dark red blouse clung to his frame like a blood stain, the waistline perfectly fitted to
his body with a laced-up back. The sleeves flowed down his arms elegantly. Velvet trousers
sharpened the angle of his hips. His hair was just shy of messy, as if he had just rolled out of
someone’s bed and into confession. Every breath he took shimmered beneath the studio lights
like an offering.

Light let himself dissolve into something more than a model. More than a man. He turned his
face to let the candlelight strike his features sharply, then glanced towards the shadows
beyond the lights with an intimacy that he tried to pass off as staged but wasn’t.
He wasn’t performing for the camera anymore; he was performing for him.

If Vale was watching–and Light knew he was–then he would force his gaze. Demand it from
him.

Look at me.

Light moved as if he were painting with his own body. Each step, each curve of his wrist or
drag of his fingertips across his blouse, all choreographed to appear natural and instinctive.
But he was thinking. Never once stopping.

He’s here. He wants something. Let him think he’s getting it. Let him see it. I will see him.

L watched with slight fascination. From here, Light didn’t know he was there. Couldn’t
know. But Light looked directly up, at the shadows again, gaze slicing through the room like
a sword's edge. His body curved inwards, then back out again. A crackling flare. L felt it like
a breath on his skin. He could feel every turn on Light’s body. He was being fed something.
Offered. Baited . L’s eyes narrowed as he gently chewed on the tip of his thumb.

You perform like you know I am watching. You move like you’re aware of your consequences.
Aren’t you aware of them?

Light wasn’t modeling. He was confessing. And L wasn’t there to collect evidence. He was
there to be transformed.

_______________________________

You’re still here. Still watching. I know it.

He didn’t need to look at the shadows this time. He felt it. Like a violin strung between their
ribs. Vibrations passed between them with every look. Light moved like a backward prayer.
Reverent and blasphemous. Slow and sharp. He rolled his shoulders and extended one bare
arm, his hand pulling up his sleeve, fingers trailing through the air. Something electric was
passing through him.

You think I don’t know what I am doing? I have traced every edge of the design for my
damnation, and I choose it without fear. I know exactly what I have done. I have chosen every
act willingly. And I will choose them again, because what I build from it will eclipse all
judgment.

He turned slowly, he didn’t blink. He didn’t smile.

If I am your undoing, then know this: You were always aching to be undone.

He posed with a hand over his heart, head tilted back, lashes fluttering closed. The
photographer gasped. “Hold that–God, hold that–”

Click. Click. Click.

Light was already moving. Something between grace and violence. He crouched on a velvet
bench, turning over his shoulder, biting his lower lip. Two fingers grazed his lips, then moved
down his neck. Charting a path of a vessel with the detachment of a surgeon. Tracing right
over the pulse, steady and exposed.

The lights hummed. The room forgot how to breathe.

From his hiding place amongst a forgotten mess of rigged lights and cable cords, L’s fingers
tightened on his knees. The heat in his throat was unfamiliar and unwelcome. He was used to
assembling people. Peeling layers, connecting the dots mechanically. Not this. Not being…
drawn.
Light Yagami should have been a subject in his investigation. A lead. But L found himself
caught between roles. Analyst and observer. Predator and prey.

You put yourself on display like a man asking to be hunted. You move like you’re daring me to
bare my teeth. Why? Why offer yourself like this? What do you want me to do?

When Light looked towards the shadows again, almost directly this time–like he knew–L
swallowed and shifted his weight back slightly. An involuntary movement. As though he had
been exposed in that glance.

You’ve studied my traces like scripture. It is what brought you here, but it won’t take you any
further. I am the one who left the trail. Breathing and watching. Entirely aware. But tell me.
What do you see?

L should have turned away. Taken notes. Kept his distance. But the urge to keep watching
gnawed at him like a low, deep hunger. His heart did something unnatural in his chest.

You want to be solved like a puzzle. Understood like a riddle. Known. But I don’t solve men
like you. I take them apart. I end them.

Then take me apart. Pick me clean. It’s what you’re best at, isn’t it? I’ll leave you starved.
There is no end to me.

Light could feel Vale watching him. He hadn’t picked out exactly where it was coming from.
It felt so sharp that it burned, and it made him bold.

He lay across a dark loveseat like a sacrifice, his arms flinging out, shirt unbuttoned nearly to
his navel. A sheen of sweat made his skin glossy. For a single moment, just a moment, he felt
himself split in two. The man in velvet, and the boy waiting for approval, burning to be seen.
L didn’t reveal himself.

He didn’t need to.

Light could feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest. Too hot. Too much. He felt open. Bare.
Made of sin.

L watched quietly with wide eyes. He couldn’t look away. He subtly shifted his weight on his
legs. Not out of discomfort, but restraint. His hands had curled into fists without him
noticing. L’s eyes traced Light's exposed collar, the shape of his sternum, the dip of his throat.
A bead of sweat formed on his jaw.

This is worship, isn’t it? This is the blood and the bread. You want me to kneel.

He thought it too loudly, but he couldn’t help thinking it. Couldn’t stop himself.

Light dragged a thumb along his collarbone. Slow and lazily. The gesture was simple, but it
felt like something more. He reached up and toyed with a crucifix that lay on a side table, a
prop piece. Holding it between his teeth like a challenge. The chain swinging and catching
the stage lights, silver scattered across his face.

You want to. You already are.

Light turned his head slightly, chin tilted. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak. A silent
invitation. A curse. A spell.

You’re close.

L started to stand. Looking down at Light, who was still sprawled along the couch cushions.
He looked ruined and holy. A temple defiled. A fallen angel who had not forgotten the sound
of heaven, and still turned his ear towards it to listen.
Closer than I should be.

Light looked up at the lights. His gaze moved slowly to the darkened nook above the set. His
eyes opened a little wider.

There.

Someone is there. He could see the difference in the darkness, something darker than the
curtains, stiller than the beams. A body. A gaze.

No lens, no stage light, no script had ever kindled this heat beneath Light’s skin.

L gazed at Light intensely. He squinted slightly. Shit. He knew. Light looked up into the dark,
his eyes catching on the shadow like a prayer finding its god. His eyes shimmered, not
pleading but invoking. A commanding presence.

Want me.

L started walking. Stepping back from the ledge slowly and carefully. His glasses were
discarded on the ledge. He descended an iron ladder from the rafters. He didn’t rush or
hesitate. Drawn. Light hadn’t moved. He was still holding his spotlight, bare-chested and
glowing. The photographer shouted something, but it was lost to him. Lost to both of them.
The only thing left between them was air, stretched tightly, dangerously, and tense. Like the
gap between heaven and the tempted.

L stepped behind a side curtain. Close enough to see the gold highlighter clinging to Light's
neck. Close enough to hear him breathing. For a moment, a breath, a second, a prayer. He
was no longer the watcher. He was the soft spot where the blade sinks in. An open wound.
Aching, raw, waiting, waiting. Split open by the sight of him.

Light readjusted in his chair. A movement he looked out of place in. Something less than
perfect peaking under his mask.
Closer .

You’ll ruin me.

Aren’t you already? Come and make it worth it.

L stepped forward a little more. Not into the lights. Not in the shot. But just enough for Light
to feel it more clearly. A throb of presence, heated and devoted.

You came to see your god in the flesh. That’s it, isn’t it?

And you came to prove you weren’t a myth. Prove something to-

He cut off the thought, his mouth twitching at the taste of it. A smirk curled the edge of L’s
mouth. Excitement made him look somewhat pleased.

How dramatic, Light. You made me come to show me. You came to prove you’re real.
Because, of course, a god has to be seen to be worshipped. But now that you have been seen,
what are you? A god? Or just another boy desperate for attention?

Light lifted his head once more. His eyes swept over the room casually and to the side of the
stage. To the shadowed darkness just past the curtains. Their gazes colliding like a prophecy
meeting its denial. It's end. It's beginning. His breath caught in his throat. He saw a pair of
eyes. Dark, bottomless, and alight like they held hundreds of unsaid words. Glossy and
knowing. L felt a warm heat pooling in his stomach. Stuck looking back into Light’s holy
gaze. His hand moved to clutch his chest, grounding himself.

You’re burning me alive.

A corner of Light's mouth twitched, and he smiled. Smiled. Cheeky and small, just for him,
before he turned back to the cameras.
Good.

For a moment, it felt like they weren’t on a set. Like the space between them had dissolved.
Light's mouth parted, and L’s hand flexed. They were more than predator and prey, not
performer and observer.

They were hunger and flame.

Hunter and offering.

Greed and desire.

God and believer.

Believer and god.

Light could feel L’s thoughts in his chest. Could hear his name forming in someone else’s
mind, could feel the fingers that didn’t move already wrapping around his throat. He could
taste it. Could feel the heat. The desperation, need, fire, burning—

The lights changed. The illusion cracked. Shattering into tiny pieces like glass.

The world fell back into its place.

“Cut!” The director barked suddenly. “That’s a wrap. We’re done here.”

“Jesus Christ.” The photographer sounded half-drunk on adrenaline.

The shoot ended early.

The crew clapped, some of them looking startled or dazed, others just relieved. Light stood
up quickly. Breathless, flushed, his blouse barely clinging to him. A stylist brought over a
robe for him to slip into, but he waved it off, walking almost bare from the waist up through
the gloom and embarrassment he had made up for himself. Spinning around like he was still
in a trance. He hadn’t realized how lost in the moment he had been. He had shortened his
own shoot.

For… Him.

Annoyed, Light straightened up and rolled his shoulders. Running a hand over his hair. He
looked back towards the side curtain suddenly. He saw him. Not clearly. Just eyes peering
from behind the curtain. Real. Knowing. Consuming.

Light smirked. It reached his eyes just slightly.

No longer for the camera.

Your move, Vale.

The eyes disappeared.

Light felt too raw to do anything. He stood there, coming down from his high slowly.

____________________________________

The smell of smoke lingered in his dressing room. A glass of chilled water sat untouched
next to him. Light leaned over the sink, gripping the counter like it could steady him. Right
him in his daze.

He had lost himself today. Not completely. But something in him had been cracked open.
Something he kept locked away in a cage.
 You saw it, didn’t you?

No answer.

You liked it. Didn’t you?

He splashed water on his face and sat staring at his reflection for a long time.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you for reading!! I love reading comments, so please let me know what you
think! I posted this here so I would be motivated to finish it. ☆
 When the Curtain Falls
Chapter Summary

Light is pent up after the shoot. ;) Extra long chapter for you.

Chapter Notes

Hm, looks like someone can't handle their emotions. Thanks for reading. ☆

Light sat silently in the backseat, one leg crossed over the other, staring through a tinted
window as the city passed in a blur. The driver spoke only once to confirm the address and
then left him in silence. It was appreciated. Light’s head was still full of lights, lenses, and
watching eyes. The kind of images that stayed with him even when the shoot had long but
ended, even though he willed them away. He felt them on his neck, on his hands, like ghosts.

When the car stopped, the doorman greeted him with a polished smile. Light didn’t return it.
He stepped out onto the curb, polished marble steps gleaming ahead of him like an altar. His
face twisted a bit as he bit back his pride. He hated this hotel. Too indulgent– even for his
tastes. The kind of place used to buy silence and sell spectacles of opulence.

He didn’t stay here by choice.

This particular shoot had been arranged late on the edge of the city. Far enough from his
usual life that the commute would have been a waste of time. Vale had taken care of
everything. The car. The suite. The attendant greeted him by name.

It wasn’t unusual for brands to fund his accommodations. He was Light Yagami, after all.
Yet, there was something more pointed about the way Vale did it. The level of detail that
made his skin crawl. It made Light furious.
“Mr. Yagami,” the receptionist greeted, handing over a keycard. “Your suite is ready.
Courtesy of Mr. Vale.”

Light’s jaw tightened at the mention of the alias. Taunting him outright. He took the card
without a word.

“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Yagami.” The clerk said, as if this entire thing wasn’t just a private
theater that Vale had purchased just to watch him dance. He could feel it resting over him
somehow.

Light took the elevator to the thirty-eighth floor. Silent the entire way up, no music played.
All that could be heard was the low hiss of the ascent and the sound of his controlled
breathing.

The suite was lavish. Predictably.

Glass walls, polished steel. Crisp, white furniture that was too expensive to be comfortable. A
space designed to impress anyone who walked in and disarm them.

Light dropped his bag by the door and walked directly into the bathroom. The mirror caught
him as he undressed with a slight urgency. His skin was too bright under the fluorescent light,
cheekbones and eyebags sharpened by fatigue. He folded his clothes neatly in a pile by the
sink and stepped into the shower.

The water was hot. Burning. He liked it that way. Like the way it left him scoured raw and
bright and clean. A punishment and a baptism. Steam fogged the glass, curling in the air. His
breath was heavy, but it was even. His eyes closed, and his head fell forward against the cool
tile.

He braced both hands against the tile. The image of Vale’s eyes played again and again
behind his eyes, like a cursed film. He thought about the way he had felt on set. How free he
had let himself be, how utterly possessed by the moment he had been. Shame bubbled like
acid in his throat. He hadn’t been performing for the camera. He had no deniability. He swore
under his breath.

He should be thinking about names. Criminals. Justice. Purpose. Planning. Fulfilling the
greater order, he had been building with every name he wrote. That divine mission that set
him apart from those lesser men. That scum.

But all he could think about was those eyes. His eyes.

Watching.

Above him, unseen in the rafters, Vale’s presence lingered. He felt him. Felt the weight of
that gaze slithering over his skin, sharp as a scalpel. Seeing and understanding. A frustrated
blush had spread over his face.

Heat pooled in his gut, twisting and hot. He felt his face with his hand, feeling lightheaded
and hot. From the water, he convinced himself. His muscles tensed as he felt the inevitable
twitch of arousal from his groin. A wave of anger washed over him like a bucket of ice. His
brows furrowed, and he opened his eyes slightly. Peering down at his hardened cock,
precome beading on his tip already. He ground his teeth together, his fingers curling into fists
against the tile. No. It couldn’t be.

He swore again.

He slammed a palm flat against the wall. The impact of it echoed, sharp like a gunshot.
Impulsively, he turned the water to cold. Frigid and punishing. He let it pour down his spine.
An ugly, terrible noise choked out of his throat from the sudden cold. His breath became
sharp and jagged as he willed himself to bear it. Still, the throbbing in his cock didn’t back
down. His tip, a dark and angry pink.

He bared his teeth, forcing himself to breathe. The coldness of the water burned him as much
as the heat did. But now it was more unforgiving.
He would not be made to feel like this. Not for him. Not for anyone.

But especially not for Lucien Vale.

________________________

Stupid. Stupid body.

Light towel-dried his hair with quick and impatient motions. He refused to look at himself in
the mirror just yet. His skin buzzed from the coldness of the water…and from what had
occurred. He could feel the ghost of it low in his belly. A pulse that refused to die. The kind
of ache that made him feel fifteen again. Undisciplined. Mortal. Human.

He dragged his fingers through his damp hair.

It didn’t mean anything. He scoffed. It was just adrenaline. Post-performance high. The body
misfiring- that's all.

It wasn’t Light. Not really. Not the part that mattered.

No, it was just biology. A mechanical response. It had been a long week. An even longer
month. Models aren’t monks. He was still young. It was natural. To be expected. He passed
the mirror and refused to look. Drying his hands on the edge of a towel draped around his
neck, and went to pace at the edge of the oversized bed. Like it would shake something loose,
and he could rest.

It was just tension, he told himself, just hormones. Exhaustion.

But something in him knew better.

The part of him that watched his mortal body from a height far above him--detached,
surgical, superior–was trying to claw its way back into control. Let himself be set back
upright. Continue on his unrelenting path of justice and order. The real Light Yagami. The
one with unshakable discipline. The one who was a god made of a mortal. Deciding the shape
of law with the flick of a pen.

That part of him didn’t respond to shadows and presence like a puppet tied up on strings.
That part of him didn’t fantasize in the spotlight with a mind clouded by curiosity, revulsion,
and something akin to hunger sharpened into heat. That part didn’t get hard over being–
watched. Looked at by a man who hadn’t even shown his face. Who knows who this guy
could be? Light hadn’t gotten any closer to finding out who he really was.

It hadn’t even taken a touch. Just the idea that Vale could be watching. That he had been
hidden somewhere in the rafters while Light laid himself bare for the camera. For him.

His body responded like he wanted that attention. Craved it. He had never craved attention
like that from a fan.

Light sat heavily at the edge of the bed, towel barely clinging to his hips, an exhale escaping
him in a bitter breath.

“Pathetic.” He muttered to himself.

He could kill for less than all of this, and he had. But instead, he sat there. Burning with
shame and something far darker. No name. No justice. Sitting pitifully until he saw it. A
black box with a silver ribbon sitting on the coffee table. Small and unassuming.

Light froze when he saw it. He approached it carefully, holding his towel up around his hips.
The card tucked beneath the bow was more ominous than the box itself. His jaw clenched.
You know how to hold a gaze. But it’s the tremor just after the lights cut that I find worth
chasing.

His mouth turned into a slight frown. A coldness seeping into his chest. With deliberate care,
Light undid the ribbon. The lid lifted quietly, and he peered inside. A silver ring, lying
amongst a bed of red velvet. The ring was heavy despite its slim build. Polished and
gleaming deeply. He picked it out and turned it over in his hand. His fingers brushed against
an engraving on the inside of it.

Deus in abscondito.

God, in hiding.

Light’s hands paused. The intimacy of it struck him in the chest like a hammer. The ring
dropped from his hand like he could no longer touch it. Like it burned him. The thing made a
sharp clink as it hit the ground and rolled slightly. Lying a few feet away from him.

Vale was watching him. He knew too much, and he was putting him to the test.

He stood looking at the ring for a moment before going to retrieve it from the ground.
Inspecting it and making sure there wasn’t any damage, as he trailed back to the bed.

He sat on the edge of the bed, breath caught in his throat. Letting out a bitter laugh, dry and
joyless. It didn’t last long. Looking on in silence as he slid the ring onto his finger. It fit
perfectly.

His face was blank, but inside he felt like a trapped animal. Gnawing at him from the inside
out.

“Fucker.” He whispered, twisting the ring. It felt like a collar.

________________________
Later in the night, the Death Note sat open on his desk. A fresh page, completely blank.

Light stared at the blank lines, sat at his desk. His pen in hand hovered, but would not fall.
His fingers shook as he tried to will himself to write. His face remained still. Names flickered
through his mind. Names he should have written down hours ago.

But his mind was elsewhere. His eyes focused on the ring placed on his finger, and his mind
on the eyes that gifted it.

“You’ve gotten soft,” Ryuk said from the shadows. Sounding almost bored.

Light didn’t flinch. “I’ve gotten distracted. That’s all.”

“By him?” Ryuk’s yellow eyes peered at him. “He’s inside your head, Light. And it’s making
you…twitchy.”

Light didn’t say anything. Tapping his pen on the paper.

Ryuk giggled. “You’re pent up. You need a release. Something to break, don’t you think?”

“I need control,” Light hissed. “That’s what I need.”

Light let his pen drop. Leaning back in his chair. It clattered against the Death Note’s open
page, making a sound too loud for the quiet of the room. He grumbled slightly, looking at the
still blank page in front of him.

This wasn’t working.

He was unfocused. Irritated. Justice required clarity and precision. This was just noise. He
shoved the Death Note to the side of his desk, still splayed open like something indecent. The
box Vale had gifted him sat beside his laptop neatly. He slid off the ring he had kept on for
the moment and put it back neatly into its box. Closing it up and placing it to the side of his
desk once more. The note that came with it rested nicely on top. With the ring inside, once
again, he sighed. One less distraction. Yet it felt like its presence was taunting him. Staring at
him.

He pulled open his laptop, tapping it awake, ignoring the faint ache in his temple. A glow
spilled across his face as he opened some files he’d been combing through earlier in the
week. Open investigations, closed reports, a few names he had almost judged but didn’t.

He scanned through each organized case report and dead ends. Materials he would normally
digest like air, but tonight everything felt too closed. Too far off from him. Too scripted.

A trial summary flashed on the screen. Another high-profile conviction that had been tied to
anonymous detective work. Convicted in what seemed to be a textbook trial. Clean. Too
clean. Almost as if someone had gone in after it was done and scrubbed it spotless.

Light’s finger tapped against the desk. He hated cases like this. Tight, sealed, all lines
pointing neatly to justice being served. Like a perfect bow. Something in the file had annoyed
him the first time around. He didn’t think much of it. He couldn’t place why he felt that way.

He clicked it open again. The notes were sparse but meticulous. There had been rumors about
an intervention from a third party that had flagged inconsistencies long before the police had.
Light scrolled more into the file. No conflictions. No gaps. Whoever had handled the case
knew what they were doing.. Knew how to cut off a trail and make it hard to trace back.

Light sighed, leaning back and spinning slightly in his chair. He pinched the bridge of his
nose as he looked over his desk. Almost done with solving puzzles for the night. He looked
over the gift box once more. Reaching for it after a moment, and picking the notecard from
the top of it.

Rereading the note again. The pristine handwriting.

Something tugged at him.

He glanced up at his screen. The file still open. The case notes. The signature at the bottom of
the successful prosecution report. Not typed, but a scanned note. A sarcastic observation from
the detective who had cracked the case. Light snapped up, straightening suddenly. His eyes
widened, his mouth parting a little.

The handwriting.

His eyes flicked between the screen and the note card in his hand. Then back again. The
curve of the L. The sharp hood of the lowercase g. The strange flick at the end of his ‘t’s.

No-

Yes .

The lettering was the same. Exactly the same. It hit him like a brick. Sharp. Deafening. A
crack in the glass. A clearing through the fog. His hands shook, and his ears rang.

Eraldo Coil.

A shadowy figure among global enforcement.. Supposedly the second-best detective in the
world. Had been quiet since some of his cases had fallen through, even with remarkable
evidence.

Lucien Vale was Eraldo Coil.

Still, most likely an alias. But not just an investor. Not a voyeur peering in from the sidelines.
Vale wasn’t just an investor playing games with him. He wasn’t just curiously poking at a
product he owned.

He was one of the most elusive minds in the world.

A detective.

Coil.

He had been watching Light like prey behind glass.

Heat spread through Light’s chest. Not embarrassment–rage. Fury. At himself for missing it.
For being handled. Played.

This wasn’t about being seen anymore. This was war.

“So. That’s how you want to play this…”

He scoffed.

“I see you now, ‘Detective.’”

He would give Coil something to fear. He would take back the narrative. Control the room.
The cameras. The trap. He would bait and expose and kill, but on his terms.

Light remained motionless at his desk for a moment. Thinking. Planning. Then, without
hesitation, he reached for the Death Note. Pulling it towards him with a quiet exhale.

What followed was a blur of precision and fury: name after name, letter after conscious letter,
spilling out of him in sharp strokes. He paused only when he needed to verify the details.
Criminal records, time of deaths, throwing in strategic messages with each stroke of his pen.
Messages for only one man alone. There was an elegance to it. Purposeful. A burning clarity
was coursing through light, finding a path through the maze that Vale was wrapping him up
in.

He felt divine. He was remaking the world. Name by name.

________________________

He felt it in the morning.

Fatigue clung to him like static- heavy and buzzing, woven within every muscle fiber, every
blink that lingered too long. Not the exhaustion of defeat. No. This was the aftermath of a
victory. A conquest.

His hands, still stiff from writing, hung limply at his sides as he sat before his mirror.
Preparing himself for his shoot, placing his mask on for the day. There were grooves on the
insides of his fingers from pressing too hard on his pen. They pulsed dully.

He liked it.

The Death Note lay closed and hidden away, but its power still bled into the room, into Light.
He’d stayed up until the sunrise, a blaze inside him burning like a dying star. Frenzied,
brilliant, destructive. Dozens of names scrawled onto paper, each one tethered to guilt and
sin, connected to the absolute correctness of what he was doing. He didn’t just kill, he
corrected .

He had placed a defining play in the game that Vale had set up for him. Because now, he
knew.

Lucien Vale. His mysterious investor, his strange aesthetic rival, the persistent itch under his
skin, was not some eccentric voyeur. He was Coil .
A detective. A trap. A performance.

Light's revelation hadn’t scared him. It had ignited him. He had stared truth in the face and
had kept writing.

Let the man watch. Let him hover and pry. I am a necessary evil.

Now he was paying for it.

Walking around the set in a sleepy haze, smiling politely at passing assistants, and going
through the motions of it like a puppet being dragged along strings.

No amount of coffee burned hot enough. No serum cold enough to erase the bags blooming
under his eyes. Even his stylist had paused, brushing a thumb under Light’s eye and frowning
before quietly applying more concealer.

He looked off.

He felt alive.

________________________

The shoot dragged.

Light hit his marks, tilted his jaw, blinked on cue. It was all reflex. The director kept telling
him to “soften up,” as if the camera could detect the sharp molten gears under his skin. He
could barely see straight. His vision clouded with static thoughts:
What you do when you think you’re not seen.

The cards.

Those eyes.

He was bearing witness to what Vale had pushed him to become.

He wasn’t scared.

He was building something again. After days of stillness, the machine inside him had roared
back to life. He’d stepped out of one mask, only to find another waiting. It made him furious
as well as grateful. The game wasn’t over.

It was just becoming worthy of him.

He was still seated in his makeup chair, staring at the blur of himself in the mirror, when the
door opened and Takada stepped in like a storm disguised as silk.

Her heels clicked across the floor. Dark red lips. No patience left in her, it seemed.

“You look like death warmed over.” She said, “And not in the way we usually aim for.”

Light smiled faintly, blinking slowly. “You always know how to flatter me.”

She crossed her arms and sighed, “But–The edge still works. There’s something a little
more…Wild behind your eyes today. Keep it. Just maybe drink some water.”
“Noted,” he murmured.

Takada shifted her weight. “There’s something else.”

He glanced up.

“There’s a small party tonight. Industry people. Designers, investors, and a few directors with
too much money and not enough taste. Normally, I’d decline it. But there’s talk someone’s
shopping around for a new campaign, and I want your face to be the one they remember.”

Light’s reflection, blinking back at him, hollow-eyed, beautiful, just on the edge of
dangerous.

He straightened and turned to face Takada.

She smiled, knowing he had taken the bait.

“I’ll send the address. Try not to be late…Or ruin anyone’s life.”

Light smiled back cooly.

“No promises.”

________________________
L sat in the dark, feet pulled to his chest, long fingers curled around a porcelain teacup. The
sun peeked through the pulled curtains of his floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse.
Casting fractured grids of light across his floor. He hadn’t moved in hours.

His monitors were on in front of him. Four of the screens were muted surveillance feeds that
looped without sentiment. Hotel hallway. Elevator. Lobby entrance. The hallway outside of
Light's suite. He could have gone all the way and set up cameras within Light's room…but he
wouldn't go that far. Yet.

Another monitor had a still frame of Light Yagami. Shirt half-off, caught in the moment
where motion became a still sculpture. The edge of his clavicle jutting like a blade, sweat
making some of his hair cling to the curve of his neck, mouth parted. A moment no one else
was meant to see. Just for him.

L had taken the image himself.

Untouched by the retouching teams and lighting crews. Just a freeze-frame, plucked from
surveillance of Light’s set. Captured in secret. Unethically.

He hadn’t sent it to Watari. He hadn’t archived it with the others. It lived only here, held in
the artificial light of his monitor. Just for his eyes.

He started at it until the angel began to feel impossible. Until the image rearranged itself
behind his eyes.

Obsession was too imprecise.

This was something cleaner. Sharper. Like a wire pulled tight enough to hum. A needle to the
nerve.

The killings had started again. Fast, specific, brutal. Dozens upon dozens of people in one
night, strung together like pearls on a chain. Men with ties to corruption. Human traffickers,
political figures, each one dropped like a match in oil. No clear pattern, but a rhythm. A
signature. L recognized it clearly.

It could be Kira.

It could be Light. Reaching for a hold. Trying to keep an ego intact.

He didn’t know. Not yet.

More so, he didn’t have proof.

But he felt it. Deep within himself, where instinct overran logic. The way Light looked at the
cameras that day. Looked at him. The practiced indifference. The glint of something coiled so
tightly behind those eyes, ready to pop. It wasn’t fear. It was far from it. Performance.

Light wasn’t hiding.

If he was Kira, he was sending a message.

A declaration. A challenge.

L leaned forward, eyes narrowing. He wasn’t afraid either. A simple truth that L was certain
of. Not the truth of Light Yagami and not of Kira. Though maybe because they are the same
person. Maybe not. But the shape of the game was forming. The architecture of it, designed
for two.

He watched the footage again. Not because he needed to, but because Light wanted him to.
Kira wanted him to. Because maybe, just maybe, they were the same.

It was a dare.
Light wasn’t afraid, L thought.

More than that: He’s enjoying this.

L could feel it in the pattern of the deaths. The deliberate exposure. This wasn’t someone
running from justice, but someone who was creating their own version of it. Setting the
board. Baiting the trap. Daring him to make his move.

A call chimed through the silence.

“Put it through,” L murmured to the air.

Watari’s face appeared in the corner of his monitor. Composed, as always. White gloves, dark
suit, a crisp edge to every angle. Yet fatigue still lingered there, softening the corners of his
eyes.

“It’s done,” he said. “The task force is assembled. They’ll arrive in Tokyo within forty-eight
hours. I’ve secured the top floor of the old Interpol office. Cleansed. Shielded. Private.”

L traced a finger along the rim of his teacup and said nothing.

Watari’s mouth pulled into something dry and familiar. “Still watching him?”

“He wanted me to,” L said softly.

Watari raised a brow.

“He’s taunting me,” L continued. “The killing. The timing. The escalation. He’s saying he’s
not afraid. That he’s ready to play. He thinks I’ll keep up. Or maybe he’s hoping I won’t”

Watari folded his hands in front of him. “And what do you hope?”

L’s eyes flicked towards the image of him. “That Kira will make a mistake.”

Watari blinked calmly. “And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll have to make him.” L curled his knees tighter beneath his chin. “Or I’ll have to.”

Watari didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had shifted slightly. Gentler, but
with an edge to it, L didn’t enjoy. “You’re walking a very fine line, L.”

“I know.”

“There’s something in your tone that worries me.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I don’t want careful,” Watari said firmly. “I want distance.”

L exhaled through his nose, eye slipping down to his knees. “It’s too late for that.”

His eyes drifted back up to his screens, catching on Light. His image burned in front of him.
Beautiful, thoughtless, ethereal. A boy playing god. Or maybe a god pretending to be a boy.
Or maybe a boy caught up in something too vast to understand.
Watari’s voice lowered. “He’ll destroy you if you let him.”

L didn’t deny it.

Watari leaned forward slightly. “You still have a choice, L. Before this gets personal.”

“It’s already personal.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

L’s eyes were still focused on the screens in front of him. They didn’t stray for even a
second.

“I’ll see them soon.”

“Yes..” Watari said with a sigh. “Soon.”

The call disconnected, and the silence returned. Everything was in its place like it had been
before. Yet, the room felt different. The air felt thinner, charged with something unspeakable.
The city outside pulsed like a living thing. The monitors hummed a low electric hymn.

L closed his tabs one by one. The official investigation was moving forward. Interpol had
given them full jurisdiction. The task force was en route. They wanted Resolution. They
wanted blood.

But L?

L wanted the truth. Even if it meant standing in its fire.

He reached to the side of his desk and pulled a black velvet box from one of his drawers.
Inside, nestled in soft fabric, lay a second ring. Identical to the one he had sent to Light. A
mirror. A mark. A silent message.

He turned it between his long, pale fingers, feeling the cold weight of it. A coldness that
somehow grounded him. It was more than just a symbol of challenge or control. It was a
tether. A promise not yet spoken aloud, hovering between provocation and surrender,
between hunter and prey.

The ring was no longer just an object. It was a statement. A question. Not for the sake of
theatrics. Not as a calculated move in their endless game. It was for symmetry. For the fragile
balance that tethered them both.

Detective and suspect.

Man and myth.

Kira and Light Yagami.

Whichever he was.

________________________

The police report was closed, the file sealed with the official's certainty.

Accidental death. Suspected Kira involvement. No leads.

Naomi Misora didn’t buy it.

She’d never believed in accidents.

She sat in her small Tokyo flat, surrounded by what the NPA had left her behind: a few
documents, Raye’s badge, and the cold silence that came from having no one left to answer
to.

She clicked through her digital case log. Private, off-network, something she’d kept hidden
even from her old colleagues. Raye had been investigating Kira. Assigned to surveillance a
high-value suspect. Then, within twenty-four hours, he was dead. The life she knew was
over.

No cause. No trace. Nothing but fear in the eyes of the other agents who wouldn’t even speak
his name.

She was different. Naomi knew how to look.

She’d spent weeks building the timeline herself. Piecing together surveillance footage from
train stations, tapping time stamps from cameras that NPA had overlooked. Raye had been
following someone that day.

She paused the footage. Zoomed in.

A tall boy. Clean-cut. Handsome. A student’s bag. Calm eyes.

She hit another button and pulled up a different file.

Light Yagami.

She’d seen the name before, but only in passing. Attached to university records, modeling
contracts, a family file with the NPA that no one wanted to touch. Son of Chief Soichiro
Yagami. Golden boy.
But here he was, on camera. Same train, same time. Too perfect to ignore.

Naomi stared at the still frame. At his face. How composed he looked. Like someone who
already knew he was safe. Her gut twisted.

Raye had mentioned a boy once. Back when they were them. Back when things made sense.
Offhand, in bed, while untieing the nerves of a long day. “Just a college kid,” he’d said. “But
something about him…doesn’t sit right.”

Naomi had laughed at the time.

She wasn’t laughing now.

She looked hollowly at Light’s image again. The shape of his mouth, the certainty in his eyes.
She didn’t know how yet, but he was involved.

And if he was Kira–

No. She wouldn’t jump that far.

Not yet.

But she’d get close. She’d find a way in. She always did.

Her eyes didn’t leave the screen until they started to blur with tears. Making it impossible to
stare any longer as she closed her laptop and pressed her palms against her eyes. Shaking
with quiet sobs and curling into herself tightly, as if the pressure could recreate what she had
lost.
This wasn’t about justice anymore.

It was personal.

The hunt had begun.

Raye’s death will have meant something. She would make sure of it.
 Impression of a Stranger
Chapter Summary

Another one of my favorites to write. They want each other so bad.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The gathering has been pitched as casual and classy. An intimate celebration of the new
season’s success. The kind of industry event where half the guests had worked on the project
and the other half had talent or money. Glass walls reflected the hum of conversation, the
slow drag of fabric and perfume. From above, it looked like a still life waiting for the
moment to shatter.

L sat alone at the edge of the balcony.

He’d been early. Not because he wanted to be, because he needed to be, because Light
Yagami, soaked in his latest sin, was supposed to show up tonight. Pretending like nothing
had changed. Like dozens of men weren’t 6 feet in the ground by now. Like dozens of lives
had been extinguished like flames, as easily as blowing out a candle.

L had come under the name Ryuzaki, a small-time investor from a parent company who
didn’t say much. A man who had just enough clout to be nodded at with vague recognition
but who could disappear into a crowd without anyone thinking much of it.

It was a persona he used when charm was required. Quiet money. Polite interest. Disinterest,
mostly.

He was barefoot, as always. No one commented. At this kind of party, it only made him seem
eccentric and rich enough to pull it off.
His toes curled over the cool marble edge of the balcony. Below, the room swam in warm
gold and low light. Formal, but with just enough wine to oil the bones of the industry. Loosen
thoughts and make the room feel warm. No pretense of glamor. Just the present certainty of
it.

Art directors brushing shoulders with editors. Designers speaking in long, fluid gestures.
Flash cameras blooming like stars with each picture.

He watched, quietly sipping a vibrant mango cocktail. The kind of drink that glowed orange
and smelled like candied perfume. Artificial and overconfident. Too bright, too sweet, too
eager to be liked.

He hadn’t ordered the slush in his hand. It had simply been passed to him by some overly
attentive hostess, assuming he’d want what everyone else was having. He could have set it
down. He should have, but it gave his hands something to do. Holding the glass, rolling the
stem between his fingers, watching the condensation trail down and gather at the base. It kept
him from biting his nails.

The party was already in full swing when he finally slipped into the room. He arrived late.
Fashionably. Deliberately.

The color of him moved first. Pure and unbroken. True black, from his suit to his shoes. The
kind of black you wear when you’ve finished killing and come to collect the praise. A
funeral.

L knew who it was before he saw the face.

Light moved like a ripple across water. Black like mourning.

He looked…calm.
Pleased, even. His expression carried none of the strain L had expected to find after the last
few days. After what he’d done. After how many he’d done it to.

L couldn’t say he was surprised.

His presence didn't announce itself. It arrived, as though the room had been waiting, and
sighed when he stepped through. The missing piece of their puzzle. One of his managers
greeted him with outstretched arms, glowing. He clasped Light by the shoulders with the ease
of someone who’d known him for years, but with a hunger of someone who never really
had.

The smile wasn’t for Light; it was for the brands hovering around the edges of the party. The
executives pretending not to watch. The stylists sipping wine and waiting to pounce.

L couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he could see the way the manager leaned in. Eager
and almost breathless. As if Light Yagami were not a person but a commodity about to be
bought or bartered. He gestured to someone behind him, a man in a double-breasted suit from
a rival label, then back to Light, like a magician presenting a trick.

The stylists clasped Light’s hands. Assistants swarmed. Cameras were raised and lowered.

No one knew. No one saw the red still wet on his hands.

Light stood there like he hadn’t damned an entire wing of humanity with his beautiful hands.
He was here, alive in the aftermath. Being adored. Being touched. Being shown off by his
manager.

L watched him gesture towards Light’s jawline, the way he tucked a finger beneath it like
Light was a sculpture. He was selling him, but not in a way Light seemed to mind. He took in
the praise like it was overdue, and smiled with his whole mouth. Tilted his chin at
compliments, nodded at the praise.
He hadn’t seen him yet.

That was part of the game. Waiting for the moment Light would.

_________________________

Light hadn’t expected to feel so alive when he stepped in, but he did. The glances. The hush.
The quiet flare of awe. His manager was at his side in moments, launching into introductions,
boasting his genius. Light smiled.

He drank it in, letting the parise fill the cold space he didn’t know how to warm himself from.
He drank bitter champagne. Dry, crisp, a coating of cool triumph on his tongue. He could feel
eyes on him like electric currents trailing up his spine. The worship. The focus. The soft glare
of cameras trailed him like moths to a rare flame.

By the time he raised his glass to a toast, he’d found his element. The dark silk of his suit felt
like armor. Impenetrable.

They should worship this. They should choose to kneel.

He’d finished what he needed to finish. Now he walked in the aftermath, undefeated.

_________________________

From the edge of the gallery floor, a woman with a camera moved like smoke, intentional and
practiced. She didn’t linger. Didn’t angle herself like the other, hoping to be seen. She wore
her anonymity like armor. A shark jacket, blunt bangs, neutral tones. Nondescript.
Professional.

L saw her
Not just a woman with a camera. Naomi Misora.

The way she adjusted her lens without ever really focusing on anything. The way her weight
stayed on the balls of her feet, ready to pivot or vanish. Her hair was darker now, cropped
shorter. Her body language was less open, more tempered, but the core of her hadn’t
changed.

She wasn’t part of anything official anymore. Especially not the Kira investigation. Hadn’t
been for months. But her silence, her absence, hadn’t meant surrender. L knew what she’d
lost.

Raye.

He felt the name move through him like a swallowed pin.

Naomi didn’t look at him. Didn’t need to. Her eyes tracked Light distantly as if memorizing
the cut of his silhouette. She wasn’t here for socializing or art, and she wasn’t here to be seen.
She was here for something that bled. For a second, L wasn’t sure whether her presence made
him feel reassured or not.

He watched from above, then exhaled softly and moved.

He descended the stairs like an afterthought, slipping through conversations like static
between radio channels. Not quite ignored. Not quite noticed he traced the edge of the
gathering, orbiting Light’s radius without making contact. Closer now. Listening to the way
the other spoke around him. How they praised his instincts, his presence, his vision. How
Light accepted it all like a king receiving tribute.

L’s fingers tighten around the glass just as someone touched his shoulder.
“Ryuzaki, there you are.”

Light’s manager stood in front of him, smiling at him in an overstretched kind of way that
people do when they’re proud to show off what they think they’ve earned.

“I’ve heard about you. I’ve been looking for you. I want you to come meet our star.”

L didn’t answer right away. He took one more look at Light across the room, his expression
unreadable behind the rim of that too-bright cocktail.

He followed Light’s manager through the soft tide of guests until the back of Light’s head
came into view. Motionless in regal black. Greif made into style. He had murdered and been
adored for it.

“Light,” His manager said, breathless, “this is Ryuzaki. He’s with one of the backers. Quiet
but very supportive. Don’t let the drink fool you– I’ve heard he’s sharp.”

L was led forward, but Light didn’t react right away. He barely looked, probably assuming
another devoted fan. Ready to endure another session of someone gushing all over him.
Another fan, another investor, another man trying to make him theirs.

But then his eyes caught the shape of L’s eyes.

Not the face. Not the voice.

The eyes . There was no disguising those eyes.

Lucien Vale. Eraldo Coil. Him.

That was the crack growing in his perfect world.

Light didn’t move. Not at first.

Then his smile flickered over his face. A twitch, almost invisible. A blink a half-second too
long. His posture didn’t change, but his focus shifted, sharply, like an animal scenting blood
under perfume. He shook L’s hand absently.

That’s when it really hit. Recognition. Deep and biblical.

This was the hunter at the edge of the map.

The stain that wouldn’t wash from the cuff of Light’s divine vision.

The man destined to end him.

“Sorry,” Light said. “I didn’t catch your name?”

Light’s eyes were fully on him now. They were not the eyes of a man seeing something new.
They were the eyes of a man remembering something intimate.

Something that had already happened.

L allowed a faint smile. “Ryuzaki.”

It was slow. Just enough weight to make it sound real. L offered his glass, a soft smile
curving his lips in a devilish smirk. “Delighted to celebrate with you,” he said, voice smooth
and deep.
Light wasn’t smiling now. He wasn’t pleased or wary but unsheilded, caught in inevitable
gravity. Holding his glass close to him. They were watching each other like mirrors with guns
pressed against the glass. Words only came because silence would be too conspicuous.

“You’re an investor?” Light asked.

“In a loose sense.”

“What sort of investments?”

L smiled again, smaller this time. “The kind that pays off in pattern recognition. The
occasional gamble is all.”

Light’s eyes narrowed slightly, strained politeness dripping off his words. “How bold of
you.”

L shrugged. “Sometimes it takes boldness to see through the noise.”

Light’s manager was already distracted, whisked away by someone else. It left them there,
standing too close, two actors in the same spotlight, each pretending it wasn’t burning.

L lifted his glass, the drink catching light like trapped honey.

“Champagne? Or something more…fruity?”

Light didn’t look directly at him. “I’ll stick with this.” He took a slow sip. “I prefer bitter.”
Not quite a refusal, just a quiet line drawn.

“Champagne,” L murmured, studying the glass as it softly tapped against Light’s teeth.

“It suits the night,” Light replied, voice clipped.

“It suits your palate,” L said, tone casual, almost fond. Almost. “Cold. Sharp. Just dry enough
to be interesting”

Light’s gaze flicked, unamused, to the drink in L’s hand. “Better than something sugary and
confused.”

L smiled, amused. “Touche.”

A pause.

He let the word hang between them like a dropped thread. Light didn’t pick it up.

Instead, he turned slightly, body angling away slightly. Deflection. Disinterest. A

performance of casual intrigue, but his hand was tight on the stem of the glass now, and he
hadn’t looked away.

“You look familiar,” Light said finally.

“People tell me that often.”

“Do they?”
L studied the way Light stood. Balanced. Perfectly centered. No tells. No sweat. The only
betrayal was the flicker of his pupils. The knowledge just beneath the skin. They weren’t
speaking in code; they were the code.

Every glance was an equation. Every breath, an encrypted line. The silence between them
grew. They didn’t speak the words circling beneath it.

Kira .

Detective .

Lucien .

Murderer .

Instead, they watched each other. Quietly. Calculating how far the other would go without
saying it. Without needing to.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you at any of our shoots,” Light continued, voice idle but watching.
“Not under that name.”

“I prefer to observe from a distance,” He said softly, not quite smiling. “People reveal more
when they think they’re alone.”

Light’s expression didn’t shift, but his posture adjusted by a degree. Angling his shoulder
away, like fencing. One foot forwards, blade hidden in the sleeve.

“Then you must find this setting disappointing,” Light said, tone polite. “Very little room for
secrets in a room full of cameras.”
“On the contrary,” L said. “Cameras don’t catch everything. Not the right things, anyway.”

This was the closest either of them had come to a confession or an accusation.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Light said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

They alone were in their own world. The noise around them dimmed to static, like a set
fading to black before a scene begins. The air grew thin, and everything outside their radius
became distant. Color, voice, form, all blurred to suggestion.

L leaned in slightly, the movement casual, almost curious. “Your performance,” He said
cooly, “is quite effective.”

Light’s smile was a blade honed on ego. “Which one?”

L answered faster than he should’ve. “All of them.”

That was the slip.

The tiny fracture where he could see Light for what he was.

There it was again. The current. Invisible, but lethal. A wire stretched once again between
them, humming. No one else could hear it, but they could. Every syllable was laced with
acid. Every silence an act of aggression.

The pause that followed was not empty, but filled with acknowledgment. Of danger. Of
recognition. Pulling them inwards.
Light broke it first. He exhaled, feigning composure. He turned away. A slow, precise pivot.
His shoulder brushed L’s as he passed.

They didn’t speak again.

He didn’t look back.

It was as though the exchange hadn’t happened at all, but both of them hesitated in that sliver
of contact. A pause neither admitted. Halved. Checked.

Light had smelled stale violence and sweetness. L smelled like fruit and ruin, like something
tender that knew how to destroy.

L saw something divine and irreparable in Light’s back, the others suit a blazing black. Light
didn’t wear black; he weaponized it. Sanctified, defiant, holy in his hunger.

In that space, that pause, they knew.

They left each other a message across the brushing silk of proximity:

This isn’t over, and it will be beautiful when it ends.

The conversation with Light had ended, at least on the surface. The air around L still
hummed with something unspent, something bruised and sharp-edged. He stood motionless,
parsing the threads that had passed between them. Thinking over every flicker of pupil, every
carefully chosen syllable.

A soft shutter click threaded through the music.

He turned, subtle as a shift in wind.

There she was again. Closer this time.

Naomi had stepped just beyond the crowd, angled near a table of untouched champagne
flutes. Her camera lowered from her eye. No flash. No words. Just the faintest stillness of
someone holding their breath through memory.

She didn’t look at him right away, still focused on where Light had gone. Still visible in the
distance, orbiting praise, unaware of the quiet storm blooming behind him.

Only then did she glance toward L. The contact was brief. Not accusatory. Not conspiratorial.
Just something forged from shared loss.

She had loved Raye, and Light had presumably killed him.

She didn’t need to wear it on her face; he presence was the wound.

No signal passed between them.

He let her vanish again into the folds of the party.

Naomi would play it quietly. She wasn’t here for closure. She was here for justice.

So was L.

That’s what he kept telling himself. It was all of the case. For the world that’s cracking under
Light’s hand.
He was here for justice.

That was the truth at the heart of this. The maneuvering, the names, the aliases. He’d
followed killers before, countless times, yet none were like Light.

Never had someone looked back at him like Light did, who smiled like he knew L’s thoughts
before he did. Looked at him like he’d already won.

L shoved his hands into his pockets. Glancing around the party with disinterest.

I’ll stop him. When the time comes, I’ll lay the trap, close the cuffs, and make sure the god
falls like any man.. We’ll see if he is mortal after all.

That’s the plan.

When the evidence surfaced and the last page turned, he would be the one to put Kira behind
bars. He would watch the fall without blinking.

Yet some small, silent nerve refused to agree. It pulsed with something cold. Not sympathy.
Not even fascination. Just a flicker of hesitation he couldn’t quite locate.

He turned from it.

From Naomi’s watchful lens.

From the stain blooming behind Light’s eyes.

There would be time for justice.

 He wouldn’t miss.

Chapter End Notes

Thanks for reading! This is the last of the chapters I have prewritten. Everything from
here on out will be posted...sometime. But hopefully this will motivate me to write more
consistently! I'll see you soon. ☆
End Notes

This is my first ever fic. I love these little glorbos so much it hurts. Hope you enjoy the slow-
motion trainwreck that these two are. I couldn't find a Model AU of them, so I had to write it
myself. Smh. ☆

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!