Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

A/N: This is a little different than my usual. The sentiment is, at least.

It took me months to convince L that I was in love with him.

He's not stupid, not by a long shot. He knows not to give himself away, and he had managed to make it to twenty-five without even a kiss. As L, he knew he was worth more than that. Possibly worth more than anyone could afford. If he simply gave himself away, fell in love with someone who didn't return the feelings one-hundred percent, the whole world would suffer. And if some person hurt him? Destroyed him? Or, really, if that person even distracted him for a few moments from his unrelenting, impartial, and cold pursuit of absolute justice, then what was he?

Simple. He didn't let it happen, and he never gave himself away.

However, that's not to say he was asexual. He took notice of physical attractiveness, he just didn't act upon it, and I knew this because the first moment I walked into the room- the first time we ever met- I could feel his eyes on me, one slow glide from top to bottom and then back up to my face. I don't think he was expecting me to look in real life even better than I did in the surveillance cameras. I've been around for eighteen years and there are very, very few people who don't think I'm too good to be true.

And since L was not asexual, as much as he pretended to be, he wasn't immune. He wanted me terribly (if the dreams he had where he moaned my name and woke up sticky and damp were anything to go by) but still, he would not give himself away to someone who didn't love him.

I did everything I could to convince him. I made him cakes. I told him secrets. I gave him hugs and pressed my body into him, lingered a little too long. I gazed at him and complimented him and wasn't always subtle when one of us was showering. When I felt it had been long enough, I told him I loved him whenever the opportunity arose. Quietly, sadly, late at night, I would say, "I love you, you know." He would always answer with a tired, "I know, Light-kun."

Somewhere along the way, I began to notice that his fingers lingered a little too long on me too, his staring sessions got longer and less focused, and he offered me a slice of cake every now and then (which for him is like a damn engagement ring). He fell in love, beyond just his physical desire for me. Someone who didn't love him could hurt him. But someone who truly did could be an asset to L's regime. At least, that's what he told himself as he looked for any indication that I might not be just trying to manipulate him.

Then, three months later- three whole months!- he finally believed me when I said it. Handcuffed, we were in our bed. In the middle of the night, when I would normally be sleeping and he would normally still be on his laptop, I was awake and he was asleep.

So I woke him up with a kiss.

It was a simple, chaste kiss, but he awoke with a jerk and sat straight up and we clunked heads.

Instead of massaging my own throbbing skull, I ignored it and went immediately to him, lightly prodding his scalp all over for injuries, fingertips finally ending on his cheeks, and I looked deeply into his eyes and asked him if I had hurt him.

He froze and stared back at me, dark eyes saucers, and he couldn't say a word.

And so, slowly, tenderly, I kissed his forehead. Then his nose. "I love you, you know," I murmured, running a single finger worshipfully down along his cheekbone.

Then I placed a feather's kiss on his lips.

I felt his entire body relax and he seized my head and pressed up into the kiss, amazingly adept at it for someone who had never done it before.

And that night, finally certain, he did give himself away.

It was great. He was... really good. The sounds he made, and the way he would gasp my name, beg me nearly incoherently in English because he'd forgotten his Japanese, explicatives flying; it was the best sex of my life. And the next morning, I woke up with his arms around me, his nose in my shoulder, curled up with the world's three greatest detectives.

The best part of it was, I didn't even really love him.

Actually, I didn't even like him. He was... awkward, and wiry, and smell, and as much as I admired his brilliance I couldn't stand him as a person.

What I loved was the idea of making L- the L- fall in love with me, and getting him, through no act of force, to let me take from him something that he had never, ever given to anyone else... the idea that no one else in the world- and he'd met kings and nobles and models and presidents- had ever seen him the way I saw him, out of control, unguarded.

And for him to know, when I killed him, that I never felt anything for him at all.

For L to know that thinking Light Yagami loved him was the first and last mistake he ever made.