This is another one for Lavilena week, and much longer too. It might have a continuation but in the form of a sequel, not more chapters.
There is some mature content but it's mostly implied and fairly minor. Lavi has some negative and self deprecating thoughts regarding himself in particular and sex in general, so be warned. This is lighter than the previous Lavilena Week entry but it has dark stuff too.
Disclaimer: DGM and all associated characters belongs to Hoshino-sensei, The Princess Bride belongs to William Goldman and the movie rights of said story belong to Act III Communications, Fox, Vestron, and MGM. Scrabble is the property of Hasbro.
Lavilena Week 2k15 Day Two: Confession. Modern AU, fluff and cuddles and cuteness. Lenalee and Lavi are having alone time in her bedroom and things start getting a little steamy, but one of the pair doesn't feel ready to go below the belt quite yet.
It was a rare occurrence for Lenalee to have the house to herself, because even as a college student and legal adult her brother seemed determined to baby her as long as possible. She loved Komui, but Lavi could tell that the man's overprotectiveness grated on her at times. She still lived with her brother in their lovely little uptown apartment that Komui's high-paying job in the robotics lab at the local university covered for several times over.
Lenalee had chosen to stay with him instead of having a dorm room or apartment of her own in order to avoid extra expenses, but the price paid for not living elsewhere was that her brother seemed to cling tighter than ever before. It made dating a hassle, as Komui was protective enough to casually (and not at all subtly) mention all the ways that his latest projects he brought home from work were potentially hazardous if mishandled, and he was liable to barge in or be listening in the next room to ensure that nothing untoward happened.
Lenalee was not at all amused by Komui's attempts to defend her innocence, especially when she was forced to remind him of their agreement to respect each other's choices of partner (which she had strong armed him into when he hesitated to start dating because of his worries about her safety). Why personally do background checks on every male she associated with and pay for her get to a black belt in Taekwondo and then treat her like she was incapable of defending herself or being careful? Worrying was one thing, but the man was overly extreme at times in his methods.
It took three weeks of conspiring between Lenalee and Jerry to get Komui out of the house on an all-night date, and Lavi took an hour to pick up supplies for his own overnight stay at a local drug store before arriving at the door on foot at 5:50 sharp, just in time to be greeted by a very distracted Komui and Jerry in formal attire as they walked out the door to head to their restaurant reservation. Lenalee gave Jerry a wink and Lavi sent him a surreptitious thumbs-up as they walked out the door, and the Indian man winked in return, mouthing 'have fun' to the two of them before the door closed behind them.
When the sound of Komui's Nissan pulling away had been swallowed by the sounds of bustling city life, Lenalee locked the door and turned to face Lavi with a mischievous grin on her face and a slight battered Scrabble box in hand. When she beckoned him to sit at the couch in the living room he obeyed without question, and they bantered easily as the maneuvered their pieces and scanned for easy points with the ease of long practice. The atmosphere became increasingly competitive up until seven, when they decided it was high time to order in and eat dinner and the mood became jovial and lighthearted.
An hour later their stomachs were full, their hands and faces were washed, and the empty Thai food boxes were broken down and disposed of. Lavi retrieved the much-abused Scrabble board from the side table he had moved it to. The second game went slower at the start than their previous one, but soon enough they were fiercely utilizing the dictionary to try and outdo each other in word complexity and point gain at the same time.
Lavi had lost the first round by six points and demanded a rematch, which Lenalee conceded too with a smile and a challenging look in her eyes that made Lavi's blood stir and his mouth dry, though his rumbling stomach had provided a convenient distraction. A bit more than an hour after they started up again he had narrowly won the second round, and they began the tiebreaker third round to finish off the Scrabble competition for the night.
Lavi made a good start, but half an hour later it was 10:45 and he kept being distracted by little things. These little things were not the ones that the average guy would immediately think of like the swell of a comely bust beneath a fitted shirt or the curve of shapely hips in tight jeans (though he did admittedly find those particular features of his lady love quite eye-catching). Rather, the things that caught and held his attention were simpler and more complex all at once; the sheen of Lenalee's soft shoulder-length hair, the furrows of her arched eyebrows as she concentrated, the rapidly-vanishing indentations left from her pearly white teeth biting slightly chapped lips, the elegant and graceful movement of her fingers with their scarlet-painted nails, and the porcelain-pale skin of her lovely wrists.
Lenalee was a work of art in motion, with her physical flaws only making her more endearing because they proved she was human, and her brilliant personality outshone her beautiful features by a thousand light years if he had any say in the matter. Every moment he spent with her was captivating, and he often lost focus daydreaming about his beautiful sweet and oh so intelligent girlfriend that sat across the table from him just as he was doing now. He knew she was going to win, and he couldn't bring himself to resent that fact even in the slightest.
"Lavi." The sound of Lenalee's voice snapped him out of a daydream where the two of them were lying on a blanket and he was carding fingers through that gorgeous hair of hers, and the redhead looked up sheepishly as she gave him a pointed look.
"Ah! Er, Lena. What is it? Is it my turn?" He asked, forcing away the remainder of the daydream to contemplate at a later date.
"Nope." She pointedly popped the "p" at the end of the word, and he looked down to see that he had four letters left—a D, a single E, one A, and a K. Lenalee had managed to spell...was that 'disillusionment' written across the board? Well...a 15-letter word was very hard to beat.
"I just used up my last letter and got a 15-letter word on top of three extra point spaces and a triple word score space, as well as a connected seven-letter word and ten other connected words. What's your plan of attack?"
"I...have nothing useful," he replied as he scanned the board before sighing and gracefully accepting defeat. Lavi wordlessly placed down his letters and watched as she hummed and recorded their final scores down on the piece of paper they were using.
"You're trailing very far behind this time, by nearly 200 points in fact," she noted, and he winced. That was almost harsh, though he knew she was wondering why he managed to fall so far behind when usually he put up one hell of a challenge at this particular game.
"Well then...it appears that I lost fair and square, Lenalady. You take the win for two games out of three, and I am, as ever, your loyal servant to command." He declared, wiggling his eyebrows and tipping an imaginary top hat in her direction. Lenalee shook her head and giggled quietly, her eyes shining with affectionate mirth.
"Well, then, you can clean up this board and head upstairs to meet me, then." And with that, Lenalee stood and sauntered away to her bedroom, throwing him a satisfied look over her shoulder as she ascended the stairs. Lavi spent a good few seconds appreciating the view that she was flaunting before shoving everything haphazardly away and stuffing the box where it came from. He almost bounced up the stairs like an overexcited rabbit (Kanda would have smirked at the comparison) but thought better of it and walked up at a more sedate pace. If this was going where he thought it was, then not only would this be their first uninterrupted make out session in either if their houses, but possibly...the first time they really dared to go all the way.
Lenalee's bedroom door was open, and he entered to see her lying on her back atop her king-sized bed, twirling a lock of hair around her finger and flexing her bare feet. She sat up as he walked towards her, and the sight of her looking up at him in the dim lighting was intoxicating. He could feel the burning heat of his blood as it began slowly gathering in his cheeks and lower down, and the dryness in his mouth returned in force.
He stumbled over to her like a recently-woken dreamer, and together they tumbled down to the bed, entwined and still moving as they shifted to find a comfortable but workable position. For several long minutes they began the familiar dance of long, languid, and unhurried kisses before gradually moving on to necking. Lenalee tugged at his shirt so that she had full access to nip at his exposed neck, and he kissed a trail from the corner of her lips down the left side of her arched throat all the way to the rise of her shoulder. Her off-the-shoulder top was never so appreciated before as now, when he was laying gentle kisses and nips on the exposed fresh and tracing the line of her bones even as she left a mark directly over his collarbone.
Hands dipped beneath their shirts and wandered to explore paths over warm soft flesh and hard expanses of muscle, Lavi being reminded of just how strong his girlfriend was in a very personal and fulfilling manner as he trace her spine with his fingertips and made her hum against the hollow of his throat. In response, Lenalee shifted so that she could gently scrape her teeth over the shell of his ear and pull gently on his hoop earring, sending delicious shivers down his spine that gathered the growing heat in his groin and lower stomach tighter than before. He groaned low in his throat and she sighed a warm breath over the sensitive lobe.
"Ready for more?" She whispered into his ear, and if the heat in his blood was burning before it was a boiling inferno now.
"Yesss," he hissed, and almost whimpered as she leaned back, teasingly brushing her hips against his and hooking her fingers beneath his shirt. Her fingers brushed slowly and softly over his torso like the kiss of feathers, and he shuddered as he raised his arms for her to pull it off entirely. He almost thought his face would explode when she held up her arms and smiled in invitation, and this time he did whimper in lust and longing as his trembling hands grasped her shirt and pulled it up and off ever-so-slowly, revealing the slender but strong body only hinted at by the form-fitting shirt.
They came together again, kissing and caressing each other without haste as they explored new territory between them. The slow exploration and the comfortable quiet between them eased his nerves greatly, and Lavi was blissfully blank of mind, thinking of absolutely nothing but how wonderful this felt when a twinge of the very same nervousness that had gripped him before returned. He froze and stiffened in her embrace, and Lenalee noticed instantly, drawing back with a curious look on her face.
"Lavi? Is something wrong?" She asked, her brow furrowing again. "Did I bite you by accident, or scratch you?" He bit his lip, and she took it as an answer. "Maybe I should have clipped my nails first, I'll be more careful now. Do you want to keep going?"
Lavi couldn't bring himself to talk from nervousness, and he nodded to her, ducking his head to inhale the scent of her grape shampoo and lilac soap that still clung to her from a morning shower, familiar and soothing to his nose. He could feel her hands slowly return to his skin, and he grunted low in in throat as a shift in position brought them into potentially precarious territory. The cold and sickening feeling of apprehension came again, a subtle but noticeable undercurrent to the desire running through him, and he drew back almost against his will, pulling free of Lenalee and falling heavily back to the surface of the bed.
"Lavi! Lavi, is something wrong?" Her hands carefully took hold of his shoulders, and he gritted his teeth as he fixed his gaze on the wall. This was humiliating. He was twenty one and had a crush on her for years, why couldn't he man up and get over his internal freakout? She wanted him, he wanted her, they were dating, they had condoms to use in his back pocket, everything was going so well and they had all night alone, so why was he not able to keep going and just lose his fucking virginity already?
"Please, Lavi. What happened? Do you want to stop?" She asked him, her voice no longer on the verge of panic but still worried, still so very kind and caring and gentle that it almost broke his heart to know he was upsetting her over something so stupid.
"I….I-I.." And now he couldn't even get the words out, what the hell was up with him tonight?
"Lavi. If something is wrong, you can tell me." She paused, and he stayed silent, swallowing and clenching his hands into fists. "I'm not going to be angry, and I trust you," she said, leaning down and sifting up higher so that she could see his face better. "Please, I'm worried about you, I just want to know what the problem is so we can deal with it." She paused, took a deep breath, and then fell silent, waiting for a response for a long minute or two where both of them made no sound but for the breaths they took. Finally she sat back and moved to sit beside him, gently stroking his bare shoulder in a soothing manner.
"If you're not ready to tell me I can wait. If you'd rather stop for now I can respect that, too." Lenalee bent to retrieve her discarded shirt, and the redhead gingerly sat up, hesitantly touching her shoulder even as he still refused to meet her eyes.
"No, that...that isn't it, not really, I'm not hurt or mad or upset or…" He paused, unsure how to explain what he was feeling. He looked up at her at last before glancing away again, and he could see that she was waiting patiently, her indigo-dark eyes focused on him with intensity as she listened and observed.
"You can tell me if you want to, and if you don't that's fine too," Lenalee repeated, her gaze soft and her voice soothing.
"I...I'm confused about what I want, okay?" Lavi admitted. He put his face in his hand, letting his bangs fall forward to cover what was left to be seen before he managed to keep going. "I...I...I might not...be as ready for," he paused again, and then gestured towards them both helplessly to indicate their situation. "This, I just feel like I'm doing something wrong and I thought I was ready and God I love you, you're beautiful and sweet and kind and smart and way too damn good for me and I just don't know, I don't want to upset you because I love you, I love you so much and I have for four years now and...I'm just being an idiot about this aren't I." He groaned loudly, clenching his hair in tight fists.
"Lavi…"
"I'm hopeless, aren't I? I'm a twenty one year old virgin and I know what we're doing and I want to keep going but something feels wrong and it's all my fault, not yours at all. Guys like me are expected to want to have sex and I never could get around to it before because I have that whole problem with attachment issues and I don't want to have meaningless sex either."
"Lavi. Please, look at me." Lenalee cradled his chin gently in her hand and lightly applied pressure, giving him the choice to look at her, and he slowly turned to face her, cringing from embarrassment even when there was no judgement in her eyes.
"Lavi Bookman Jr., if you think I'm upset about you being honest with me then you're an idiot," she softly scolds him. "If you're not ready to have sex yet then you're not ready to have sex yet, and it isn't bad or wrong. You're a good person and you're becoming a great man, but you aren't perfect and having doubts is normal and human." She looked him directly in the eye as she said this, and the silken softness of her voice is infused with a core of steel as she continues. "Yes, you have 'attachment issues' as you put it, but you can form attachments and maybe you just need more time to adjust before we try anything like this again. And if you have to wait a long time, or even if you never really feel up to it, that's fine too."
"Lena—" he choked on his own breath, touched beyond belief at her words, at the understanding in her tone, in her words and touch and gaze. He should have expected her to be so giving and understanding, but some part of him had still cringed from her even with all their history and trust and love, and the fact that he couldn't talk to her about something like this before seemed rather dumb now, almost (if not enormously) dumber than not being ready to have sex with his longtime girlfriend.
"I know you care and that you think I'm beautiful, and I'm the same. You've proved it many times over that you think I'm very attractive and that you love me. I love you too, Lavi. I respect that you're not ready yet, and anyone who mocks you for being a virgin at twenty-one is an idiot," she assured him, and with that he can feel most of the tension leave him in a relieving rush.
"So...even though we planned this out for weeks so we could finally get an uninterrupted night alone, it's…"
"Lavi, it is more than fine. I can do the planning again, but I don't have any intention of pressuring you into something you don't feel ready for." He smiled weakly at her as she petted his loose hair, and she smiled wryly as she had a further thought to impart. "It's our business and nobody else's what we do in private anyway, so we can wait."
"Well...that confession went over better than I expected," he muttered, and Lenalee rolled her eyes at him fondly.
"You know what? Let's get out my DVD of The Princess Bride. A movie night is just what the doctor ordered. And yes, you are allowed to quote every line you like, too."
"Aw, shucks! Lenalady, have I ever told you just how much I love you?" He kissed the side of her head and pulled back with a lopsided grin that would have fit perfectly on the face of the Cheshire Cat, caught between bouncing up and down in glee and sighing in relief.
"Have I ever told you how much of a dork you are?" She retorted, smiling at him as she ducked out of his arms and stood. "Up! I'll get the movies, you can make yourself useful and make us popcorn."
"Yes ma'am!" He saluted her, running into the kitchen and almost crashing into the wall as he descended the stairs to the kitchen.
They spent the rest of the evening watching movies, and Lavi even went so far as to clumsily act out his favorite scenes like the ham actor he was, coaxing more than a few laughs from the both of them with his antics. They had a pillow fight that became a wrestling match that turned into tickle fight that led to a sated cuddling session, and Morpheus overtook them in the early hours of morning as they lay entwined and exhausted on top of Lenalee's extremely comfortable down mattress.
By the time Komui was back from his date the next morning, the two of them were cuddling on the bed in their sleep, still fully clothed and on top of the duvet. He spent a long moment contemplating what he should do before coming to the decision that they'd hardly be up to anything with him in the house cooking brunch for them, and he smiled as he gently maneuvered the door closed again until it was open a crack (of a few inches, but still mostly shut), leaving them to their dreams.
Was Lavi's position as the one having doubts surprising to anyone? Because despite the pervy act he puts on he clearly is not a ladies' man and he does have problems with forming and acknowledging emotional attachments, so I didn't just pull the idea of him being a virgin or at least inexperienced and conflicted out of my arse. I also played with the possibility of him being demisexual here, though if you want to think of him as ace or as just nervous that's fine. I'm demisexual/demiromantic so I'm a bit biased.
Well, that's done and over with for now. I have class in a few hours, I'm going to hit the hay. Flames will be ignored, comments and constructive criticism are welcome. I hope you enjoyed it.