My First Book My First Book a Oneshot Collection Typeset, printed and bound by 3FrogsInATrenchcoat. Collection Started: 2025-04-22 Completed: 2025-05-25 10 Works by 8 Authors in 5 Fandoms Words in Total: 27,282 Sorted by fandom and addition to the collection. Table of Contents Death Note.......................................................................................................... 1 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse.............................................................. 3 Love is a Crime Unless It’s Stupider............................................................................ 23 Voltron: Legendary Defender.........................................................................41 Only the Stars................................................................................................................43 A Collision of Stars (and How They Merge)................................................................49 i got a thing for you, now (it won't go)......................................................................... 55 Boku no Hero Academia................................................................................. 71 A Final Request............................................................................................................ 73 there will be darkness again..........................................................................................83 The Sweetest That I’ve Ever Known............................................................................91 Carmen Sandiego.............................................................................................99 Safe With Me.............................................................................................................. 101 A Goofy Movie................................................................................................111 Stay Away (It’s Like That)..........................................................................................113 Binder’s Notes and Thanks......................................................................................... 124 The author’s notes and summary are after each fic. for community and love of art are what makes us create Death Note 1 2 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse the_untamed_poet25 Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/64618966. Mature, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Fandom: Death Note (Anime & Manga) Relationship: L/Yagami Light Additional Tags: Enemies to Lovers, Rivals to Lovers, Hate Sex, Love/Hate, Obsession, Unhealthy Relationships, Power Dynamics, Pining, Mutual Pining, Banter, Unhealthy fixation, Angst, Existential Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Graphic Smut, Yagami Light is Not Okay, L is Not Okay (Death Note), L Needs a Hug (Death Note), Yagami Light Needs a Hug, Manipulative Yagami Light, Manipulative L (Death Note), Metaphors, Introspection, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, no happy ending, Suggestive Themes Part 6 of Checkmate Published: 2025-04-20 Collected: 2025-04-22 Words: 4,708 3 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse S omewhere between the third cup of sugarless tea and the seventeenth insinuation that someone was hiding something (someone always was) , Light Yagami decided he hated L. Truly, deeply, sexually hated him. This was no mere academic distaste, not the disdain one feels for an inferior intellect—though Light had felt that for years and had grown bored of it. No. This was something filthier. Stickier. This was an instinct-level revulsion curled so tightly around fascination that it made him sick. L's eyes, enormous and ringed with insomnia like grave wreaths, blinked at him from across the table. “You’re glaring at me, Light-kun,” L murmured, in the same tone one might use to note the weather or a minor apocalypse. “Is it because I ate the last strawberry?” “No,” Light said sweetly. “It’s because I’m fantasizing about strangling you with your own spinal cord.” A pause. “Ah,” L replied. “So it was the strawberry.” The silence between them was not silence. It was metaphysical. It was laden. It was pregnant. It needed to be induced before it exploded into triplets of suspicion, erotic tension, and a legal deposition. They were chained together. Physically. Philosophically. Interdimensionally. The chain clinked as L reached to refill his tea. Light watched the flex of pale, tendon-laced fingers with the intensity of a starving wolf observing a deer limping just slightly. “You're such a child,” Light snapped. “And you,” L said, sipping, “are masturbating to the fantasy of your own innocence.” Light’s hand twitched. 4 the_untamed_poet L set the teacup down. “Metaphorically,” he added. “Though I would not be surprised if you did it literally. You seem very efficient.” “I’m going to kill you.” “I’m counting on it.” They stared. The air became clinical. Inevitable. Like the moments before surgery or the last seconds before a confession. There was something building here—something algebraic. Light imagined it might be the tension that precedes equations, where one side must equal the other or the whole thing collapses. He hated how L made him feel like a variable. A squirming x in a proof he could not solve. "You think you’re better than me," Light said. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an accusation. It was an epiphany choked on its own narcissism. "I know I am," L replied. His thumb hooked over the rim of his cup, dangling like a dare. "I’m the one who isn’t hiding." "I’m not hiding," Light snarled. "I’m surviving." "Same thing." "How the hell would you know?" "Because," L said, leaning in, voice dropping into that octave reserved for blackmails, bedtime stories, and orgasms, “I’m the only one who can see you clearly. Like this. Like now.” The words slapped Light across the soul. He stood so fast his chair shrieked. Their chain jerked taut. L didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. He tilted his head and looked up at Light like a dog waiting for its master to admit who taught who the trick. “You’re sick,” Light hissed. “Is that a confession or a compliment?” “You’re—” “Everything you want to be.” “—insufferable.” “Yes,” L said. “And yet. Here we are.” Silence again. Not the previous silence. This was the version you weren’t supposed to talk about. The silence under the bed. The silence that watched you undress. The silence between two people who have almost kissed and will spend the rest of their lives pretending it was nothing. Light swallowed. “You’re not special.” L stood. Slowly. Spinally. Like gravity had to ask his permission. “I am,” he said. “But not in the way you mean.” The chain jangled. L stepped forward, dragging Light into the gravity well of his stare. There was nothing there except pure calculation and the awful, blooming 5 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse warmth of understanding. Light had spent his life dissecting people like meat frogs on tiled tables. But L—L saw him. Peeled back his chest like a ribcage full of neon signs. L didn’t solve Light. He read him. And it made Light want to scream. Instead, he stepped forward too. Nose to nose. Breath to breath. “You want me to kill you.” “I want you to stop lying.” “You’re a hypocrite.” “I’m a mirror.” “You’re a fucking—” “—genius?” L suggested. His mouth curled around the word like it had a flavor he liked. “Sadist.” “Accurate.” “Freak.” “Do go on.” “I hate you.” L looked at him, really looked, the way no one had before. No admiration. No fear. Just... recognition. “I know.” The kiss didn’t happen. Not really. It was a theory of a kiss. It hovered between them, a quantum event vibrating between potential states. The tension snarled in their bones. Their hands didn’t touch. Their mouths didn’t move. But every inch of them screamed it. And Light, for once in his life, wanted something more than he wanted to win. He wanted L to lose with him. To lose into him. “Room,” L said softly. “Now.” “What?” “If we keep yelling metaphors at each other in the kitchen, Watari is going to die of embarrassment.” “You think I’m going to follow you to the bedroom just because you asked?” L turned. The chain followed. “No,” he said. “I think you’ve already decided to.” And Light—gritting his teeth, hard enough to taste god—followed. ⬪⬪⬪ They did not walk to the bedroom. They migrated. Migrated like predator and prey occupying the same body. 6 the_untamed_poet Every step was a refusal. A declaration. A clause in a legal document written in bruises and breath. The hallway lengthened with each echo of their chained footsteps, twisting into some terrible symbol—like a red string, if red strings were forged in contempt and edged lust. Light’s spine was so straight it looked carved. L’s posture was its opposite: casual, crooked, apocalyptic. One was a sword, the other a hook. And still, the chain held. Still, they moved forward. Light didn’t know whether he was being dragged or doing the dragging. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that was the whole point. The bedroom was a crime scene of neutrality. A shared space neither of them had bothered to claim. One bed. Two pillows. No personality. Just the haunting sterility of a place where nothing truly honest had ever happened. Yet. Light stopped at the threshold. “This is a bad idea.” L walked in. Sat on the bed. His knees pointed in opposite directions, like the world's most horrifying puppet. “Oh, absolutely. That’s why you’re going to do it.” “Do what, exactly?” Light demanded. L looked up, eyes wide. “Confess. Crack. Come. Kill me. Pick one.” “You are the most manipulative—” “Don’t stop now. Use a bigger word. Say ‘sociopathic.’ Say ‘demonic.’ Say ‘insatiable.’ Say ‘beautiful.’ Say—” “I’m not saying that.” “—‘soulmate.’” “I will vomit on you.” L tilted his head. “How Freudian.” Light crossed his arms, muscles taut as theological strings. “What the hell is wrong with you?” “Oh, Light-kun.” L leaned back, all pale limbs and gentle apocalypse. “I was born without the part that lets people lie to themselves comfortably. You were born with nothing but that part.” “And what,” Light growled, “does that mean?” “It means we’re a matched set.” Light said nothing. Words were rotting in his mouth. The silence this time was different. This silence wasn’t metaphorical. It wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t even pregnant. It was erect. L was watching him with the maddening, tragic calm of someone who has already decided to die—but wants to make sure it’s by the right hands. "You want me to lose control," Light said, his voice quiet, flint-sharp. “I want you to stop pretending that you’re ever in control,” L murmured. 7 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse “You don’t know what I’m capable of.” “I do.” L’s eyes flashed like a gunshot through gauze. “I know exactly what you're capable of, Light Yagami. That’s why I keep pushing. That’s why I haven’t stopped. Because I want to see you break into your truest form. I want to see if the god you’re playing is a god who bleeds.” Light trembled. Just slightly. Just enough for his knuckles to ghost-white around his crossed arms. He wanted to hurt L. Not physically. Not like that. He wanted to prove him wrong. Wanted to force L into stammering, into blushing, into breaking his own rules. He wanted to fuck L’s logic until it sobbed. But first—he had to win the argument. “I don’t want you,” Light said, low and lethal. “Liar.” “I’m not like you.” “You’re exactly like me.” “You’re a monster.” “And you’re a boy who thought God would be easier to wear.” “I’m better than you.” “Then prove it.” Light took a step forward. “I could have anyone.” “Then why are you still here?” “I could kill you.” L smiled. “You already are.” The chain was no longer a symbol. It was a joke. They could’ve unchained themselves at any point, and they both knew it. The weight between them wasn’t metal. It was choice. Light was standing over L now. Close enough to smell sugar and sweat and spite. He wanted to bite L’s face off. He wanted to kiss it until it shattered. He wanted to tear L apart and bury himself in the wreckage just to see if something human remained. He didn’t move. Not yet. “You’re obsessed with me,” he said. “I am,” L replied, reverent. “Isn’t that beautiful?” “No.” “Yes. Because I don’t need to lie about it.” “I’m not lying.” “You’re doing it right now.” “I’m not.” “Then why haven’t you left the room?” 8 the_untamed_poet “I—” “Why are you still chained to me?” “Because I—” “Why,” L whispered, “do you keep waking up facing me?” Light opened his mouth. Closed it. The weight of L’s gaze was biblical. “I hate you,” he said, again, and it sounded more like a prayer this time. A confession. A chant to ward off something ancient and growing. “I love that for you,” L murmured, with all the irony of a funeral dirge in a rave. There was a pause. And then L stood. There was something about it—something slow and cataclysmic. He rose like a question finally answered. A heresy declared. He moved into Light’s space. Leaned in, almost—but didn’t kiss him. “I could destroy you,” L said. “I want you to try.” “I will dissect you. With fingers. With facts. With language.” “Do it.” “Then beg.” “Go to hell.” “I’ll meet you there.” They didn’t touch. But they wanted to. And that was the tragedy. That was the climax. That was the whole goddamn war. The air between them sizzled like a polygraph under duress. L was so close Light could count the flecks in his irises—like tealeaf detritus or data points—smoldering in a storm of unspoken theories. One breath closer and it wouldn’t be metaphor anymore. It would be treason. L’s voice was a scalpel: “Say it.” Light blinked. “Say what?” “That you want me. Just once. Say it like an admission. Say it like perjury. Say it like you mean it.” Light almost laughed. Almost. The sound caught in his throat like a verdict. “I want a lot of things,” he said instead. “You’re not on the list.” 9 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse “Liar,” L whispered, a gospel in a crime scene. “I am the list.” Light snarled, “You think this is clever? This little seduction-as-supposition act?” “It’s not seduction. It’s science.” “Oh, forgive me, detective. I didn’t realize mouth-fucking was part of the methodology.” “It is,” L replied. “Under controlled conditions. Peer reviewed.” Light exhaled sharply, halfway between fury and laughter, and that—that was the fatal error. Because in that split second—where all his walls cracked just enough to let out breath and spite and steam—L moved. He didn’t kiss Light. He collided with him. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t gentle. It was chemical warfare. Teeth, lips, heat, logic melting under friction and falsehood. L kissed like a man proving something. Light responded like a man being dared. They weren’t kissing—they were arguing without words. Duelling. Sparring. Unhinged, incandescent. Light’s hands slammed into L’s shoulders as if to push him away, but he pulled instead. L’s fingers tangled in Light’s hair like crime scene tape, like rope, like come here, prove it, show me you mean it. And still— Still— They couldn’t stop talking. Even as their mouths broke apart and gasped, Light’s voice cracked through the steam like shattered bone. “This—this means nothing—” “I know,” L panted. “That’s why it’s perfect.” “I should strangle you—” “You already are.” “Fuck you.” “Soon.” Their chain clattered like a dying metronome. They stumbled back into the bed like drunks in a courtroom. Light’s hands went to L’s throat. Not gently. Not sexually. Threateningly. But L just arched against him, eyes wild, mouth parted, breath quick. “You’re dangerous,” L said, almost admiring. “And you’re deranged.” “We’re the same.” “Don’t insult me.” “You’re insulting yourself.” “Shut up—shut up—shut up—” 10 the_untamed_poet Another kiss. Sloppier. Angrier. Hungrier. Less of a statement, more of an evacuation. It was terrifying, how easy it was to slip into it. How their bodies remembered the war and danced through it like a language. Light gripped L’s shirt like it was evidence. L bit Light’s lip like it was a thesis. Somewhere in the chaos, Light was laughing into the kiss—laughing through it—and L whispered, “See? You’re beautiful when you lose.” “Fuck you.” “You’re trying.” “I hate you—” “I believe you.” “Then why—why do you—” Light’s voice cracked. “Why do you keep pushing me like this?” L’s reply was too soft. Too cruel. Too kind. “Because you’re only honest when you’re falling apart.” And Light—Light broke something then. He didn’t know if it was in L’s mouth or in his own chest, but it snapped. The thing inside him that had always been perfect. Always composed. Always above it all. It split open and spilled everything—rage, hunger, fear, and that one black sliver of desire that pulsed with L’s name. He didn’t want to admit it. So he didn’t. He showed it with his mouth, his teeth, his hands—throttling honesty into skin. He kissed like he was trying to consume the proof. Burn the documents. Hide the body. But L, for once, was quiet. Just breathing. Just letting Light lose. And then—when the tremble hit Light’s shoulders, when the last of the words died in his throat—L reached up. Brushed his thumb under Light’s eye. And whispered, “There it is.” Light froze. He hated how gently it was said. How unbearably soft. As if L had waited for this. For this version of him. As if the real Light—Light stripped of godhood, ego, and rhetoric—was worth the investigation. “I’m not your project,” Light said, hoarse. “No,” L said. “You’re my peer review.” A beat. 11 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse And they both burst out laughing. Mad, bitter, unhinged laughter. That beautiful, horrible harmony of people who know they’re already too far gone. “God, we’re insane,” Light gasped, falling backward onto the mattress. “I’ve always been,” L said, sitting beside him, legs folding like origami. “You’ve ruined me.” “I suspect you were half-ruined when we met.” Light let his head roll sideways on the bed. Watched L in profile. He wanted to ask what the hell they were doing. But he didn’t. Because he already knew. They were building the gallows with their tongues. And waiting for each other to jump first. “Do you think—” Light hesitated. “Do you think we’ll survive this?” L looked at him. Expression unreadable. “No,” he said. “But I think we’ll make it interesting.” ⬪⬪⬪ It should’ve ended there. The kiss. The laughter like two knives learning to love each other’s edges. But of course it didn’t. Because endings required resolution. And Light and L were incapable of that. They were devoted to contradiction. So it didn’t end. It evolved—slowly, disturbingly, beautifully—into something breathless. The bed was a crime scene. They were both the murderers. Light was half-pinned beneath L now, one arm above his head, the other tracing indecisively along L’s hip like he hadn’t decided whether to shove or pull. His shirt was a twisted ruin around his ribs, and the way L was staring down at him made him feel like an equation that had finally solved itself into sin. “This is stupid,” Light said, hoarse. “This is—insane.” “Yes,” L agreed, straddling his thighs with all the grace of a ghost perched on a gravestone. “But that hasn’t stopped us before.” “You’re going to use this against me.” “Undoubtedly.” “And I’m going to let you.” 12 the_untamed_poet L tilted his head, eyes like confessionals. “Are you?” Light opened his mouth. Closed it. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I might kill you tomorrow.” “You’ve been saying that for months.” Light shoved him—not hard enough to move him, just hard enough to say I could. “You’re not making this easy.” “I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to be the control variable.” Light laughed—sharp, guttural. “Control? You?” L leaned down, slow. Deliberate. Spoke against his jaw like a thesis on temptation. “Then prove otherwise.” And Light snapped. He rolled them, chain clattering like a whip across the bedframe, and suddenly he was above, one hand pinning L’s wrists, the other sliding under his shirt like it was searching for god. “I hate you,” Light said, again, quieter now, nearer to the root of it. L nodded, eyes half-lidded. “I know.” Light bent down, dragged his tongue along L’s collarbone, slow as a sentence with no punctuation. L arched up like punctuation incarnate. “You’re sick.” “Yes.” “You like this.” “Absolutely.” Light growled and kissed him again. Sloppier. Lower. It wasn’t romantic. It was diagnostic. An autopsy of want. He didn’t know when it stopped being metaphor. Didn’t know when the hard drag of hips became the center of gravity. Didn’t know when L’s legs wrapped around his waist like the parentheses in a math problem he couldn’t solve. Everything blurred. He wanted to map L’s body like a courtroom diagram—trace every bruise, every fracture, every twisted hypothesis. He wanted to undo him. Make him say something true in a voice that wasn’t clinical. And L— L just let him. Moaning in that quiet, labored way—like surprise, like pleasure wasn’t something he was used to feeling, only observing. Light hated how beautiful it was. Hated how real it sounded. “This isn’t strategic,” Light muttered, panting against L’s skin. “No,” L whispered, “it’s pathetic.” 13 In the Garden of God, Handcuffed to a Corpse Light bit him for that. Hard. Just under the jaw. L gasped, and Light licked over it like a confession. They were rutting now, clumsy and too close, friction becoming form. The air filled with the indecent sound of need—fabric shifting, breath catching, words failing. And then— Somehow— Light slowed. Not stopped. Just slowed. His mouth softened. Became curious. Became hands that asked instead of demanded. L looked up at him. Truly looked—like he was witnessing something evolve beyond hypothesis. “Yagami-kun?” Light didn’t answer. He was kissing his way down L’s chest, tasting the fault lines of a body built on caffeine and self-denial. L’s breath hitched. His hands moved—one threading through Light’s hair, the other fisting in the sheets like he was ashamed of having nerves. “I could break you,” Light said, low against his stomach. “You already have.” Light looked up. “Then why are you still here?” L blinked. Slowly. As if the question needed to be breathed before it could be answered. “Because no one’s ever tried to break me beautifully before.” Silence. A beat of breath between bodies. And then—Light surged up, kissed him again, and this time it was different. This time it was desperate. Slippery. Half-painful. Their teeth clashed. Hands roamed. The rhythm wasn’t romantic—it was survival. Like two people fucking against the inevitable. The chain kept them close. Too close. They couldn’t escape each other, even if they wanted to. And maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they never had. Light rocked against him, growling nonsense—philosophy turned to filth. L murmured theories between kisses: "oxytocin, dopamine, the collapse of ego structures—" Light cut him off with a hand around his throat and a hissed, “Shut the fuck up.” And L did. Until the moan broke out of him. Quiet. Almost involuntary. 14