Title: 'My only love sprung from my (only) many hatreds...'
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi, in no particular order.
Warnings: slash but no more than shounen-ai. Don't like same sex relationship? Don't read. Two guys flirting, in a very non romantic way give you the shivers? Don't read. Drabble and, even worse, no beta!
Disclaimer: D.Grayman not mine.
On Kanda's fifth birthday his parents are killed by Akumas. This, feels Kanda, is a very bad thing seeing as they had been making noises about selling him to a geisha house like his older sisters and he misses the older girls lots. Years afterwards when he gets what was meant by rearranging of his anatomy he might change his mind but by then even that part sounds awfully restful and not altogether unwelcome compared to his current life. Also he still misses his sisters...
His sixth birthday sees him still trailing the painter who dispatched the Akumas. The loon has been keeping Kanda with him ever since he touched that odd rusty katana blade he was lugging around making it shine. Life is just too weird for words. Kanda has taken a neither so sudden nor incomprehensible dislike to paintings, old supposedly wise men who don't tell you a thing and travelling.
Age seven and Kanda gets a tattoo on his birthday. It hurts and itches and has apparently something to do with unsatisfactory synchronisation. Kanda decides that tattoos and synchronisation should disappear from the world. He also wonders what accelerated healing and reduced life expectancy fucking mean.
Two days before his ninth birthday Kanda is sure that it can't possibly get worse than the last one where he broke his two new permanent front teeth on his celebratory rock cake. (His front teeth grew back in less than an hour. It was a fairly painful process. Cakes made it on his to be hated absolutely list. Kanda sometime feels that having several such lists might be passingly weird. He still keeps them updated.)
He is, unfortunately, wrong. His introduction to the Black Order is followed by several long catechism sessions. Kanda doesn't really see how you can believe there being ONE God, even more so if said God is not a sadist. (Though the word sadist hasn't actually made it into Kanda's vocabulary by then, the concept is still pretty clear in his mind.)
After Kanda erects an altar to worship shinigami (singular to make his teacher happier) and is subsequently labelled as a 'satanist', 'infidel' and 'heretic' with people trying to starve him into compliance to acceptable beliefs, he is uncertain if religion teacher should make it to the hated to death (- theirs) list. After his sensei gets him out of the dungeon with the argument that he is after all an Exorcist, he decides that maybe the utterly hated list is enough.
On his tenth birthday Kanda meets Lavi. He gets called Yuu or, worse, once the idiot learns some Japanese, Yuu-chan, because, as he says, Kanda is a beautiful as a girl. Kanda knows which list to use, this time, no doubt. He sets to mildly hating Lavi and thinks with something almost like regret about the near miss on being Yuu-chan in Gion. Of course seeing as he still mildly dislikes Lavi he sets to being perverse and follows him around katana swinging each time the idiot uses the improper honorific.
By age eleven Kanda has realised what is wrong with his world. It's birthdays! Together with this conviction Kanda also has reached the conclusion that kind, fatherly Finders and their putative well-meaning Exorcist sons are to be hated as a matter of survival.
Kanda spends his twelfth birthday in the hospital with a horrid stomach-ache caused by too much chocolate eaten in Lavi's company during their latest Swiss mission. He decided then and there that sweet things are to be hated because dangerous. On principle he adds Switzerland and cuckoo clocks to his to be hated because linked with chocolate list.
On his thirteenth birthday Kanda adds second level Akumas and defenceless civilians you can't save on time, to his absolutely hated and painfully hated lists respectively. Kanda hates that he has accumulated 19 lists. He still adds a twentieth for people to be hated on principle. Linalee Lee ends on it, after having escaped all lists due to her 'vegetable' status, by association with her idiot brother.
Kanda spends his fourteenth birthday under his bed, just in case. That turns out to be a particularly inspired move as it is the only thing that saves Kanda from the cave in of his dorm cell.
By his fifteenth birthday they still haven't repaired his window; they cleared the stones away in less than two days in order to get him on a mission but the window has remained mangled. Lavi decides to offer him a gift and repairs the window with different coloured pieces of glass coming from other broken windows. He doesn't have enough to finish and Kanda's room looks even more like it belongs in a church or a cathedral. Kanda feels sick. His throat is all constricted and his eyes water a little bit. He almost adds stained glass windows to his 'dangerous' list. He realises in time that really it is the hated because they hurt list that is the appropriate one. Kanda thinks that maybe it is not a matter of stained glass windows and adds presents in general to the list, just to be safe. That winter when the temperature is below freezing he also decides that he hates unfinished, faulty objects.
On his next birthday when Lavi gives him a glass hourglass case for his Lotus flower and looks at him as if Yuu were about to break, Kanda tells him outright that he hates presents, because they are dangerous to his health. Lavi looks at him oddly. Then he asks somewhat pointedly if Yuu always categorises the reason why he hates something. Kanda is surprised enough to actually come out and admit all about his currently 27 lists. Lavi looks pained, then he kisses Kanda on the mouth and tells him he is sorry his life was that harsh. Then he leaves in a hurry. Kanda really hates people leaving in a hurry.
Kanda remains right there in the middle of the passageway going to the restaurant and ponders. His chest really hurts. Maybe he should add kisses to his hated because they hurt list. He doesn't.
That evening when he meets Lavi again, Lavi says he should add Bookman to his lists. Kanda says Bookman IS on his 'hated because they are always right' list already. Lavi almost smiles, and then he says that it is not the good list. He says it should be the 'inhumanly bastard' one. Kanda sighs and starts his 28th list. He would not be averse to talking with Lavi for a little while longer, if only he knew how to talk. He doesn't and Lavi has to leave anyway. Kanda adds his lack of eloquence to his things I hate about myself list. That is, he realises with surprise, the second longest one. (The longest is the 'people I hate because they are idiots' one.)
On his seventeenth birthday a wounded Kanda makes it back to Order headquarters to meet a tiny waiflike boy with white hair, whom Kanda hates on principle. Their first mission together confirms his inkling that he also is someone to be hated as a matter of survival. His classification of Allen Walker might have been completed with this observation if Kanda hadn't ended up going on a mission with Lavi and Walker just a few months afterwards. Within minutes of seeing Lavi and the painfully polite young man interact Kanda feels as if his stomach has turned to so much lead. Kanda finds himself almost considering the possibility of making a stupid mistake and slicing the boy in halves.
He hates that his dedication will not allow him to make such a 'mistake'. The precious life of an Exorcist is necessary for the war effort. He also hates how Allen survives day after day. Until Allen doesn't and he hates how Lavi seems almost empty after the news is given. That evening Lavi kisses Kanda, almost crying because it could have been Yuu, who had died. Kanda almost reconsiders his policing of continuing to hate dead people. That is before Bookman appears to take Lavi away, looking like thunder. After that nearly anyone is game: Allen who prompted Lavi's insanity, stupid Lavi, bastard Bookman and above all Kanda himself for not acting once more.
When Allen appears before them, not dead after all, Kanda realises that he really, really hates revenants.
In the Ark facing Skin and sending Lavi away with all the others Kanda realises that he really hates Lavi, because he loves him. Imminent death, it seems, is about the only thing that will make Kanda see his feelings clearly. His blindness and regrets make it to his things I hate about myself list. It is now the longest of all.
Kanda knows he is going to die and that he will never see Lavi again. He hates that.
Kanda doesn't hate being a revenant. Not even a downloaded/uploaded/whatever one. He also doesn't hate revenants called Lavi.
When next Kanda sees Lavi he doesn't hate anything, he is too busy kissing the other boy and feeling grumpily happy. In hindsight he somewhat hates the fact that all that good angst he had going gave way to a happily ever after.
When Bookman tries to butt in, with some more nonsense about Lavi having to remain detached from all things human for the good of the Record, he kindly informs the old man that religious fanatics and all zealot types are being bumped up on his hated to death (- theirs) list. It is a usually empty one, he explains patiently, seeing as after summary execution people on it end up on his dead but hated list. He doesn't hate saying that nor does he hate the old panda's expression (he looks as if he sucked on a very green lemon). He also doesn't hate the sincere smile he sees on Lavi's face. Kanda really has lots of things he doesn't hate.