A/N: I'm a horrible person :D Just so you all know. On the same note, I know there are other utterly sadistic fans like myself, so I'm sure at least a few people will like this read. I have no idea where this idea sprang from, it just sort of happened. I needed to get it written and out of my head so I could move on to other writing projects :D Get the clutter out
Warning for those light of heart! Contains some rather gratuitous torture. Just sayin'.
Also yaoi/lemon/smut, cuz I was in one of those rare moods.
Be You My Saving Angel?
A D Gray-Man Fanfiction
He had said time and again that humans were stupid creatures prone to repeating each other's mistakes. When he said that, though, he was being rather... generous in his assessment. Some people were simply stupid or naïve, and to a certain extent, he could forgive that.
More importantly, there were many other people who were cruel, and it was cruelty which fueled war and suffering above all else, which took advantage of and fed off of ignorance. It was also such cruelty that got him into the predicament he found himself in now.
He was a spy. An agent between two warring kingdoms, planted in the halls of one for the sake of the other.
Spying was something he was good at. He had been born with keen eyes and a sense of sharp observation, with a good head on his shoulders to boot. He was good at being where he wasn't wanted and hearing things he wasn't meant to without being caught, unless he wanted to reveal himself. He was good at gaining the confidence of those around him, as charismatic as he was secretly bitter, for keen eyes showed him too much throughout his life.
Who else, then, was better suited to the role?
Yet, in hindsight, he wished he hadn't been such an expert at it. Spying wasn't hard. People were easy to fool if one knew their way around them, gaining greater skill and practice with it each time he managed to fool people, whether it be a single individual or entire crowds. He had gotten so good at it, that most of the time he could forget his hatred or spite of other people, his smile both disarming and inviting, undertoned with a mischievousness that lent well to causing annoyance when he wished it.
It was a simple enough job: gain a little trust and send whatever aiding intelligence he could find back to the ruler of his own country.
The one flaw in his plan, however, was one of the infiltrated kingdom's generals, Yuu Kanda, a man his own age with long, raven hair and the temper of a dragon.
He could gain everyone else's trust, but not Kanda's. Kanda was the sort who never smiled, never had a sense of humor, and never associated with anyone outside of his business with the ongoing war. And when he did associate with others outside of such official business, it was because he had reason to suspect them. For the first time in his life, he was caught eavesdropping where he shouldn't have been, and Kanda knew.
More to the point, the aristocracy Kanda answered to wanted to know just how much the redhead knew.
They didn't need to know what he had discovered and shared of their secrets with their enemy kingdom. Their defeats they suffered, unexplained up until now, told them everything they needed to know about that.
No, what they needed to know about what the redhead knew was secrets on that very enemy. To get him to squeal so they could regain their momentum.
And that was how he found himself in this predicament. Locked away in a dungeon for interrogation, which was the last place anyone, especially a spy with vital information, would ever wish to end up.
They were very up-front and uncreative at first. Tie him to a chair, ask some questions, rough him up when he refused to answer, then try to bribe him with promises of mercy or reward when that failed to work. He was young, so they thought he would break easily, but to assume as much was a mistake. He was trained well. Far better than they were estimating.
Then they tried depriving him of sleep for many days, giving him only water to keep him alive, and promising food and rest if he gave in and told them the secrets he knew. He remained close-lipped, and things progressed further into beatings, and then tying a noose around his neck, hanging just low enough that he could touch the ground with his toes if he strained far enough to keep from being utterly strangled. He was left to stand/hang there like that for a good many hours as they tried to get information out of him, all the while breaking his fingers with thumbscrews the longer he held out on them, and then ripping the nails off each of them afterwards.
Certainly, they were greatly underestimating him if they thought that would be enough to make him break and spill all of his secrets. His old man had scolded him many a time for being too loquacious, but when it really came down to the wire, he was as tight-lipped as they came. He knew when to keep his mouth shut.
They tried half-drowning him several times, which he eventually just laughed and spit water in the face of his tormentors. They tried cutting him, leaving small wounds all over his body. Then they moved on to burning his wounds with hot metal, cauterizing them so he wouldn't bleed out, but likewise to cause him a great deal of pain.
Then they had him locked in a small room, no windows or light to see with, no sound that penetrated the space, save for that of his own movements and breathing. He had no idea how long he was in there, between being awake with no sights or sounds to tell the time, and the moments where he passed out for equally unknown lengths of time.
It couldn't have been more than three days before he was yanked back out and given only water, so parched that he had a difficult time swallowing, and so hungry that even the basic liquid made his stomach churn painfully.
He still refused to talk, and they begun to get more creative with their tortures. Topping the list out of all of them would have to be one in particular, more several forms of torture rolled into one actually. It started with the typical use of a Rack, stretching his limbs until he both felt and heard the joints in his shoulder pop and dislocate, leaving him crying and gasping.
That was the better part of things. They let him off of it as soon as his arms had been dislocated, shoved him to his knees, and tied them behind his back. Not much point that he could see - at first - given they were damn useless to him as they were anyway.
What came next was being force-fed like they were trying to gavage a goose for slaughter, an experience he would have to say was far more unpleasant for him than for a water fowl for two reasons. For one, he actually had a gag reflex, unlike geese. And two, he would hardly call a mix of porridge-like slop, wet sand and sharp bits that might have been rocks or glass, and hot peppers anything that should be forced down anyone's throat. He certainly struggled and made what noises he could in protest, but it was a vain effort at best.
After being stuffed so far that it ached even draw breath, he was reverse-hung, the pain in his dislocated shoulders excruciating. Between it and the agonizing fullness of his stomach, he couldn't even breathe at all. One of which they remedied by beating him like a piñata until he vomited back up everything they forced down his esophagus and then some, the course sand and sharp bits making him cough and heave, while the peppers made his raw throat burn like fire. The taste of blood and bile on his tongue barely even registered in his mind with everything else that was overpowering it.
Suffice to say, he didn't remain conscious very long afterwards.
He didn't know how many days, or weeks, or perhaps it was months that went by. Each of his "days" was spent either locked in the small room, lacking all light and sound, or in the torture chamber where they tried to concoct new, creative ways to break him into spilling his secrets.
He got very good at talking, but none of it was what they wanted, reciting trivial facts he'd learned reading books throughout his life like the known diet of squirrels or how to fix a broken wagon wheel. So long as he found something to talk about, no matter how stupid, he knew he could keep his important secrets to himself, laughing manically when they grew furious and frustrated with him, demanding he give them the real information they wanted, not stupid little fun-facts about random shit that didn't matter.
Perhaps it was only to his own disadvantage, but he had been trained too well. He wouldn't break under such brutality, no matter how hard they pressed. After a while, he almost prayed they would simply grow tired of the game and put him out of his misery, which would certainly come about before he ever spilled his secrets.
That was why he was trusted with such a task. That was why he was planted as a spy, instead of anyone else. He wouldn't crumble. They couldn't break him, and it was obvious that they were becoming desperate, because they were losing the war, and the things he knew were the only things that would allow them to make a recovery from past losses. He knew that, and he laughed every time he saw their exasperated, hopeless faces as he told them the life span of fish or the difference between precious gems instead of telling them of vital supply lines or secret entrances into enemy fortresses.
Once again he found himself locked up in the black-box, his only company being his own haggard breaths as his body ached too much to allow him proper thought, unable to tell between wakefulness and sleep since his surroundings were equally as dark and silent as the backs of his eyelids, unable to make out even the silhouette of his own hand an inch from his face.
When he thought something brushed his face, he jumped, instinctively moving away. He wondered if he had imagined it - if the sensory deprivation was making him go crazy - but then he felt it again, fingertips touching his face below his eye. The right one that he'd kept until all of two days ago, when they tore it out with heated metal tongs and left it little more than a bloody pit, ignoring his anguished screams and writhing in lieu of their anger that he would not submit.
He withdrew, stifling an involuntary whimper, but arms coiled around his shoulders and drew him back, making his breathing hitch.
"Shhh, be still," a soft voice ordered, and he did, ceasing to move. Carefully, oh so carefully, those same fingers brushed unkempt locks of red away from his face, mindful not to get too close to his swollen and festering socket. What came next was the dab of a warm cloth, picking flakes of dried blood from his dirtied flesh, tsking unhappily. "They've been excessively cruel to you, to do this."
He tilted his head back to look up, but all he could make out was the vaguest of white penetrating the darkness, shaped like a human. He squinted, trying to discern more telling features, but the darkness was too great.
His own lips were dry and cracked, his throat scratchy and raw, so it made talking difficult, yet more so by the exhaustion and pain wracking him.
"A-... a-are y-... you...?"
He felt a warmth on his lips, soft and wet, silencing the rest of anything he had to say, then as soon as he grew used to the new contact and settled past his surprise, they were gone again.
"Don't speak now."
He obeyed, and the rim of what he was sure was a glass was brought to his lips, trickling water from its edges. He instinctively choked it down, and literally choked on some, a coughing fit renewing much of the pain in the rest of him that had begun to dull. The figure shushed him again with gentle strokes to his face and was more careful about pouring water in small increments then, until there was no more to be had.
He sighed and sunk down against the figure's lap, closing his only remaining eye. It made no difference. The backs of his lids were just as dark as the entirety of the room. Sometimes he questioned if his eyes were even truly open or not.
The figure stroked his hair softly, and he focused only on their touch, distracting him from his other pains.
"What is your name?"
He cracked his eye open, his consciousness having begun to drift.
"Lavi," he answered hoarsely.
The figure was silent, before voicing, "Your real name."
He smirked. "Maybe that is my real name?"
"No, it isn't," they responded, a hint of disapproval in their voice. "It's something else. What is it?" When 'Lavi' didn't answer, they questioned, "What are you afraid of?"
"I'm not," he stated simply. He felt hair that wasn't his own tickle his face, warm lips peck his again, before drawing away.
"Then tell me," they insisted. "What's the harm in a name?"
He was silent, gnawing his lip as he stared into the impenetrable shadows. Finally, he decided to share after all, the reasoning lost to thought.
"Deak." After a moment, and with a hint of pleading, he added, "But you can't tell anyone."
"Of course not," the voice promised, brushing his hair back and pecking him on the forehead.
Deak thought of asking who the stranger was, but suddenly they were gone, and he was alone. He had no idea if he had dreamt it or not. Their going seemed instantaneous, but it was difficult to be sure.
What must have been days afterwards, the door to his tiny cell opened up, and he was dragged out, back into interrogation. His back became marked in open wounds from a whip, each one given for each refusal to speak the information he knew, until he was delirious with pain and blood loss. The next time they crushed his stomach in a vice until he was tasting blood. Hung him by his ankles upside down and broke his ribs the time after. Damn near split his jaw with a choke pear after that. They even tried drugs to torment him into speaking.
He stopped keeping track of the methods they used after that. Half of it he wasn't even really awake for, even when his eyes were open. Still, he told them nothing, and they were becoming disheartened that nothing worked. They tortured him less and left him alone in the black-box for greater lengths of time.
And each time, he was visited by a white shape with gentle hands that cooed to him softly, gave him water to drink, and sometimes food if he could stomach it. He wasn't sure when, but he started looking forward to the visits. To their coaxing voice and tender touch. He stopped speaking at all to his tormentors, uttering only exclamations of pain, and he saved his words for the one-in-darkness.
"Why do you not tell them?" the one-in-darkness finally asked after what must have been weeks. Many of his wounds were healing, others were festering and making him ill, and exhaustion made him uncaring of all of it.
"Can't," he choked out hoarsely, focusing most of his attention on the finger that lightly traced his shoulder, mindful not to touch the sealing wounds on his back.
The one-in-darkness hummed unhappily. "But it brings you such pain to refuse."
"I knew," Deak replied, not bothering to keep his lead-weighted eye open. What did it matter? There was nothing to see anyway. "It was always a risk."
"And you're okay with this?" There was a sorrow in that voice, sadly empathizing. "Look at what they've done to you. You would simply let them continue?"
Deak sniggered, a manic, broken sound if ever there was one. "They're wasting their time," he hacked out, falling into a fit of mad giggles, which melted into agonized coughing. "They're all wasting their damn time!"
"You must love your country very much," the one-in-darkness noted thoughtfully.
Deak laughed again, unable to breathe between them and his sputtering, rough coughs. He gasped with the desperation of a fish yanked from the water, and the figure encased him in their cradling warmth, stroking his hair and trying to shush him back into calm and easiness. Deak wasn't sure if the other succeeded, or if he merely passed out and woke again.
"Was something that I said funny?"
"You think that... I love my country, and its people," Deak wheezed, barking a few halting laughs. His chest ached so much he wished for a sword through it. "I've just done what I'm told-," he coughed. "That's all."
"You go to great lengths," the one-in-darkness observed quietly. "For someone who cares nothing for what they defend."
"And what do you know of it?" Deak yelped out, breathing too hard and rough, sputtering. The figure tried to calm him with soothing touches and shushing, but for once, he ignored it, too wound up. "Who do you think you are to lecture? What are you? A demon come to torment me? An angel come to save me?" His coughing and gasping became too much to continue speaking, and he felt arms cradle him against warmth until he could breathe again.
"You would not need saving if you would simply speak," they told him quietly, still with sadness etching their voice.
Deak chuckled again, choking them back down when coughing threatened to erupt again. "Why should I listen to you? You're... n-nothing! Nothing but a figment of my imagination! A trick of this darkness!"
Silence followed, the only noise he could hear now being his own shallow, struggling breaths. Then a rustle of cloth, and lips on his forehead.
"Then there is no harm in telling me anything in the world," the one-in-darkness replied quietly. "Tell me what you refuse to tell them, and I will quell your suffering."
Deak paused, unsure. "You will take me from this place?"
He felt the subtlest exhalation ghost over his skin. "Yes. First, though, you must tell me."
"What must I say?"
"Just one thing. One thing that is important. A place or a secret. One you shouldn't ever say." When there was silence, the one-in-darkness kissed his forehead again, and ran fingers soothingly through dirtied hair almost lovingly. "You can tell me."
He tried to think, but it took him some time. The pain took his mind from thought, filled it only with the ache in his joints and fire in his wounds. He had tried to erase everything else from memory, and it took some searching to find it again. The one-in-darkness was patient, and merely continued to give him small touches of reassurance and affection as they waited.
"To the east," he rasped finally. "Below the small mountains with a fort... near the lake that shapes like a snail... a tree."
"And what about this tree?" the one-in-darkness encouraged gently.
"A tree that grows curled, like the arch in a doorway... a doorway in the hill, unseen behind thorned thickets."
"And to where does this door lead?"
"Into the fortress... a place to transport supplies and fresh troops, or to escape," he gasped, whining as a particularly sharp pang assaulted his chest. "One mile from the fort, but the tree can ea-easily be s-seen."
"Sh-sh-sh," the one-in-darkness silenced, cupping their face. "Enough. You have said all you need to." Lips brushed his not for the first time, coaxing him into parting his lips for a deeper kiss. He tasted something new on those lips, a mix of sweet and disgustingly bitter, one trying to mask the other. He grimaced, not sure if it was from the taste or the pain wracking him.
They pulled away before he could lose his breath, and stroked his face with calloused fingertips.
"Rest, now. Let your suffering be eased."
He listened to those words, and everything - the pain, the hardness of breathing, the exhaustion that plagued him so deeply he could not find rest - melted into inviting warmth and numbness, floating in a void of blissful detachment. His relief was finite at best, and when the agony returned, it returned ten fold, leaving him writhing and crying out.
"You told me you would stop the pain!" he accused when the one-in-darkness returned, his breath shuddering in his chest. Fingers caressed his face, and he wasn't sure whether to be repulsed or drawn to them.
"And I did, as I can do again," they told him, apology lacing their voice. "This is the price of relief, until the damage has healed. Tell me one more thing, and I can make it stop again, for a time, and stop any more harm from coming to you. This, I swear."
"Why can you not simply take all of it now?" he demanded, voice ragged with anguish.
"Even angels need time to work miracles," they told him. "But I will not abandon you. You are my charge to protect now. Tell me your secrets, and let me be the guardian that will save you."
So he caved, and he told them, just as he had done the time before. One secret for another length of relief, pitching him into the welcomed embrace of deeper darkness than even that of his solitary, enclosed, lightless space. Until the time that the pain returned to assault him again, until he cried and begged to once again find the peace that the one-in-darkness brought him, who cradled and rocked him as they listened patiently, then kissed him once more, and sent him into oblivion.
Soon the secrets simply spilled out, without thought for anything but the protective warmth and the blissful drift of blanketing numbness, which the one-in-darkness provided him without fail. Each time coming out of it was less agonizing than the last, the burden of both secrecy and his wounds slowly lifting one at a time with each encounter.
The one-in-darkness brought him relief less, but his body also needed it less.
When wakefulness became more tolerable, he would choose to remain for as long as he could, or for as long as his angel would allow, letting their fingers brush his skin and fill him with a pleasant tingle. He had not seen the torturers in so long that he had nearly forgotten them, if not for where he was. The one-in-darkness assured him that they had grown tired, and they dared not defy the will of his angel to stay away now.
"Your suffering is almost at an end," they promised him, fingers tracing his face, following his jawline and the lump of his throat, lingering over his collarbone. He almost shivered pleasantly. "You've been so strong to hold on and to trust in me."
"I had little more to lose," he returned, shifting his body impatiently into the touch when it stopped. He needed say nothing, the angel already appeared to know, and resumed tracing pathways and circles against his skin, down the crease of his pectorals.
"Do you enjoy me?" the one-in-darkness asked. When Deak paused in puzzlement, his guardian seemed to sense that too. "Do you enjoy when I touch you?"
"Yes." It was so automatic, he didn't stop to consider the implication in those words. He never gave it much thought. He had no idea how long he had been here.
In truth, some times he pondered if he was even alive anymore, or if he had withered long ago, and this was all that awaited in the afterlife. If he was still alive, he did not think much of the touch. He did not even know if the one-in-darkness was anything more than a conjuration of his mind, to cope with everything that had gone wrong. If his mind had simply shattered, and he didn't know he was merely an insane person talking amongst himself.
Fingers danced lower, across his stomach, and he squirmed with a noise of eager contentment, thinking nothing of that, either. Under normal circumstances, before all of this, perhaps he would have been ashamed. Really though, what use was pride to him now?
"Do you like this as well?"
"Yes," he whimpered, again immediately, arching into the caresses.
Further they went, pushing beneath the hem of his pants, and touched him where no one else before had ventured.
"And here?"
"Yes," he mewled, moaning at the bolder attentions that made the air turn chill as his body went hot and the muscle between his legs turn hard. He didn't hold back even one sound, panting and arching into the touches, soon freeing his arousal from the tightness of his own clothing into the cool air, which only made him pulse with greater need for the warmth of the tight hand massaging his length.
When they stopped he whined at the sudden loss, but he didn't get the chance to voice disappointment before their were bare legs straddling either side of his hips, and a tight heat pressed down onto his erection, slowly encasing it all the way down. He shuddered unabashedly and moaned aloud when they moved, slowly up and down, dry friction making it go from hot to broiling.
He bucked his hips upward, and was rewarded with a sharp mix between a grunt and a gasp, hot walls tightening around him and making him groan aloud. He bucked again, and the next was bordering on a hoarse cry. Firm hands pinned his hips, and the tightness around his swollen cock began to move at its own slow pace again, driving him crazy with the need to move.
Deak whined, squirming, and tugged at the bindings that kept his arms behind his back, as they had always been without fail within the confines of the unending blackness.
"I want to touch you," he complained, causing the one-in-darkness to pause as if surprised. "The way that you touch me."
The one-in-darkness laughed lightly, and continued to move, making Deak squirm again and try to buck his hips deeper and harsher but in vain.
"You will get to, in time."
"You're no angel," he gasped out, twitching his hips to thrust again, but the hands on him kept him from doing so. "An angel would never do something like this."
"I have never honestly claimed of being an angel," the one-in-darkness told him, voice strained too far in breathless, sinful pleasure to be lying as they slowly moved up and down. Deak did not know if it took an eternity or if time stood still where he arched his head back against the floor and wriggled against the encompassing heat, his groin coiling like a spring in need, before he managed to gain back some movement and thrust up harshly.
The one-in-darkness groaned and gasped aloud at the roughness as he was filled completely, first by swollen flesh, then liquid heat.
They stilled for some moments, before the one-in-darkness stood and forced him to slide out, and Deak couldn't be entirely sure he wasn't the only one panting. The other didn't leave, though, positioning themselves between his legs and pushing themselves inside him with the same careful, deliberate slowness, pumping in and out of him slowly.
The friction was intense, bordering on painful, but the other seemed to know just how far to push it to straddle the line perfectly between pleasure and pain that made him moan and writhe in the worst of ways. A shift in angle and a deeper thrust hit a point inside that made him cry out in ecstasy and fill with the other's climax as he came again as well.
The one-in-darkness pulled out of him, cleaned him up with care and returned his clothes to their former state, settling at his side. Deak nestled his face into their neck, and he could smell the sweat and sex on their skin. When he was prompted to talk of his secrets again, he spilled them out readily, mumbling the details out against their ear tiredly and almost feeling their approval.
"This is the last time," the one-in-darkness promised him, laying him back down and making sure he was at least marginally comfortable, before kissing him, lips tasting of that same sweet-bitter substance that always claimed his consciousness. "When you awake again, this will all be over with."
"Will you still be there?" Deak asked with a hint of panic and longing. He could already feel his awareness slipping, and suddenly the thought of that which had been protecting him vanishing left him with a sense of fright.
They smiled against his forehead, petting his hair. "Yes. Now sleep."
He wasn't sure their words were true, but he could hear no deceit in their voice, and had not been betrayed thus far, and so willingly let the darkness take him once he received this promise.
When he awoke again, it was to light beyond his heavy eyelids, and the concept had become so foreign to him that he almost didn't know what to make of it. For the longest time - what felt like years to him - all that had existed was him, the darkness, and the one-in-darkness whom he could hardly see. He saw a flash of movement at his side, heard a repeated thumping, and nearly jumped, watching in awe as a figure with golden hair dashed away and disappeared through a door.
He could only stare for the longest time, as if expecting them to burst back in, before taking proper stock of his surroundings and where he was. Compared to the stone floor of his prison, he felt as if he was sitting on a cloud, with warm linens and silks and furs bundled around him and plush pillows behind his head and back. There were lavish chests and drawers and wardrobes, decoratively embroidered rugs, mirrors with which to see his reflection by-
Good gods, he looked like shit.
His hair was longer than he recalled and his skin more sunken. He had definitely lost some weight ever since his capture, and his skin was paler from lack of sun. His right eye - or what had once been his right eye - was covered with an eye-patch, and lifting it to see the damage underneath was a mistake he quickly learned he wouldn't repeat again any time soon, silently mourning the loss of it.
His eyes had always served him better than any other part save for his smarts, and he was down half of them. He would never again see out of his right eye, and that revelation hit him like a kick in the chest. He sunk down into the pillows and squeezed his good eye shut as tears welled in them, letting out a loud, shuddering breath, resisting the urge to cry.
What distracted him from such thoughts was the sound of the door opening and shutting, footfalls announcing the arrival of another person.
Deak glanced up at them and froze.
The young man that came to the side of the bed was shorter than himself, with fair skin and a scar down his face over his left eye. What made Deak freeze up though was the snow white locks of chin-length hair and the white coat lined in a plume of fur. A snug black shirt underneath contoured every subtlety of his lean but muscled frame, and his silver eyes smiled gently along with his lips as he came to sit on the edge of the bed, regarding Deak with a sad sort of familiarity.
"How do you feel?"
Deak stared for a long time, his silence palpable.
"I'm... not sure..." He supposed that depended on if the other was asking him of his physical state or his mental one. "You're...?"
"I'm sorry," the young man told him, looking guilty and apologetic. "If I had heard just a few days sooner, I might have saved you your eye, too."
That made Deak pause, uncertain at first what to say. "Who are you?" he finally settled on.
The man smiled at him. "Allen Walker," he introduced. "We've seen each other before, though we didn't get to talk. Well... not until you were imprisoned."
Deak blinked in surprise, trying to recall where and when he'd seen this Allen person, but he drew a blank.
"I'm one of the Generals here, like Kanda."
Deak drew in a sharp breath. "Then... you...?" All of that vital information he had been withholding, thinking he was safe in speaking it to Allen, when really-
"It was important that we get it," Allen defended, looking somewhat angry. "But it was barbaric for them to put you through everything they did for it. They should have given you over to me sooner. Damn aristocrats always think they know better, though."
"And the war?" Deak couldn't help but ask.
"Over," Allen told him. "Or at least it will be. Kanda's taking his men to strike the final victory now. We've won." He paused, looking away. "I'm sorry. It was the only way to secure your safety, though. I can't believe they would go that far." He was shaking, and Deak figured out it was from suppressed rage. "To treat other human beings in that manner, even if they are from an enemy side. If they weren't going to let you go, they should have at least let you die quickly."
"Where did we meet?" Deak asked, still confused.
Allen glanced at him, but he was patient and understanding. "It was one of the royal parties. We only glanced each other from afar. I was too busy to get very involved in the festivities."
"Oh," Deak hummed, trying to think back to it, but he still couldn't recall. Odd, considering he figured he would remember someone with such a unique appearance. He supposed the glance had merely been one-sided. Or perhaps he had merely spent too long in that cell in darkness.
"You were more attractive back then," Allen chuckled, drawing Deak out of his thoughts. The white-haired male sobered, looking apologetic. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you."
"Why do you even care so much?" Deak questioned, baffled. It was one thing to have done it for information, but to actually care for him as more than that? It was unfathomable.
"Because its wrong what was done to you," Allen stated resolutely. "I didn't choose to help fight a war to defend something as heinous as what my superiors did to you. I don't stand for it, and neither should they have."
"I guess that makes sense," Deak hummed, too weary to argue.
Allen brushed his hair behind his ear, and leaned in to peck the redhead softly on the lips. Suddenly Deak remembered something else. This had been a man he had spilled all his secrets to, come to rely on his presence just to keep his tattered sanity together, and had even had relations with,and he wasn't sure how to feel about that.
Clearly, Allen wasn't entirely certain either.
"Deak, I-..." He trailed off.
"Don't call me that," the redhead ordered, catching Allen by surprise. "It's Lavi."
"Lavi was the alias of a spy who infiltrated our kingdom looking for information," Allen pointed out. "That's not your na-"
"No," Lavi cut him off. "Deak was the failure of a spy who infiltrated this kingdom looking for information." He turned his head aside, letting out a long sigh and appearing to deflate into the mattress. "And he died somewhere along the way, after his mission crumbled all around him, one misplaced confession after another." A pause. "Call me Lavi."
Allen gnawed his lip, then gave in.
"Alright, Lavi. I just... hope that you know that what we had there was not simply faked. I did not give myself to you there for any reasons that had to do with those I answer to."
Lavi huffed laughter, disbelieving. "You wanted information from me."
"And I could have gotten it from you without resorting to that, and you know it," Allen told him sharply, the hint of a temper entering his voice. "I am not a whore, and don't talk to me as if I am. I liked you from afar, and I came to like you more up close as I came to tend to you and argued down my superiors from putting you through any more torment."
Lavi fell silent, and he could see Allen trying to rein his anger back in, turning his glare to the floor instead of on the redhead himself.
"I would like to get to know you more now, where we can talk and get to know each other properly, if it is alright with you. You still have some recovering to do, and it would probably be unwise for you to return to your own kingdom now, or what is left of it. Any who remain and figure you out would surely put you through Hell again."
Lavi watched him carefully, nonplussed. "If this is about information, I have nothing more to give you..."
"Damn you, this is not a ploy for information!" Allen snapped, grasping his chin and kissing him, long and hard until they could both barely breathe. "This is only about us. If you do not want to pursue it, then that is fine, but I do not put myself out for anyone I am not serious about. I certainly do not fuck anyone who I would not be willing to spend my life with, if they would have me."
"You're serious about this?" Lavi asked, unsure of whether or not he had genuinely hurt the other man's feelings.
Allen huffed and crawled further onto the bed, up against Lavi's side, and drew him in, cradling the older's head toward his chest and stroking his hair. "I did not spend weeks of my life saving yours to be insincere now." He pointedly pinched the redhead's cheek tightly. "And I certainly didn't have your cock up my arse, or mine up yours, to be any less than serious either."
"Well when you put it like that..." Lavi mumbled, flushing a few good shades of red not attributed to by his hair.
Allen merely laughed heartily, and Lavi nestled his face against the crook of his neck, exhaustion beginning to tug him down.
"We can try and make it work," he agreed, closing his eye.
True, Allen may not have been a angel in the truest sense of the word, but Allen had at least been his saving angel.