InsaneJournal

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Oh fuck this one is just plain BLAAAH. This prompt brought to me looking at a barcode on the back of a picture frame!

Title: Painted Dreams
Author/Artist: temptationwaits
Fandom: Death Note/Another Note
Pairing: Beyond Birthday/L
List and #: Alternate #9 - mardi gras
Rating: PG-13 (profanity, mild violence, mild sexuality)
Disclaimer: Death Note, L, etc. © Ooba Tsugumi, Obata Takeshi, etc. Beyond Birthday, Another Note, etc. © Ishin Nishio. Song lyrics used as from "Welcome To My Nightmare" by Alice Cooper and "The Checkered Demon" by AFI.
A/N: Spoilers for L, B and Another Note.

It had been just a year before B would leave the Whammy Orphanage, to become an outcast and a criminal mastermind.

At the time, however, he was merely just another special, gifted orphan. Like a good deal of the residents, such as L and a little boy named Near, he enjoyed spending time away from everyone else. While Roger and the other caretakers much preferred to teach in groups, the amount of socially awkward children increased as the years went onward. Because of this, most of these children learnt on their own, taught themselves and didn't get as much attention as those who attended classes.

B had been the second orphan to be raised in Whammy's. Even then, he never cared to get to know a single person, never cared to get along with anyone. He hid away from the public, taught himself everything he knew now. Because of his reclusive nature, and sometimes... frightening behavior, everyone thought it best to leave him to himself and his own devices. They attempted to crack into B's little bubble after A died, in fear that another orphan would kill themselves from buckling under the stress. B pushed them out until he was alone again.

This evening, the children had all been herded outside to watch the fireworks for New Years. All of them bundled up in warm clothes, hauled into vans to the nearby park, where the fireworks could be seen more clearly. As usual, B stayed behind; nobody even attempted to ask him, for they knew from past experiences he would never leave.

But B hadn't been the only one to stay behind.

One of the teachers had started an Art class. As usual, Linda was top of the class, getting the highest grades. Today's lesson involved painting portraits you've only seen once, for three whole minutes; after the time was up, you were to paint that picture from memory alone. Most of the kids did it easily, of course. The class ended an hour later, and most of the incomplete paintings were left out to dry. The paints and brushes had all been stocked away in a shelf across the room.

B had been wandering the halls; he hadn't done so in a long time, since there were always crowds or somebody there. But now the place was dead silent, deserted, expect for Whammy, who was in his office doing intensive paperwork and filing. He and L had only just now returned from a case in China (authorities were completely clueless about the case for two weeks now, but L blew them out of the water solving it three days later), and thus had a lot of catching up to do.

Just as he was making his way to the kitchen for something to drink, he heard a clattering noise from the Art Room. He knew immediately who it had to be--no one else would be here except Whammy, who was in his office, and... Quietly he opened the door and saw L sitting on the floor, surrounded by papers. He was hunched over something B couldn't see, but it seemed he was working quite attentively on it.

"If you're going to watch, you might as well come see what I'm doing."

B smiled slowly. L could detect even the slightest noise; it was quite amusing. But he obliged the request and walked into the room, stopping right behind L. He watched as L's shoulders tensed, his spine pushed into his back, barely seen from under his baggy white shirt. B slowly walked around L and squatted in front of him, on the other side of his little project, which turned out to be a painting. Containers of paint surrounded the both of them.

"Aren't you a bit too old to be painting?" B humored.

L humored him right back: "Aren't you a bit too young to be a peeping, dirty old man?"

B smirked. "What exactly are you painting?" he inquired.

"Something. Something I saw," L answered, eyes still fixed on the paper. He ran the black tip of the brush along the paper, tracing a thick dark outline around his sketch. It looked something like a human, but without features, and plump and awkward. Yet there were no pieces to distinguish it from being anything else, no nose, no eyes, no mouth.

"Something you saw?" B mused. He watched with red eyes the paintbrush move in thick, long strokes. "In China?"

"No," L answered. He looked up at B, who looked up at him. L's big black eyes were wide, darker, the rings around his eyes thicker. He looked frightening; his mouth was a flat line, his eyebrows all but nothing, his expression clearly empty--but his eyes, his eyes spoke. They made up for the lack of emotion on his pale face. His eyes expressed something of intrigue... and fear?

"What are you afraid of?" B whispered; he had picked this up quite easily. He repressed the urge to grin. L was vulnerable, weak, if you knew where to look, what string to pull. "What was this dream about?"

L's big eyes fell back to the painting. "I don't remember the details," he answered. He dipped his brush into the cup of water, spun it in circles. The water had all ready turned an ugly, smoggy black. "All I remember is this." He dried the brush on a paper towel, then dipped it in the brown canister. "This thing, it was hanging there, it said nothing, it did nothing, it merely hung there in the darkness." He started to fill in the body with the brown color. "Sometimes, it felt as if it were multiplying from four, to three, to two, then back to one."

"Is that all?" B inquired. He pressed a finger to his bottom lip and looked upward. "What an ominous dream."

"I guess. Maybe. Maybe not," L murmured, shrugging. He finished with the coloring, swishing the brush in the murky water. "It could just be a simple dream for all I know."

"Dreams can mean many things."

"Perhaps."

B asked, "Is this all you saw in your dream? A human-like creature?"

"It was definitely not human, though it had the shape of one," L disagreed. He dipped the brush into the black paint again, streaked the brown human-thing with lines. "It was more like... a doll."

"A doll?" B echoed, smiling. "A doll scares you that much?"

"Not so much as frighten as intrigue," L corrected. Once again the utensil was in the cup. He blew gently on the paper and held it up by his thumbs and index fingers alone. B could see the doll's shadow on the back of it. "I wonder if it's a sign of some sort. You know? You believe dreams are symbolic, often memories, thoughts or feelings deep in your subconscious that come out once your brain shuts down for rest. Speaking only in riddles; perhaps we are never meant to know the answer clearly to some of these questions--maybe it is up to us to discover them on our own?"

"Or," B suggested, smoothly, "they are warnings? Vision of the future? Humans have always believed to have a spiritual connection, in some form of another. Faith in deities, supernatural powers, encounters with spirits, third eyes... Perhaps this could be true. Perhaps all humans have spiritual connections, and these connections can be dreams and nightmares. A way for us to see into our future, a way to warn ourselves of upcoming disasters or events." He paused to laugh, a bit too loudly. He grinned ear to ear. "I bet you're thinking this is all silly fantasy talk. None of it makes logical sense."

"Dreams indeed can represent present reality and events," L assured, but didn't return the smile, "so you may never know."

B rapped his fingers on his knees. "The thing is, L," he purred, and outside the first firework exploded in red and white in the sky, "do you believe this is a warning?"

L stared at him, those eyes wide again. He answered a moment later: "I do."

B grinned with teeth. "If you're afraid of it..." He reached out a hand and snatched the paper from L. He held onto both sides, his smile hidden behind it. "... Destroy it." He ripped the painting in two, L's eyes widening slightly. He started to shred the two pieces into smaller pieces, into tiny pieces, and so on and so forth and L noted a look of insanity in his eyes as he ripped the paper up. A certain gleam of madness in his beam. "Rip it apart. Kill it. Eliminate, annihilate, destroy it," he sneered, until the paper was nothing but specs of white, black and brown.

L queried quietly as another firework bloomed in the sky outside: "Did it, perhaps, excite you, Beyond Birthday?"

B rose his eyes to L's face. L picked up a scrap of paper and turned it in his lithe fingers. "The passion you just displayed. It wasn't fear, it wasn't amusement. It was excitement. It was desire, it was hunger and thirst." He tilted his head to the side, held the shred of paper to his eyes. "When you saw that painting, what did you really see?"

B thought for a second, thought seriously for a moment, before his grin reappeared. "The future," he crooned. A firework exploded in the dark sky, beautiful greens, blues and pink, and at its brightest, just before it would fade to nothing, B was on top of L, pinning him to the ground, lips pressed hard to his mouth. Both L's and B's eyes were open, black staring into devious red.

The lights died. B fell off L with a large thud after a kick in the chest, landing on the paint. L sat up, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. B chuckled deeply in his throat and slouched forward, his back sticky with paint, his hand on top of a puddle of spilt black. "Did I scare you?" B whispered. He fell onto his knees, reached out his wet hand and touched L's cheek. L eyed him, a hand print of black moist on his cheek.

"You don't scare me," L answered, B's thumb tracing the corner of his mouth with darkness, "Beyond Birthday."

"That's a shame," B sighed. He thrust L forward, grabbing a fistful of black hair in his stained hand. L grit his teeth and shoved a hand into his chest, hard enough to knock air from B's lungs. B let him go; L lost balance, dropping to hands and knees into the spilt paint. B recovered and leapt on the boy's back, forcing him to lay flat on the ground. B laid out on top of him, pressing his mouth to the back of L's ear. "I would die happily if I could make you scream in terror. How orgasmic that would be. Just the thought is making me hard."

"I can't fulfill that request of yours," L retorted. He managed to quickly twist under B's weight, backhanding his face with his red soaked hand.

B sat up, head snapped to the side. Slowly, he looked back at L, the colors red and orange streaked across his face. B smiled darkly, bangs hanging over one of his narrowed red eyes. "I don't need your permission."

The two wrestled with one another, as the window above head displayed explosions of colors, red, blue, green, purple, white. The air was full of smoke and thundering howls. Paint flew into the air, splattered against the walls, the floor, on their bodies, drenching and soaking them. So many colors, so many lights, so many noises, so much commotion, both boys faces hidden behind masks of blurred paint. It was a lot like a party, a Mardi Gras, a festivity, full of rawness and emotion, hate and love.

L was on his back again, B's blue and black hands squeezing his shoulders. Their heaving chests were painted with a variety of colors, L's shirt having been ripped and torn. The paint dripped down their legs, splattered across their arms, hair streaked, faces red, black, orange and blue, pale skin peeking out between slices.

"Even when you look dirty and covered in filth, you're still beautiful," B purred. He dropped his painted face to L's, licking the tip of his wet nose. "You'll make a beautiful corpse, even if it means you're ripped to shreds, way beyond recognition. Let's hope such nightmares never come true, however." He chuckled as he sat up, straddling L's hips. "Tell me, L," he crooned, "do you believe you can change destiny so easily?"

"Destiny is what you make it," L answered, lights from outside flickering in the dim room.

"Do you think you can alter your dreams?" B inquired. He squeezed L's shoulders tighter. "Do you think dreams are warnings to help or hinder you?"

L stared deep into B's crimson red eyes. "We were not meant to know until the very end."

B laughed at that. "Try as we may to stop fate, to break destiny, death is inevitable in the end."

"Are the numbers you see always the same?" L was the one asking now. "Can they be changed?"

B sized up his painted body and smiled darkly. "No," he whispered, leaning forward, "never."

And as B's face closed in on his, as his lips touched L's, L couldn't help but think about B's red eyes, those dangerous, foreboding eyes, and his red and orange painted face.

Like fire, burning up just like fire.