Purpose
Social Purpose
Fucking hell… What the hell did I fucking do last night to make me feel this bad? I'm sure that the fucking gods are out to get me or something. Fuck…! His head full of expletives, Kanda Yuu set about the momentous task of sitting up in his bed. Contrary to popular belief, Kanda always censored his language when it tumbled out of his mouth. Amazing since a good amount of curses normally left his mouth either way.
"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" a chipper voice made its way into Kanda's tranquility, somehow managing to mollify and further anger Kanda at the same time. How anybody could have had that much liquor and be up so early in the fucking—what time was it anyway? Noon. It was 12 pm and it was the latest Kanda had ever woken up in his entire fucking life. Cursing silently and berating the disappearance of his subconscious alarm clock, the one that woke him up every morning with the normal greeting of "Get up you son of a whoring bastard; you have a fucking long day ahead of you, you asshole," he sat up and squinted toward the other side of his room. His door was still closed. Thank god.
Come to think of it, the voices in his head weren't very nice. Hell, they had longer sticks shoved up their asses than he did. An uncomfortable thought, Kanda's mind instead went back to the problem at hand: namely, an overly eager bunny rabbit that had flounced into his room without any warning or consideration for his right to privacy and was now currently tugging open his curtains and allowing bright sunlight to filter into the room. Fuck but this was not helping his disposition.
He didn't understand. He didn't fucking understand. Lavi had downed at least three bottles of straight vodka, 4 shots of tequila and half a bottle of rum and had been drunk out of his mind until Kanda had dragged him back to their apartment and dropped him on his bed, huffing and making his way to his own room. Kanda, on the other hand, had not had a single drink. He hadn't even had water for fear that Lavi would pour his fucking precious vodka into it or order tequila and replace it with the contents of his glass while he was in the restroom. Yet, the rabbit was just fine, probably even more fucking chipper than ever before while Kanda felt like he had gotten hit by three trains, a bandwagon and, for no apparent reason, a stampede of wild, bloodlust-crazed rhinos, and then gotten mugged by ten army-grade hand-to-hand combat specialists and three professional wrestlers. Even that, Kanda found, didn't cover it. Every single muscle in his fucking body was crying out in protest but he still managed to lever his legs over the side of the bed and place one foot on the floor, before recoiling almost immediately when he found the tiles were colder than Antarctica in the middle of the night. Fuck! Will nothing go right today?
Cursing everything from the Earth to the Moon and back—not that there was much there, Kanda thought vaguely—he stubbornly set his foot down on the ground once more, almost cringing and waiting impatiently for it to adjust to the below-freezing temperature, before setting his other foot down and repeating the process, making a mental note to get a nice, warm rug. Then he promptly stood up, ignoring his protesting body that for some fucking reason was feeling particularly vulnerable and walking slowly and surely toward the other man in the room, who was blabbing on and on about something to do with sunlight and chlorophyll and "Jeez, Kanda, no wonder all of the plants in your room die within a two week time frame," and something about purple flying elephants… Or wait, that was the voices. The god damn, fucking voices needed to shut their fucking mouths before he fucking made them.
With one last step, Kanda found himself face to face with a Lavi that was paying no attention to him, an extremely dangerous option when facing a pissed-off Kanda. For some reason, Lavi had become immune to his glares and his threats and therefore would not fucking shut up when he needed to—or more specifically when Kanda wanted him to (which was all the time, but that was beside the point). If only Lavi would shut his mouth, Kanda thought disjointedly, he wouldn't be so hard on the eyes, or the ears in this case. Kanda paused before the inevitable explosion, deciding that although the voices needed to fucking die, Lavi had it coming to him even before they did. He was still talking to him as if he was paying attention. Pft, it would be a fucking freezing day in hell before that happened… oh and heaven would have to be burnt to a crisp, Kanda decided, almost fascinated as he watched the other man gesture and continue talking, looking for all the world like he wasn't talking to himself. The rabbit probably thought he'd been listening, but he really should have known him better than that. Kanda didn't do the whole listening thing. Fuck if he was in any way social.
Kanda waited patiently for Lavi to finish his one-way conversation, a novel response to anything the rabbit had ever done before. When the other man finally trailed off with a "Right, Yuu-chan?" Kanda stared at him rather unnervingly and they just stood there for a few minutes.
"Yuu-chan?" Kanda did not reply. "Yuu? Earth to Kanda?" Nothing.
Scratching his head in confusion, Lavi stared at his companion. It took all of half a second for Kanda to unsheathe Mugen and place the sharpest part of the blade at the other man's throat. It took another three seconds for Lavi to figure out where Kanda had gotten the katana from and how he had managed to so quickly get past every one of his defenses while probably still being half-asleep. And then it took him another two seconds to realize that his death was imminent unless he said something. Or perhaps when he said something. Either way, he was going to defend his measly little life the best he knew how.
"Uh… Kanda? There's a bean sprout at the door. Said it's urgent or something. Life or death and all that jazz." He'd said nothing of the sort, of course, but it was Lavi's life on the line now and he would say anything to get out of this ordeal with only a measly little scar running across his throat. "Just uh… slowly lower the tip of your blade from my very poorly guarded neck and we can go see what he wants, ok?" Kanda seemed to consider this as Lavi cowered in what could only be described as fear. After the twenty-third glare and the seventy-fourth threat, Lavi had found that he was no longer cowed by either, but even after the 755th time his neck met with Mugen, he still found himself scared shitless. Mugen was almost as much of a prick as its owner (though perhaps now was not the right time to be thinking of this; he hoped neither the sword nor its master could read minds) and as much of an asshole as the sword was, it clashed with his hyperactive personality; no matter what kind of conversation it was, neither found it in them to get along. After all, no matter what Lavi said, Mugen would still be pointed at his throat—the true definition of asshole. Perhaps it was the very real threat of death or castration (or possibly both, knowing Kanda) that gave the sword an edge that simple threats and glares did not possess.
After a moment of receiving the patented Kanda glare and an equally long but stressful moment of cowering from the sword pointed at his throat, Lavi found that Kanda was not, in fact, killing him. It was a good start to getting him to withdraw the weapon and take a few steps back, but not enough to make him feel one hundred percent safe as he would if Mugen were sheathed. Thinking it over, it was probably not a good idea to open his mouth just yet. That might have led to a change of heart and an extremely short (or if Kanda was in the mood extremely drawn-out), extremely painful hello to his own personal, wonderful life in Hell. Which would have been excruciating, in more than just one way. Not to say that he wasn't prepared to "meet his maker" as the cliché went—oh, no, he was far past acceptance, he'd been taught as a child to take things objectively and what was more questionably objective than life and death?
A few seconds later, Lavi began to sweat. It was very soon or never, that was how Kanda worked after all, and the next few seconds he decided were crucial in the matter of his state of well-being. Thankfully, just as the sweat was turning cold with the addition of a shiver down his spine, a white head peeked in through the doorway with a wickedly cheerful smile on its face.
"I thought you'd have Lavi at sword-point for disturbing your rest by now, so I figured I'd stop by before one of my (arguably) best friends was beheaded and the other was sent to prison for first degree murder," Allen stated calmly.
"First degree—?!" Lavi squeaked while Kanda lowered Mugen with a slight "Tch, stupid meddling bean sprouts."
With the sudden absence of Mugen, Lavi took several quick steps back before running a hand over his throat and thinking what a godsend Allen was being currently, before taking into consideration what the boy had said as he made his appearance (he had a photographic memory after all).
"What do you mean first degree murder? It's not like he planned it," Lavi scoffed, "er… this time anyway," he added as an afterthought.
Allen looked skeptical, "Like hell he didn't plan it ahead of time. He had the whole second or so before Mugen was at your throat to decided where he'd dump the body and the whole minute or two (maybe three) while you were standing there cowering to decide if it was really worth it. That's plenty."
Lavi looked at him askance, "Are you sure you're not psychic, bean sprout? You certainly have your moments."
"I changed my mind. I'll just take my leave and you can go back to your previous situation," Allen stated seriously before making a move to duck his head back through the opening in the door.
Faced with the option of either talking to Allen (as Allen rather than bean sprout) or getting skewered (or beheaded or god forbid castrated) by Kanda, Lavi chose the much safer, much less painful route: "Er, wait—sorry, Allen. I didn't mean to call you that. Force of habit?"
Allen paused and then sent a glance back at a desperate Lavi before heaving a sigh and walking completely in the room. After shooting him a thankful glance, the rabbit scurried out of the room as fast as his legs would take him with a flimsy excuse—something about meeting someone, somewhere, at some time in the near future, banging the door open and grabbing a few things off the living room table as he went. So Allen found himself faced with an almost-murderous Kanda who had still not sheathed Mugen. Neither of them said a word for a few minutes before the distinct sound of the front door slamming and footsteps echoing down the stairs (much faster than the elevator) had faded. Still the minutes ticked by until they were sure the rabbit wasn't coming back soon—or hopefully ever, Kanda thought although doubtful, and then Kanda finally replaced Mugen in her sheathe and took the one or two steps to his bed where he sat wearily, rubbing his hand down his face and scowling at life in general.
Allen moved further into the room, anything but tentative, and sat at the comfortable, padded swivel chair in front of Kanda's desk. Kanda and Lavi's apartment was a large flat that they had gotten at a surprisingly low rate and was most likely attributed to the fact that it was owned by Kanda's "father," or, well, his step-father. That aside, they had all the room they needed and more, and often Kanda felt as if he were drowning in the space; he'd managed to take up the far wall with his bed (a king-sized one) and his desk and a giant bookshelf spanned the wall adjacent to that. A door opposite the bookshelf, and on the same wall as the door leading out, led to the giant walk-in closet that was only partially filled with clothing and mainly taken up by another bookshelf. The remaining space was used as an area in which to practice his skills with the katana and with martial arts. The wall across from the bed had a door leading to an amazingly large bathroom that also connected with Lavi's room. A flat screen television (with surround sound) that Kanda rarely used was situated next to bathroom door, directly across from the bed.
After sitting in silence for another few minutes, Kanda sighed deeply and muttered some unintelligible words before looking up at Allen and stating quite clearly that the rabbit was going to die in the near future. Allen shrugged as he was wont to do and stated that he probably had it coming and Kanda had the right to do so—just not in accordance with the law. Cursing out the law, Kanda decided that it was high time he switched roommates before he broke the "fucking godforsaken law" by killing his current one.
Allen chuckled, "When do I move in?" Of course, he was joking around slightly, but he didn't want to see his red-haired companion sliced into little pieces either (well… most of the time) so it was mainly serious.
"Get the rabbit's stuff out of here and you can move in tomorrow or even today," Kanda said without preamble or any sort of remorse. He was only looking out for Lavi's safety, anyway, and his temper was getting shorter and shorter lately so it was probably safer for the rabbit to be somewhere else for the next few months (stupid midterms).
After a cursory glance at the long-haired man sitting on the bed, Allen decided that stating the obvious would be beneficial to his cause: "You look exhausted. You didn't drink too much last night, did you?"
"I didn't drink a single thing; that was the stupid rabbit's department. I just feel fucking horrible." With a sigh he sat up and stretched, cracking his back in the process and making a slight noise of appreciation before reclining back on the bed.
Allen made a noise of neither agreement nor disagreement, a slight "Mm," before taking a good long look at the man in front of him. He hesitated slightly but then decided he might as well try: "…You look like you could do with a nice massage. Up for one?"
"…Yeah, that'd be nice." Rolling over, he presented the bean sprout with his back and relaxed completely, eyes closed and head to the side.
After a nice, long massage, Kanda was relaxed beyond belief and had his guard completely down as he simply lay there and basked in the feeling of his relieved muscles. He'd been stressed for so long his body hadn't known there was something other than stress itself. Thankfully with a little reconfigurement via very skilled fingers, he and his body were back on track and he was able to focus without having to resort through running a tired hand over his face or trying to stave off a headache by pinching his upper nose.
"So I can only assume that you didn't come here to merely offer your head up on a platter in exchange for Lavi's or to give me a massage…" he trailed off, glancing over to the white-haired bean sprout. For once, Allen looked serious and Kanda began to get a bad feeling about the visit.
"Well. Actually," he pulled a face, "I'm here on Cross' request. He said that he decided that he doesn't need me anymore and to find a different place to stay (ironic, yes)—which is now solved, thanks. Afterwards he said you and I have a mission to do. And then he gave me this," he said, holding out a folder.