-1Under Stone
Scene 1: "It's a transitory period."
That's all he says. You don't want to settle for that as a love confession, but still, it's all that he says, so you have to.
You shouldn't mind. You, as you have told yourself before, are unfeeling and cruel. You chose to be that way. It has done many things for you, so you should appreciate it. Accept your viciousness and let it carry you--no, wash you over--to your heart's desires.
You've been like this for a long time. You do not fear the tears or blood that you wrench out of the feeling-gorged elect, but swim in it like your mother sea. (You are not sparing him.)
It's appropriate for the kind of monster you are. Your heart is a collection of sharp blades that pride forged--one for power, one for self-reliance, one for revenge, one for--You have done well for it. You have…
The point is, you shouldn't have to settle. You should have him saying he is a useless gilded bauble, one you can grudgingly admire it for its shine, but can always sneer at it for its petty luxury.
You would have wanted him to fake a light-handed, even contemptuous fascination for you, which would place him in your cold bed as his own offering. You would have wanted him to slowly drain his warmth and will away to your desires until he loses his sense of himself. You would have wanted him to dash out his brains to pick out the Bookman for you and then lay the winding mess at your feet.
You would have wanted him to hand his heart over to you. You can tell yourself honestly that you would have done those depraved things to him.
But he is a fast learner and adaptive, so if he had loved you, he would understood you even as he wove his way through your ambushes. (Toss him over break his ribs and guzzle his insides, only he might have dodged. )
He would have done it because he is wily and manipulative and he is never more wily and manipulative when he is trying to be more human and less Bookman. What you would have done for that, you don't know. Maybe you would have liked to see.
If he loved you, or at least said it, then it would have been your game, both of yours'. The guileless prodigy liar and the guileless prodigy who never tells lies. You don't hide because you're not ashamed.
You have no shame for anything. That is why you are here with him, ready to break him without apology, in any way he asks for it and you feel like taking for yourself. Something maddening and complicated starting with, at the very least, a possible exaggeration, a facsimile, an act, a vaguely sincere…
So you say it.
"I loveyou."
So you pin him against the column for him and try to kiss him. These things are about as contractual as signing your--or his--soul over to the devil. It is so easy to make someone yours for a while.
There is a lantern hanging from the teeth of a stone angel above you heads which jerks with the clatter of metal dancing on metal. The flame whips his face into flashes of cool resolve before your eyes.
He is still strong and he breaks apart from you by elbowing you in the stomach. It doesn't hurt. It barely registers. You could still make him, but if he doesn't want to he's not above screaming. He could bring the family around to crucify you or feed you to a bonfire. So you let him go.
He sweeps away from you. He is giving you a turned back and leaving footsteps. You could live with the unloving love confession. You can't live with this. You could kill him for this.
He is only dancing. Toes light, fingers white and the rest of the hands sheathed, wrapped around himself as he walks a few steps just to stop for you again. His hips stalling at the of the scooped out ridges of the marble support column until he swoops around for you again, speaking.
"Yuu, you did it just to be bad." he says almost pityingly. He's not teasing. It's a soft rebuke. He's warning you. "Why do you always want to be bad?"
"I don't." You say, which is not a lie because you don't mean for it to mean anything.
"They were right there. Lenalee follows Allen and Allen follows Komui and we break rank and follow no one. We think ourselves worthy to be beholden only to God's eyes and fled to sanctuary mere paces away. Always taking refuge here for the merciful judgment of dead angels, who know no shame. But there are agents of stone and agents of flesh and we can't fear only one. What you need isn't what you take."
His mouth looks soft and shivering. His front teeth gently clasp the bottom lip for each hard syllable. Catching and releasing. It's dots of white tugging at pillow-y pinkness and that has never changed in what you know about him, ever since he was a child.
What you learned, which is what he is talking about, is how they purse when he resists you kissing him a few feet away from Lenalee, Allen, and Komui marching down the adjacent hallway--those that can rain the most hell on you if they saw.
He rejects like he accepts, diverse in his passivity.
Nuances to the pressure of his protest. His tongue had pushed and his lips had pressed and his teeth had gently run along the edge of your mouth to shepherd it away. No one feels more alive playing dead.
You held him until he melted with a sharp gasp of air knocking the back of his head against the rock. His back had slid down the slide of the slippery cold column, putting him below you.
You were going to push him down further. But he put a guiding hand on your shoulder and it became a delicate tempo of mouths departing and meeting again. Achingly fragile.
He played you that time. He had said so and laughed at how he could tell you wanted to put your hands around his throat.
You don't listen, you stare and remember.
"I was joking. M' trying something new." He laughs, letting it slide into a giggle. "It's a transitory period." he echoes. "Do ya like it?"
You didn't listen so you don't know and you don't care. You press a brief, rough hand against his chest. You can feel the nub of his nipple in the center crease of your palm. He startles.
It is so, short--just the force of it releases him from contact.
"No. What I like is…"
You broke the spell, you realize a little too late. He ghosts his way out of the scene with a hand sliding past your cheek, the muffled laughter dimming your circle under the torch in the mouth of the carved face.
Scene Two: "Can you help us bring him back?"
They send you in because just looking at him makes them want to cry. That's their mission statement for you--get him out without crying, but oh could you please do something with him so when we have to look at him we won't feel like crying?
Because normally they wouldn't send a rottweiler to fetch a baby bunny, but the baby bunny might be rabid. So maybe you're the only one fast (ruthless) enough to put it to sleep.
You seize that as your excuse to invade his room, which has been his closed-door fortress for a week. His mind is and active and frothing. You can tell by how he mans his desk, enthusiastically hunched over and defacing clean scrolls with vigorous writing.
His mind is the sensation fluttering against your skin when you press a hand against his face. You feel the staccato fire of words from his smile.
"The heart has four rooms, biggest left ventricle, little atriums. A mat of paralyzed tissue on the left ventricle and the whole song went quiet…it's ok, had the others right to the shrunken one, the dark soggy one that could have gone bad. Unlocked and burned them all. Outlived them. I must have scavenged. More than four multiples of four and more. That's a lot. Yuu, what're you doin, hon'?"
You don't answer but drag him out from his chair. His legs kick impulsively, like a groundless kitten's or a hanged man's.
"Yuu! What's the matter with yah? Lemme go!"
You are halfway convinced he is trying to disarm you by acting like you can still have what you want. He promised you the perfect-cut diamond brain embedded deep in a sloppy gutter mouth. The intrigue and challenge he held for you in those green eyes as brazenly colored as any painted lady's when he met yours.
He didn't mind appearances, but the other senses were too intimate, which he didn't like. Touch, smell, taste--they were excessive. So sly, suggestive looks was the only thing he dabbled with. It was enough.
But now suddenly you can smell the sweat of exertion on him, and underneath you he is hot and slick. He is leaving his scent on you. It's heavy on your tongue.
You can feel the first stirrings of arousal. You play with the idea of hardening yourself through friction against his buttocks, which are flush with your groin.
But he twists around and flickers wide green eyes at you, bewildered and betrayed like a child's. The feeling quickly dies. You even have the urge to drop him but you can't yet.
He once did it for you without a single lewd touch or intelligent remark. He was such a bitch about it too, making it his every move without saying so exactly. But.
"You can't tell me where the bodies came from." he curses, spitting at you, struggling under the brace of your bone. "Simultaneous births without a womb like a phantom sow. And you forget the law of conservation with the bouquet you promised and never gave. That doesn't happen, Yuu Kanda! "
"That doesn't make any sense," you snap at him for the ears outside. And because they can't see you, you press unnecessarily close to his damp hair. Bloody soft like wet cotton.
As soon as he feels you against his skin, he shudders so violently you pull him tighter--he might have orchestrated it all because he goes limp spontaneously. You are the only thing holding him up.
"The only things that make sense are systems, and that's only because you set the conditions." he sighs; his breath is sad and transient. It warms your pulse .
"When you try to apply a rigid mode of logic to dynamic variables, of course the outcome isn't predictable. And yet that's the sole occupation of humanity, especially for people like me. Do you see now why I'm in so much trouble, Yuu?"
He pivots and folds himself in your arms, pliant and cooperative. He holds up his wrists that have a rich dusky creaminess from his mixed blood. You see him daring you to restrain him.
"Yuu, why arn't you answerin' me?" he insists, almost irritated. "I asked you a question."
"I don't understand it." you say honestly. The thing is, you're surprised that you kind of do. It's relatively coherent. Relative to the heart and womb nonsense, anyways.
Unfortunately, it's closer to that Bookman nonsense you've always taken especial care to pretend doesn't exist. Not because it hurts, but because you loathe its intangibility, its chilly loftiness, and its enlightened detachment. No particular reason because it's very close to yourself. Just principle.
He chokes on something that must be a bad attempt at a laugh, since it can't be mistaken as anything other than a sob.
"You dummy, it was just a simple yes or no question…" He's about to hug you but his hands come up halfway short. He draws his shoulders in and lowers his head. You read the body language to mean he's on the defensive again.
"I just want things to make sense." he growls, misgiving making him bare his teeth. White. Straight. "That's why I have to do it this way. It's not so hard, I just need to pick a point of a view and stick with it if I can't do without at all. You're the outlier. You're the one who needs to leave the system."
You let him off with a threat. You take his chin in your grip and force him to glare at you directly in the eyes. "You never tell me to leave, got it?" Because you never let anyone take back anything.
"The highest high and the lowest low. So removed from the rest it shouldn't matter." he hiccups at you. "But we only want to live life for its extremes."
He curls all ten fingertips around your hostile hand grasping his jaw. Trying to corner you with coaxing before putting you down for good. Trainer, pet. He doesn't understand his position.
Humans, the thinkers, have always been naturally defenseless. They can only predict patterns to stave off weakness--any beast has at least teeth to finish a human off. You're tired of him thinking he can tame you at your wildest. You've always been human and a beast both and can see it coming.
Only you can't any more. He's losing himself and not even trying that any more. He is descending into animal himself.
He's tasting you. His mouth suckles gingerly, pulling and scraping you on his molars from your wrist to your nails. His tongue lays timid strokes on your skin, rolling around knuckles as if to take up the last trace of human saltiness.
His eyes close. "I want a perfect record of you, Yuu Kanda." He whispers, pulling your arm through and traveling up to your face. His licks are curious and frequent, memorizing the contours of your mouth. His saliva leaves a subtle tackiness that you don't like.
He slides your hair tie out of its knot. He is sifting you like sand, feeling for treasured impurities like seashells. But it all falls away without a single catch. It slips out of his touch, drizzling through the gaps and leaving no mark. Expired ink. "I…"
"Hands off, Lavi." because this is not a good time, even if you could have sworn that any time would have been a good time. Everyone's waiting for you outside and they'll give you all the time you want. They're too scared to face him for what he's become.
Enough time to gag him (the voice is what's getting in the way anyways) and get it done.
He is not fighting you. He extended the invitation. He issued it months and months ago and back then always he was always postponing with a glitter of mounting delayed desire in his spring-colored eyes. He's scattered but the bits of him left over crave the visceral reminders.
You are not your enviably beautiful dark hair. You are not the kiss he gropes for with his clumsily seeking mouth. You are not the rare tenderness that thawed him once in a while and made him hesitate.
He'd hated that about you. He said so, that it got in the way. You'd smirked and returned the compliment because it was just about teaching him a lesson. Sincerity was optional.
"This is all you are." he argues harshly. He plucks the shortest pieces of your hair from you shoulder and caresses it in a show of defiant lovingness. "Categorized, because I can't understand you any other way. Beautiful on the outside. Ugly inside. I can tell. Yuu takes and makes it hurt if it won't give willingly, like a selfish brat." he smiles sweetly and tilts his head at you. He starts humming a lullaby you taught him. "Why do you think love is unconditional?"
"You crazy fuck," you answer him. You sweep the desk clean, an explosion of paper, pens, and coloring crashing to the edges of the room. You swallow his cry of dismay, eating it as you throw him onto the tabletop.
Melding your bodies together. Ah. He is moving underneath you, through two thin protective barriers of cloth. He writhes, too slow to be panicked, too fast to be calm. You remember it being this way.
His hips rise and fall like the swells of a lake. A disordered array of red, green, orange, teal, all contradictory. Exposed white of a proffered throat and meaningless, heated noises running down. Your fingertips getting trapped by the angel wing dimples at the base of his spine.
"No…don't do it… Yuu…this isn't how you wanna do this…"
You stop. "Are you…"
"Lucid? Yeah." he chuckles throatily, hoarse from his tirades. He yanks his shoulder out from underneath you, rotating it back in the socket in a stretch held back for so long it cracks. He yawns and nestles his clothed erection closer to yours, settling hands on your waist to hold it all together. "Mm, Yuu…you gotta settle down. It's gonna be game over soon, get it? It's not safe for you t' keep tryin t' play like this."
When Allen skids in the freshly planted scratches on your face are printing your neck and collar with little red rosettes. You gather your runaway hair and let Allen gather him trembling on the floor.
"Half hundred is too even of a number, too, too many." he whimpers, touching his lips in fussy worry. "The matter came out my head. It's not Pandora's box or alchemy, pagan substitution, so don't be so stingy with me. My miracle's heresy, I get it. No more allowance, no more privilege--why designate me a vessel when he's the one who steals from a cup just before it overflows? He was going to drink it dry."
He makes Allen cry.
Scene 3: "I am complete and there is no room for you."
You've forgotten how he looks righteous. Maybe he'd borne that lidded look of isolated, passionless cool when he was very, very young. Back when he could get away with pretending that he doesn't draw people in for the fun of it.
But he was never innocent and only got better at it with experience.
"The best bait is yourself," had once been his own admission to you. That time, he'd sassily stripped the eye patch and hurled it you, smirking triumphantly at the twist of your expression that you couldn't stop.
It was incredible, the paired set. Completely normal but you found out that that unique sea-rainbow green had never been alone in the world.
You found yourself craving the story and the lingering light of it. But he'd laughed and took it back with two fingers drawing the fringed shade of his eyelid down.
"D'ya see now? M' not beautiful. Not like you. But I don't haveta be. How long did you want that one, Yuu?" He mocked you. "Hold anythin' away and it'll be wanted. Can't stop it now, can yah darlin'?"
He'd confessed his secrets to you because you are a dead-end. That was what must have delighted him so much about you, although he lied about an arbitrary interest.
Or maybe not, because that is arbitrary. He wanted, he said, something that would amount to nothing, no matter how full and chaotic getting there would take. Irrational means for an irrational ends.
"Fuck Yuu, you're good at this." his words had been pregnant with appreciation--admiration-- when you found him after he'd broken into your room. There were sketches of Mugen, the lotus, and even your tattoo recalled from furtive observation during times too bad to be obvious about it.
He'd dropped the stack of them, fanning them out in a spread on your bed. They covered it from headboard to footrest. "Y' must want me pretty badly, Yuu." He'd sounded husky and moved. "You never let anything slip, and for sucha long time. You've got my attention all right."
Now he stands straight-backed under the usual stone angel, his tone smooth and his syllables enunciated. He glides away from you, leading you in a merry-go-round chase around the column every time you try to get close. You are a thing, whole, to avoid. Not the parts he told you were the only draw.
This isn't just a stupid eye. He's withholding an entire soul from you.
"If Eve had partaken of the fruit without the serpent as her tempter, the Lord would have forgiven her. It is not sin He deigns to be permanent fault, but faithlessness. He was the pure conduit for all things worldly and she chose a sullied medium. You are such an infidelity, and you have no place with me." he chants. There is clarity in his serene hand upon the pillar.
What transition? You just see a replacement. When he preaches there is no ambivalence.
None either when he lays on his back with you on top of him, shredding the skin of your back. Those sleepy prickles, and the coming prolonged stings, you know what will come of them. Crusts like old earth jewels itching for a week. There are still three lines of them crumbling off your cheek in bits at a time.
You don't know what will come of being enveloped in him, throbbing like this is no release but a trap to make it worse than ever.
He chokes on his own silence the entire time, under what must be the painful crush of your weight and your relentless movement against him. You see it clearly because you have your hand around his hair tight enough to rip it out of his roots.
You have his head back jerked back, which makes plain the agony in his shut eyes. They're screwed hard enough to leave furrows on his eyelid. He is polished by candlelight, everywhere his natural tan bronzed by that placidly still lantern under the angel's fangs.
You are pale, so you might be a purer gold. Or, because you are above him and he is below you, you might just be shadow.
He stops clawing for the stress of it and instead sinks his nails deep in one place. He is anchoring himself to you. It's a cold, self-petrifying thing to do. But to you, he's tight and hot and good and the more alone he tries to make you feel by fading the harder you take him. Soon he can no longer stifle the moans, so he stuffs them into your shoulder to snuff them out.
A lonely trickle of dark liquid bubbles out from the corner of his clamped mouth. You don't know if his form of distraction bites the inside of a cheek or a tongue. You don't know if he is even taking any of you in.
Afterwards he takes off the eye patch because it must have collected an uncomfortable amount of sweat. He rests like you killed him. Unmoving and fingers already linked in prayer formation upon the altar of your bleeding back.
Your stray hair frames his sleeping face in stripes of black. They are like the crepe streamers of funerals. He is so lifeless when he relents.
Your lips line up with his ear and you ask.
"Are you angry?"
"No."
"You're crying."
"It hurt. I can feel myself bleeding…or is that?…anyways, I'm not sad."
"You sound normal again."
"Some cultures believe sex has restorative powers."
Back to the lunacy, which you never left. You flop over onto your back, carrying him with you on your chest with two seized wrists. "I'm kidding. You're a right bastard and I think you just raped me."
You're out of control. The words shoot adrenaline straight into your heart and through its buzzing fit you need to remind yourself that insanity is not sexually transmissible. Over and over.
"Yuu, you mustn't put words in my mouth. Language is the only thing that binds people together. Words are inadequate enough without you presuming them for others." he says. He is worn and read now, the solved mystery of his two bright, life-colored eyes gleaming under the celestial decoration's glowing burden. Naked, with every smell of him sweated out for you and every color of him laid bare for you. Game over.
He sticks a strand of dark hair, brittle hard from some stickiness, behind your ear.
"You should think about cutting your hair. It's lovely, but it gets in the way when you fuck."
Author's note:
If you couldn't tell, they are both fucking crazy. Both. Very. Crazy. Lavi's going and Kanda's been.
Honestly, this is because I watched Firefly and Serenity and wanted to out-crazy River's rants. Welcome to Lavi's schizophrenia after the mental stress of too many aliases and Kanda's impatience with anything other than the fuck that sane Lavi seemed to be getting at before he went bonkers. That's right, I just summed up the entire point of this fic in the last sentence.
I was struggling at the halfway point, so I started just going with the flow of things…hope it doesn't suck. Y'see, it started with drawing a fanart for Clockjuice (.com/art/DGM-Two-of-God-s-KandaLavi-107345143), which was also improvised conceptually as it progressed…and then Kuro666 made me want to write, and then I started reading the brilliant tempusfugit3's KandaLavi for inspiration…and thanks so much to all them, but I think I should try to make a return to structured writing.