Killing This Way
Lavi's freed eyes flicked from the sword in Kanda's hand to Kanda's steady and unreadable expression.
Seconds passed in silence. Kanda noticed that Lavi was still; not a single muscle twitched. He wasn't looking for anything to say or do. Well, if that was his way to set the tone, then…
"You said you needed me. I think you were the one who once told me that I wasn't good for anything but killing." Kanda told him.
Lavi blinked. His lips did something that wasn't smiling, but it was serene. "Okay. Yes. Yes about the killing."
Kanda stared at this admission, and then warned contemptuously, "If you're enough of a fool to want me to be your kaishakunin, I'll give you a death that's beneath even a dog."
"Oh. So that's what you think. That does make sense. If I'd just wanted to die, why else would I need someone else? I already know how a pedestrian suicide works…But still, you're not right, Yuu. Murder would be fine, in fact. Any kind." Lavi really did smile, but it was somehow simultaneously warm and bleak. He swallowed. "I…" he said haltingly.
Kanda laid the blade's tip over Lavi's heart. "I almost died, remember?" he said thoughtfully. "So I know that death is painful. And it's easy to make it worse than it has to be." Lavi didn't mean to step back, but the prick on his skin, so close to where Tyki had just stroked him, pulled his leg behind him. Kanda followed it.
"Do I care about justice?" Kanda was speaking half to himself now. "You've done so much. But I can't torture you. So all I have left in this world is your death." And then, somber: "You're right Lavi, we all make our own decisions. If this is yours, then it's the right one." It was as close to thanks that Kanda was ever going to give him for sparing his life.
"Wait." Lavi knocked the sword aside with the back of his hand, nicking himself for the trouble. "Wait. I mean, yes. Yes…this is right, and yes, whatever you want, but not yet."
The sword plunged into his right side, left open by Lavi's distracted hand. Lavi took one second to suck in the air in his throat, choking himself, but his head was clear as he grabbed onto the blade with both hands and stopped it from sinking deeper into him. The bone was strong enough to catch the edge of the blade. His waist and fingers opened up. His leg and the floor became sodden.
"Yuu, wait! There's something you need to see." Lavi's cry held more worry than pain or fear. For that, Kanda didn't yank the katana out of his grip, which would have certainly sliced apart Lavi's tendons. Instead, he reached over and loosened Lavi's fingers, taking care to get as little of his fingertips as sticky as possible.
"Oh…"Lavi said faintly, looking vaguely down on himself. He sank down on one knee into the puddle. "Nnngh. Oh god, that hurts. God." He murmured. The cut was beyond shallow but not deep. Lavi bled but nothing spilled out.
He looked up pleadingly at Kanda, who was staring as he ran his sullied weapon through a clean white cloth he had pulled from his pocket. The knowledge that Kanda had been prepared to do this crashed into Lavi and made him feel sick. "Yuu, please...help me get this under control…I swear, I only need a little more time to show you this, and then…whatever you want. I swear."
--
"It had to be you, you know." Lavi panted as he leaned on Kanda for support. They were clumsily trudging past the deep snow in a direction Kanda had never walked very far. It was a clean, cold day with no clouds in the sky, although the sun was so fierce and dry that the top of the snow banks had melted and then refroze into a crisp. Their winter boots crackled as they broke into this thin mirror crust over and over again.
Lavi was stumbling more than Kanda, so Kanda had to jerk him back up when he threatened to fall completely.
"I couldn't save Allen. Goddamn him, it was like asking Satan to pardon Jesus. Or, I don't know, asking Satan to give Beleezebub as a playmate to a kindergartener." Kanda pulled on him impatiently as Lavi rambled.
"He belonged to them, but he was going to kill him. He was like Lucifer for the other side. And that guy's supposed to lose. Because he was a traitor. The traitor always loses." He clutched at his injury. Kanda didn't help him, knowing that the occlusive dressing they had put on Lavi before the left was doing all that could be done.
"They're the Noah!" Lavi suddenly shouted out into the open. "What did you expect? You know how it goes, right? The story says two from the Old World are allowed into the ark. Two." And suddenly he was crying. He and Kanda were so thickly wrapped in winter outer wear that he couldn't even reach his face to wipe it. Kanda dropped him by accident.
"Who else could I take? Lenalee? She's his wife. She was in love with him. They had to go together. And, you know what? She would have forgiven me. I would have completely destroyed her and made her go on living when she didn't want to. And she would have forgiven me! They all would have. They would have looked past the truth and forgiven me. Every one. "
He swore as Kanda drew back in a crunch of ice, waiting to see if Lavi would try to pick himself up or
rage some more. He raged.
"You're all humanity's got left, Yuu." He went on. "And I know you don't give a flying fuck about anything as pointless as forgiveness. So what will it be? What's your judgment? Revenge? Mercy? What do I deserve?"
"... Mana."
Lavi jerked his chin, caked with white powder, up at the other man. Though the bottom half of him was flaked over from their walk, Kanda's look was clean in his face so long out in the cold that he was white from it. The jacket Lavi had given him was Kanda's choice color, a deep indigo. Angel theme colors.
"I just thought of it. That's what they planned on naming their first child. Mana." Kanda frowned at the icescape before them.
Lavi was tempted to snap "So what?" but the memory of Allen and Lenalee, kind-faced, strong, held him in check. "Oh I get it." He groaned. "Cycle of life and all that. Going back the father. Poetic. It's beautiful. "
"That's only half of it." Kanda said. Lavi wasn't watching his face or tone, so he didn't know Kanda's feelings on what he said next. "Allen said if they had a boy, they were going to name him Mana after his father."
"I got that!" Lavi shouted. He made no attempt to unburrow himself, but began to sweep dry the water forming on his brow with his bandaged and mitted free hand.
"But Lenalee said she would name the child Mana even if they had a girl."
Lavi took his hand away from his eyes.
"She came up with it herself from the story of Exodus. She was thinking about the Jews' forty years of pain and suffering in the desert. They had nothing. No home, no peace. But she said they were able to live on because every day, they had mana to eat. She thought that it meant… "
"What?"
"'There will always be sweetness enough to live.'"
---
They arrived. Kanda could feel a sickening knot forming in his stomach as soon as he recognized the shrine-like gates, but he held firm to Lavi draped across his shoulder. He walked on as quickly as possible while supporting another person, not daring to examine the structure too closely. Lavi, who was exhausted, said nothing but concentrated on trudging forward the last of the way.
When they slid open the entrance to the threshold, Lavi wearily waved towards the other side of the room, where a paper and wood door was shut fast.
"Go ahead and look around. I need to rest here." He purposefully pushed himself off of Kanda and curled into a convalescing ball in the corner. Kanda, however, did not take another step but dropped the wrappings around his head in a heap by his feet. He looked around slowly. Though unfurnished, every beam of wood, every red-stained floor plank, was in the right place.
"But this is the Baltic region." He whispered, his voice touched by disbelief. "I know it is."
But Lavi had already tuned him out to meditate. His eyes were squeezed closed and he had pulled himself inwards tightly to protect himself from the cold of the unheated house. His face was hidden from Kanda in the folds of his coat, so Kanda had no choice but to walk on.
The place was as sprawling and complex as he remembered. But without lit fires or lamps, and without servants or guests crossing his path, beaming with approval, it was eerily quiet and gray. Filmy light doused the thin paper walls and projected a dusty haze on every surface of the halls.
There were many doors, and several times Kanda opened a random one. Most opened to empty rooms, bare like unfilled boxes. A few had sparse, scattered items and furniture in the simple style of his memory, but haphazardly placed as if someone had been looking to unload quickly and arrange later.
As Kanda got closer to the center of the house, the operating site of a home, these spaces became more cluttered with crates and barrels of what looked like food. The kitchen, not that he had known it very well in his time, was fully stocked with the cast iron pots and pans and bamboo utensils it would need to serve a large household. It was annexed to a courtyard. Skinny and dormant trees dotted it in artful arrangement, the miniature conifers agreeably live looking under their cover of snowfall. Aesthetic colored boulders were stacked around and beneath them.
Kanda had to pass all this until he could enter the dining room across the way, which had a low table and cushions on the floor. Settings were placed for four people to have tea. He leaned down and put a hand to the knobbly, clay-green metal of the kettle's lid. Freezing. He blew his breath into his hands to erase the chill. Vapor fogged upwards like a substitute for a hot drink's steam.
---
By the time Kanda reported back to Lavi, the sun was midway to gone. Lavi was in the same place, but had moved slightly in his sleep so that the lids of his eyes were visible above the edge of his scarf. He was so pale that he glowed a color near identical to the hot sun dipping down through the paper walls. Kanda knelt, and set down two cups of tea by Lavi's feet. He put a hand on Lavi's shoulder, waking him gently with the weight of touch. Like a friend.
Lavi opened his eyes, squinting in confusion at finding Kanda sitting next to him, relaxed and with a warm drink clasped in his hands. He breathed in a deep waking breath and twisted to the same knee-drawn position. His toes nudged a matching porcelain cup, spilling some but not tipping it over.
"Careful." Kanda admonished So Lavi wouldn't have to reach, Kanda leaned over, picked up the cup himself, and passed it to Lavi. Lavi took it uncertainly and sipped. It tasted normal. Bitter wateriness, which was how Lavi always felt about tea himself. There was nothing in the house that could have made a poison clever enough to be undetectable.
"How did you do this?" Kanda asked him conversationally as they drank. Lavi frowned at him.
"I… visited your house. Forged a letter from you to fool your parents. Got a good look at the place you grew up…Your sister had your swords, though. I had to go find her." he told Kanda haltingly. He put the cup down. "I liked them all. They were good people."
Kanda sighed, mysteriously annoyed. "They were alright. If they were really good people, they would have raised a son who would have written to them. Even once."
Lavi had no response to this, but awkwardly tried to scrounge one from his befuddled mind anyways. Meanwhile, Kanda was surveying the sturdy ceiling beams with interest.
"You couldn't have done this all yourself. Did the Noah help you? Why would they do that?"
"No. Sort of. They let me have an akuma work crew. They gave me pretty much whatever I wanted. Still do. That's where we get our supplies from, and how I got stuff for this house. The world may be ruined, but there's enough for two people. "
"You've certainly got them wrapped around your little finger." Lavi noticed that there was a trace of a familiar sneer in that sentence. Kanda seemed to notice it too, and reined it back. His tone was more gentle as his continued. "What are you really doing here, Lavi? What really happened? I'm listening now, so don't try to tell me something else and think I can't hear you hiding the truth."
Lavi shut his eyes. He was hoping he'd be dead before it came to this.
"When you brought in Tyki Mikk, he…offered me a chance to save history. History, with a capital H. There were things he talked about that…" Lavi trailed off, strangled.
"Take your time." Kanda was powerful and composed and the air smelled of strong, cleansing matcha. He sat unseen in darkness.
"He told me things that had happened and would happen. Not even just the things related to the war, about everything, all over the world. He told me what to look for, to know that he was telling the truth. Signs. So that I couldn't doubt him. So that I would believe him when he said…that there was no way for us to win. That God wasn't on our side." Lavi covered his face with his hands.
"They all happened, one by one. The earthquake in San Francisco. Bloody Sunday. Relative theory." Lavi knew these things were meaningless to Kanda, but he went on anyways. "But that doesn't matter. Even I could see it, in the hidden history. The holes in the biblical records--Why do the Noah exist, and why did no one notice them until recently, if they've lived forever? Why were there so few of them? How could humans still hold the Earth when they Noah are the tribe with all holy blessings, and godly powers, and all we have are our Innocence and tools? How could we not know anything, after all this time? I always thought it just our ignorance, that the Bookmen could do so much. That it was no one's fault. But--" Lavi's breath hitched.
"--But Tyki told me, it's because Bookmen could only ask humans because the Noah did not want to speak. If I went with him, they'd answer my questions. And the first thing he wanted me to know is that God is not our side."
"I don't believe in God." Kanda's words came out the room, which was now blackness. "But that's who they said the Innocence came from. Who was looking after us, if not God?
"No one. They're just artifacts of the last war. Old trash. Worthless except for their last vestiges of power, and the whatever you project onto them. They get destroyed all the time, but we've never been able to kill a Noah, remember? Not completely. Whatever their Allen was like then, he was like the Earl is now. Traitor of his own kind destined to lead the holy people to victory. Yeah." Lavi said through a thin smile at Kanda's shudder next to him, his first true reaction. "You noticed, didn't you? The Earl doesn't look like the Noah. He looks human."
"Lavi, not all of this is making sense."
"Of course it doesn't. That's because it's senseless. There's no explanation why it's like this. Why did Cain kill Abel? He was jealous that God loved Abel's offering of a lamb better than his offering of fruit. But why? Why did God choose blood? No one knows the reason. Maybe he just likes seeing it spilled. Every few millennia, Noah triumph over humans or humans triumph over Noah; and when enough time passes that no one remembers the fight, the war breaks out again. Our turn's over. Simple as that."
If Kanda was reluctant to accept this, he didn't bother pursuing the doubt and said instead "I would have chosen to die with my own kind."
"Yeah. Well." Lavi brushed him off. "You weren't given the choice, I was. Soon the Noah will propagate, and any people needs a history. I was…commissioned. Be their storyteller, teach them how to tell the stories. They paid for it with my life, and the chance to keep alive the Bookman clan's knowledge even beyond the end of humanity. And even to complete the records…really complete them, and say what I want about the people I knew."
"That's all?" Kanda scoffed.
"Go ahead and say it, if you're going to. I come cheap, don't I?" Lavi gave him a bright, bitter little smile.
"Not so cheap, I suppose. You did bargain for my life. And this house."
"No." Lavi mumbled "I didn't. Not really. It was just Noah and their fun. They told me I could save one person, going by the two's of the first flood…they just wanted an artsy way to watch me suffer through the choice. They're like that. You've noticed, right?"
"I noticed. And?"
"And?…"
"And why'd you take the bait?" Kanda goaded him.
"Oh…I don't know… I was weak…I couldn't let humanity go…I know I should have just given you peace. But please, Yuu." Lavi pleaded. "Can't you try to see it my way? It was wrong, but I couldn't…I couldn't stop myself. I thought saving even one person would give me some peace."
"How pretty." Kanda's laugh was just that. Pretty. "But I think I get it now. Alright, thank you for telling me."
Lavi didn't even have time to reply an awkward, confused 'you're welcome' before Kanda pulled him close, so that Lavi was forced look directly into his face. He smashed his other hand into Lavi's cut.
Lavi cried out as pain flooded his senses. It had been too long since he'd been a soldier to bear such pain with dignity. He openly struggled, pushing helplessly at Kanda. "Yuu, don't! It hurts!"
"You wouldn't have let me live if you weren't hoping for an easy way out of what you did to us." Kanda accused him in soft tones. He dug his fingers in deeper, forcing out an unhappy mewl. "So I'm supposed to kill you, …but then what, Lavi?"
"No--" Lavi gasped, squirming, but Kanda raised his voice, speaking over him.
"Then I'd be left to choose to live in a world run by Noah--things I've fought and hated my entire life, Lavi!--or suicide. You thought this dollhouse would be enough to distract me--?"
"It wasn't like I didn't want you to be happy if you could be! I tried!" Lavi protested, trying to seize a sense of calm against the pointless panic.
It was fine, wasn't it? He'd already known it would go this way, right?
So why did he feel angry? Like fighting?
Why did he feel like crying again?
"Happy? You thought I would be 'happy'? That really gives it away. When have I ever acted as if I wanted to be happy? Everything you did, you did for yourself. You know how I know? You're a selfish bastard. You've always been one." He began to laugh again.
"…Fine. You win. You got it." Lavi whispered. His hand slid out from under the folds of his coat and grasped the white wrist of Kanda's sword hand. "I didn't care about what you wanted. I wanted to be a Bookman. It made me want to die. I wanted you to decide for me because I couldn't." His eyes narrowed like a child's daring an adult to keep a promise. "Was I wrong? Will you do it? Will you kill me?"
When Kanda looked at Lavi, Lavi could see his decision forming . It held sweetness. It held malice.
"Mercy, Yuu?" he choked out finally, unable to wait any longer.
But Kanda pulled his arm away.
"No." he said lightly. "You said it, didn't you? You need to live. Go teach those monsters to remember how they murdered us."
---
In a curious reversal of their roles, Kanda ended up taking Lavi to one of the central rooms and arranging him in a futons. After Kanda had reopened his wound, Lavi couldn't have made back to the main house if he wanted to. Lavi immediately set to sleep, and Kanda went to fetch some coal and burners. They were where Lavi had said they would be, in the replica storage shed out back. He traveled from room to room, heating a knot that were that were close to the kitchen.
The available supplies didn't have much variety, but Kanda managed to open a barrel of rice and put together a meal with some vegetable pickles. Kanda was impressed that the rats hadn't gotten into them. The barrels had been sealed well. (Not that he'd seen any rats here, which made quite the difference between Lavi's domain and the rest of the world. Maybe sheer animal fear kept them far from where Noah lurked.)
When he was done, he carried a tray back to Lavi's room, complete with more cups of tea. By then, thanks to Kanda's efforts, the place was comfortably warm. Nevertheless, Kanda was surly as he sat down to eat, unsympathetically jerking Lavi awake.
"It's a mess in here." Kanda complained. "Where are your akuma workers? Why can't they clean it up?"
Lavi wearily reached for the bowl of food, gingerly rolling to his good side so it was possible for him to handle the chopsticks.
"They're just akuma. You can point and say 'put that there' but not 'make the room look nice,' you know? I didn't have time to get things done myself after you got here--and then I had to write." he said.
"Feh." Kanda grouched. "Just make sure that they know to bring things here for a while."
"I can tell them." Lavi assured him after he swallowed a mouthful of hot rice. "One of the Noah will come looking for me. Lulubell, probably. It's her turn next."
"The cat? Good, but don't let that thing change into Noah form. And then tell them to stay the hell away from here. I'll give you back to them when you can move again."
Lavi looked at him questioningly, taken aback by Kanda's newfound authority. Kanda caught this surprise and smiled grimly.
"This is my house, isn't it?"
When Kanda had finished eating, he got up and left Lavi alone in the room. Soon, Lavi heard the scrapings of heavy things being slid across the floor. Kanda was rearranging things to his liking. He really was intending to settle down here.
He laid back, thinking wryly that Kanda must have endured similar while recovering. There was the deadness of winter outside. And on the inside, a caretaker full of mystery, but with thoughts dark enough that the patient knew better than to ask.
---
When Lulubell came in, she did not do so gracefully. Her little cat feet swept up and over the threshold soundlessly, but as soon as they hit the floor, she stuck her ropy tail straight into the air. Kanda didn't stop her from stalking into the room where Lavi was waiting. He even slid open the door for her, so she wouldn't have to morph into Noah form. She gave Kanda a glance of greatest feline contempt before going in.
Kanda had known cats before, a long time ago when he was a child. They'd protected the storerooms from mice. He hadn't liked them. And he'd seen the things in bad moods before. If Lulu had been a male cat, and if Lulu didn't have the greatest pride of all the Noah, he was pretty sure she would have sprayed the doorframe to show just how she felt about being here. Lavi had said that out of all the Noah, she detested humans the most. It must have been unpleasant to have to come calling on the last one on Earth. Regardless, since this was his house, Kanda only showed her courtesy the he'd learned from watching his parents receive guests.
As soon as he shut the door after her, he heard a murmur from Lavi. Immediately, a woman's silhouette burst into being from the floor. Kanda had lit lamps for a late evening. Lulubell's shape flickered darkly against the glowing panels of wood and paper. As the last womanly curve fell into place, Kanda heard the Noah's and Lavi's voices erupt into a quarrel.
Lulubell was not the gesticulating type. Holding a beautifully proud position of hands on hips, her words came out smooth, but low and angry. Kanda had never heard Lavi fight with anyone either. But Lavi also spoke composedly, if sharply.
He had the final word. There was a soft thud, as if something padded had hit the floor. Sure enough, after Kanda pulled open the door again, a small black cat darted out. The animal halted in front of him and spat out a hiss, hair on her back raised, before taking off for the main door at a slow run. It seemed as if she didn't want to look as if she were being chased off.
"Catty bitch!" Lavi said crossly as soon as Kanda came in.
"What did I say about having a Noah in here?" Kanda said instead of replying.
"Cats can't talk, Kanda. She would have scratched up your floor."
"What did she want? Why were you fighting?" Kanda asked, ignoring this.
Lavi sighed. "She hates you, for one thing. Also, I told her that I was taking a break and why, which only made her angrier, since it's your fault."
"I didn't know she was so attached to you. Do all the Noah love you so much?"
"No." Lavi corrected Kanda shortly. "She hates me too. She puts up with me because I serve the Earl, but she's mad that I'm not fulfilling my duties. She kept saying 'master will not be pleased', and 'master spared your life only for your services'. I told her to have everyone leave transcripts in my library, so I can get back to them later--that's what history is anyways, putting together something from primary documents. I'm the only one on this project, I've been working nonstop for years--I take some time to recover from a sword wound, and she accuses me of going on an undeserved vacation? Crazy woman! She's the worst of all of them."
Lavi looked over at Kanda, expecting some kind of a response to his list of complaints about his job. Instead, he saw Kanda in deep study of a lamp's little flame.
It was the first time Lavi had said something so directly about working for the Earl. And he'd spoken of Noah easily, as if they were merely his coworkers and not harbingers of destruction and violence, who'd successfully pulled off the apocalypse, by the way.
Noah. There only Noah in the world. They were what were normal, and he was the abnormal. Lavi had known this. He'd lived in it. Kanda's turn to wake up and accept reality.
"Yuu?"
---
Lavi was nowhere near as bad as Kanda when he'd been brought in by Lavi, but Kanda had benefited from healing powers and heavy medication. Lavi ended up taking about the same time to heal. It was boring work, but Kanda made a run to the main house and picked up some paper and inks along with some other things. Lavi slept and wrote (for himself) while Kanda fell back into his own habit of cleaning and cooking. There was more to do here, since Lavi's house had been pleasant and functional long before he had ever come along. Besides that, his family compound hadn't had a dojo, but Lavi had thoughtfully added one to the plan of this one, tucked into a corner where the difference wouldn't be too obvious. Kanda would take a charcoal burner with him and would swing away the hours.
And for a lack of anything better to do, they talked. Like they used to, half a lifetime ago, when they were young.
Kanda was generous. He answered, without embellishment, the questions Lavi couldn't help asking about their old friends and what they had done with their last years. Lavi, to his credit, never dissolved into hysterics again. He could have been asking about books he'd left behind in the Order's care--if anyone had read them, if they had been put to good use before being retired?
He would smile faintly to know that Krory had also wanted children, and that had been his wife's suggestion that the first girl be named "Eliade". Lenalee had nervously asked Kanda to be her "best person," and had ended up strutting off in angry dignity. This made Lavi laugh.
But as they were men who had not seen each other in a while, there was nothing to it but getting to the sex eventually.
They swapped stories of girls and women and boys and men over lunches and dinners which had gone to the simple and elegant meals of Kanda's childhood. It was a distinct change from of the simple and hearty dishes they had eaten in Lavi's house. Back then, Kanda had still been cooking in the style of roadside camps like Tiedoll had taught him, as suited the Western ingredients in Lavi's pantry (akuma loot from the aftermath of a world-wide riot). Here, Kanda surprised himself by being able to recreate what had been made for him by servants' hands many years ago. This, he'd realized one day, was because Lavi had correctly instructed the akuma in how to stock Kanda's kitchen differently and also because Kanda had good senses for this kind of thing.
So they ate vegetables and meats that tasted of vegetables and meats and not of seasonings. And now that Lavi had had some for himself, and there was no society making it awkward for them to exist around each other afterwards, they talked about their lovers.
"…She wasn't my first kiss, that was when I was fifteen just grabbed some innkeeper's daughter behind the stable. Suman walloped me good for it too-- it got us kicked out before we were done with our mission. But she was the first woman I…met right after Bookman died. I didn't tell her anything, but I didn't have to--when she kissed me for the first time, it was because she knew I was in pain and wanted to do something for me." Lavi gave a sheepish grin, as if he were confessing an embarrassing secret--even though they had talked about more graphic experiences already . "It was new, but nice. I didn't know I'd feel that good, knowing she cared. And--well, yeah, she was a lot of firsts for me. You?"
Kanda wrinkled his brow in thought. "My most first time," he said finally. "Was with someone older. I gave, I think, Marie the slip, and after I got to the address, he--"
"Hey Yuu!" Lavi put up a hand of warning. "Not that kind of conversation right now--I mean, yeah, I'm sure you made great jailbait. But I'm talking about…I don't know, that kiss. The one you remember."
"You sound like a woman sometimes, Lavi." Kanda said scornfully, gracefully placing a piece of sliced fish between his lips.
"That's not it, Yuu--it sounds like you're the one who never got the point!" Lavi gave him a sly smile.
"Point of what?"
"Kissing."
"What do you mean, the point of it? You do it, and then you go further." Kanda stated bluntly. He was a bit irritated that he had undercooked the rice today. The too-stiff grains were getting wedged in the cavities of his teeth.
"What? You really think that's it?"
Kanda shrugged indifferently from beside Lavi's quilt.
"Jesus!" Lavi exclaimed. "You really do! Well, then I feel sorry for you…-you've never found anyone to kiss like you mean it and now you can't--And, I'll say it before you do, shut up, I know that's my fault--"
"I've never had to kiss anyone like I cared to get what I wanted." Kanda's pointed out, getting a bit sharp. To his annoyance, he could feel his temper prickling. He was sure that in principle he was apathetic to Lavi's banter, especially on such a banal subject. But that was no reason for Lavi, with a bite of rice stuffed in his cheek, to prattle on so fearlessly.
"That's just what I'm saying! You know, Yuu, sometimes I think being ridiculously beautiful spoiled you. You only did it as part of sex. That's an entirely different thing. It's as if you haven't kissed anyone at all." he lectured between chews.
"Well then, what about you?" Kanda challenged him, unable to keep the bite from his voice. Lavi furrowed his eyebrow in distaste.
"Hey…what's with the change in tone?" he objected.
"Just don't give me a hard time, especially if you're going to be a hypocrite about it."
Lavi swallowed. "What do you mean?" he said in clear innocence, almost convincingly.
"You were just fucking around too--you can't say you cared about any of them, you knew they were going to die, and you just let them--you did them and left them--like my sister--"
"Yuu!"
For the first time, after all the yelling and accusation about Lavi being a murderer and a traitor and worse and Lavi only nodding along, it looked like Kanda had crossed a line. His jaw snapped shut, not in regret but in shock. He'd done the impossible. Lavi was offended. He was scowling.
"Of course I cared." he slowly, glowering, but not directly at Kanda. He focused on the patterns of his comforter. "I was trying to understand them, Yuu. It wasn't…corrupting the history anymore, they were the history. Going to be it. I wanted to know everything about them, even the part of them that was their bodies…and how they tried to feel something using their bodies."
Lavi paused, needing a moment to perfect his thoughts. "I think…the Bookmen before me had it right, Yuu. Sex really was a distraction from record-keeping, which is why they didn't do it. But at the same time, sex is a core component of humanity…ignoring it would be like leaving the record unfinished forever…so maybe, we always knew that we would have to try to understand it at the end…and…that because it's such a primal, irrevocable thing, that it would be there to be understood, even at the end of the world."
Kanda's features had gone slack with disgust at how Lavi was using their conversation to put some defining points to his own philosophy. He hated it when Lavi started talking at him, not with him.
"Whatever," he snapped. "Just, if you're going to start on how unfeeling I am, and then say you loved and adored all your old lovers, think about what you did to those people in the end--"
"Yuu, I didn't say I loved them." Lavi interjected smartly. "I said I tried to understand them. As a Bookman. Maybe as a human, so I'd be able to remember that for them too." Lavi closed the topic neatly, having just understood it for himself now. Satisfied, he resumed eating his meal, leaving Kanda to moodily stab his own with chopsticks and brood over it was just too damned easy for Bookmen to think and talk.
But, noticing his mood, Lavi brightly started talking about the best blowjob he'd ever had (not the same girl) so that Kanda could relate and they could get into the flow of talk again. Meals were boring spent in silence, after all.
---
When Lavi was well enough, be began to hobble around the place, doing thoughtful small things. He started setting the rice to cook while Kanda was still in the dojo so that they could eat faster, with Kanda only needing to prepare the sides when he came back. He swept the halls, pulled tender weed sprouts from the garden and sorted out the edible ones, and did the wash for the clothes he'd had brought here as well. It was a good thing that he and Kanda were similar in size. Lavi had lost some weight from going from philosopher-warrior to pure philosopher. The sword injury hadn't helped any either.
One day a stack of notes snuck its way into their supplies. It hinted to at least one Noah's growing discontentment. (The only that seemed sane enough to care was Lulubell, but you never knew.) Although they had avoided Kanda's house and had made no attempt to contact Lavi, its appearance said that they were watching the place, and wished him back in their affairs now that he was mostly recovered. Lavi ran his eyes over it, but didn't bother doing anything else with it. He had a whole library's worth of backlog he could throw it into once he got back, he was sure.
After all, even though he was injured, and even though Kanda could be abrasive to live with, it was a refreshing change-up from his life as the Noahs' historian. With all the late-nighters and squabbles with a whole cast of strange characters, sometimes it had felt as if he were back at the Order. Implications aside, that part of it had tired him out.
There was something bugging Kanda, though. He was getting up before the sun, so Lavi often missed him in the morning. As soon as Kanda lit the fire and brought in chopped wood, he wandered off into the dojo or the woods and would come back around dusk. Back to the good old routine.
He'd learned that he could get Lavi to do things by leaving a note. So Lavi slid open a door and sat on the edge of the wood platform, taking the mending he'd found in his chair with him. Kanda must have ripped it on a branch. He could hear mating birds shrilling at each other in the surrounding trees. Passable substitute for cicada screeches, if the season weren't wrong. It was warm enough for it, though. Lavi wondered if the hike in temperature had anything to do with the Earl's plans. Reverting to an Eden-esque clime to suit the new race, maybe?
Oh, who cared, he thought as he closed up the tear. He was on break. If they wanted that noted, the would have to tell him. Or maybe they already had somewhere in the paper mountain that had been on his desk. Lavi figured that needed one more week, tops, before he should head back to his own place. For one thing, it wasn't good to fall too far behind.
Also, Kanda had been looking pretty pissed lately.
Lavi didn't have to think hard to figure out what it was. He knew from their conversations what he and his Noah conspiracies had interrupted. Two years worth of losing everything you had and then constant fear/rage made a damned good distraction. But fact was that Kanda was still relatively young and there was nothing to do around here. As for Lavi…well, fine, maybe he had gone a bit overboard with the few years of freedom he'd had, but he hadn't forgotten what it was like to live his first almost-30 years in peaceful abstinence. He could do it again. But he didn't think Kanda had it in him to do it gracefully.
But nothing to it, really. What was Lavi supposed to do? Every man knew how to deal with forced celibacy, and that didn't need any outside help. Solitude would be the best thing. Time for Lavi to clear out.
Lavi nearly dropped the shirt when he heard door frame rasping against its runner. It was Kanda, of course. Who else? Why be surprised? A hand dragged him into the house. Lavi stumbled into the room--his.
"What is it?" Lavi asked, bewildered. He stuck the needle in the sleeve and tossed the whole thing aside. Had the Noah did something to bother Kanda?
More than half of Kanda's face was blocked out by shadow in the unlit room.
"Is something wrong, Yuu?"
Kanda reached out and took Lavi's chin in hand.
Lavi looked up sharply. Kanda had never touched him that way before. His fingers remained light on the edge of Lavi's jaw.
"You know." Kanda said thoughtfully. "You're actually…"
Lavi didn't even get a chance to close his eyes before Kanda closed the distance. When Lavi did nothing to help or hinder him, Kanda actually placed a hand behind his head and the other on his back to bring him near enough. His mouth got trapped. He couldn't get away. It was as if the long-absent touch of tongue was a paralyzer.
"…Oh." Lavi mumbled. He could feel himself turning red. He twisted in Kanda's arms and looked away. "Oh. Yuu, I don't think I can do this."
"Mm. Why not?"
"Because…" Lavi thought, because Tyki said this would happen, because I don't like men, because you need this and I owe you, and because I'd have to live with it.
He breathed out in the room, having nothing he could say to Kanda. "… I don't know" slid out of that breath; the words rode out on its weakness. Fragile, poorly put together, they vanished from the pressure of rough fingers--instantly arousing touches stroking down hard on his penis through his pants. Lavi jerked; there was a gasp and a rustle of disturbed sheets in the dark as he was pushed down onto the futon.
"Yuu, I said I don't want to do this! Get off me!" Lavi hissed as he struggled, getting angry. He winced when his recently healed wound gave him sharp pinches of pain. Kanda held him down by bracing an arm across his neck. He was kissing Lavi again, his hand deftly sliding down past his bandage and past his waistband to touch him skin to skin. Lavi made a sound that could have been pleasure or disgust.
"Just tell me when it stops feeling good."
It was nice for a while, which was why Lavi let it go. But he quickly found out that this kind of sex was a lot of ugly pain punctuated by a few points of ugly pleasure. He couldn't help fighting at times when it felt like Kanda would never finish. But Kanda pushed his palm against Lavi's throat to tilt his head back, as if not having to see it would be a comfort. Lavi squinted at the ceiling through half-closed eyes, hot blood pounding in his temples. He kept his lower lip clipped between his teeth.
Afterwards, when Lavi tried to get up on shaky legs to wipe himself off, Kanda pulled him back and did it for him with the sheets. Lavi lay back on Kanda's chest with Kanda reaching between his legs, their shirts stuck together with cold sweat. Whenever Kanda leaned forward over his shoulder, Lavi could smell what they had done, clinging to his black net of hair.
Shit, Lavi thought there, clammy, stung, with Kanda feeling around his thighs. Lavi could feel the motion of words from Kanda, but he didn't bother to try to understand them. He let his chin slip onto Kanda's collarbone and stayed there with him until he was warm enough to feel human again and doze off.
The next day, Lavi's ass hurt, but he started to organize the information he had from the Noah's notes. It was about time he got back to work anyways.
---
Lavi had been right and the stacks the Noah had left around his place were dismally deep. It was "place", not just "study," because they had marched right out of the room into the halls. Lavi noticed that the ones with a new handwriting--elegant and slanted, not like the boxy letters etched out by cat claws--were especially lengthy. She'd kept her messages terse and rude as an animal, but Noah had wonderful intuition for what would most bother a person at a given time. Lulubell was a bitch through and through. But Lavi took them on gamely and got back to work.
The Noah came in for their visits. Rhode and Tyki teased, but didn't pull off any more stunts. Lavi got the impression that someone had scolded them from disrupting the Bookman at work--maybe Lulu. Maybe even the Earl. Letting someone who was technically human live had been loaded decision for the Noah, after all. All that seriousness would be wasted if Lavi got accidentally broken by one of them, or offed himself from the stresses of their attention.
No one was more surprised than Lavi when Kanda came calling on him after he went back to his own house. Kanda would appear on the path on early evenings, with an umbrella under his arm for the summer rains and lantern swinging in his fist, his regrown hair neatly tied behind him. Lavi had his misgivings at first, but they were unfounded. Kanda would just eat and talk with him, like before. Lavi tried to fend him by being excruciatingly boring ("I'm writing. Can't talk to you for the next few hours."), but this didn't work.
"You got that wrong." Kanda would tell him, reading over his shoulder.
"What?"
"There." And Kanda would put a delicate finger to a line on the page. "Lenalee and Allen didn't get married in the winter of that year. They had the ceremony in early fall."
"…What? That can't be right, the letter they sent me--"
"Komui got a stroke at the end of the August that year. Not a big surprise, the higher ups were putting pressure on him to revive the third program. They moved the date up because they weren't sure he was going to make it. But he did. Said he wouldn't miss the chance to be an uncle for anything in the world."
"I didn't know that."
Kanda shrugged. "Why would you? Lenalee didn't like upsetting other people." he said. And Kanda would take Lavi wetting his hands as a sign to stalk out and get dinner ready.
Finally, one day Lavi gave up on his books and walked into the kitchen with a page he couldn't finish. Kanda had his back to him, meddling with the fire in the stove.
"How long can you keep this up, Yuu?" he demanded. "I know why you're doing this. But what about what you want?"
Kanda tossed chips of wood into the flames one by one.
"What do you mean?"
"You're going to run out of sad stories eventually. What are you going to do then?"
"It's not like that, Lavi." Kanda deflected him absently and he stoked up the heat. "I'm not thinking about anything when I'm with you."
"Really? You always make me think of everyone. Everything. As if the world were still full." Lavi gave him a smile, grim and bitter. "It sucks."
"If you really thought that, you would have told me shut up. But you never did."
"You know I couldn't! That's why you did it. It's a pretty bad act, Yuu. You talking sweet about the others--you've got to be kidding me." Lavi crumpled the sheet he'd been holding and tossed it at Kanda's head. It bounced off. Without a single sign of rage, Kanda deftly picked it up and tossed it in.
"I asked you." Lavi said icily "What you're going to do next."
Satisfied with the fire, Kanda started pulling down pots and pans from Lavi's cupboard. "The same damned thing."
Lavi crossed his arms. "What is the 'same damned thing'?"
"This." As Lavi shook his head in frustration, Kanda placidly continued.
"I like this, I mean. It's fine. Living with you. I like it. I can keep doing it." Kanda said. He frowned suspiciously at the fire, and went back to throw in more fuel.
Lavi didn't say anything back.
---
But that night, Kanda was woken from his sleep when someone slid in behind him and wrapped his arms around him. It was very, very late--or else, very, very early. He'd walked back from Lavi's house back to his and been in bed for a few hours already.
"Lavi?"
"Yeah?" Nothing for a moment. "This is okay, right?" he was asked almost defensively.
Was it?
"…Yes." Kanda decided. "It's fine."
He rolled over. He was amazed at how very aware he was of his own heartbeat. It… it wasn't as if he could tell if it had gotten stronger, or faster. But he knew it was there, and he could feel it.
But before he could do anything, Lavi grabbed his wrists and leaned in quickly. His kiss was swift and shy--like young boy's first time with an older lover. Like, Kanda suddenly remembered, how his first time had been like.
But he couldn't match the face to the memory. It was only a sensation lingering on his lips, which had been left there by Lavi. It was only Lavi's face, which was now staring at him with bright green eyes that looked a little sad and a little ashamed, but also curious and wanting more. As if he could tell what Kanda was thinking, he ducked his head and Kanda could see his blush.
Kanda felt a surge of desire different from the bright, violent rush that had always come before he fucked someone. Tenderness flowed in a slow uneasy trickle, something that made him feel both awkward and excited. He pulled Lavi closer--Lavi shifted slightly, feeling the change in Kanda's anatomy pressing against his thigh. And though he wasn't nearly as hard as Kanda, Kanda could also feel Lavi's body responding against his.
Kanda let go of Lavi's waist and got on top of him, placing his knees on either side of Lavi. Slowly, he lowered himself so that their erections pressed together. Lavi let out a tiny moan.
With a fumbling motion that Kanda wouldn't have believed of himself, considering how easy and effortlessly he had done it countless times before, he pulled Lavi's shirt up to expose his chest and run his hands over it. This was his first time seeing Lavi unclothed---since Christ, when? When they were kids? Had he ever, even then?
Lavi was thin, thinner than he'd ever been in the Order when the training had toned them all. Kanda could see the lines of his ribs. But his muscles were sinewy and defined, and his skin--his skin looked warm and sweet, flush with color despite the season that had made Kanda sun-starved and pale. Lavi's nipples were a dark rose against his skin.
His fingers met a raised, taut line. With a dazed pang, Kanda recognized it as a scar--the one that he had given. He lowered his lips to it. Lavi squirmed at against the feeling of Kanda's mouth on his stomach.
"Oh…" Lavi said as Kanda's lips and tongue traveled upwards. He put his hands on Kanda's shoulders. When Kanda took his nipple in his teeth, Lavi's back lifted from the floor with a small "Ah!"
"Yuu." Lavi was tense. From where he was laying on top of him, Kanda could feel it in his entire body line. "Yuu." he said louder again, as Kanda reached below him into his underwear, hands slipping over his buttocks. Lavi was warm there. When Kanda slid his hand in between, he quickly, eagerly pressed his lips to Lavi's to stop him from jerking away from the touch. With some swipes of his tongue, he soothed Lavi with kissing until Lavi relaxed into the intrusion of Kanda's fingers.
"I won't hurt you." Kanda promised him. This time, he stopped himself from saying in time. Lavi pressed his forehead to his, almost a nod.
"Do you have… anything to make it easier?" Kanda asked him in between kisses. Lavi, he noticed, was clenching pretty hard.
"Ummmm." Lavi twisted his head away, thinking. He'd thought Kanda would, like last time. He pursed his lips in uncertainty as he reached for a small round tin that he'd kept in his pocket. "How about this?" It was an ointment he'd used to soothe the sting of his healing cut. Kanda took his hands out of Lavi's pants to unscrew it and run his fingers over it. It was greasy and slick. Lavi sat up to watch him, balancing on his elbows
Kanda actually removed Lavi's pants this time, freeing a half hard member and exposing Lavi's entrance. Keeping his eyes on Lavi's face, Kanda put one hand on Lavi's knee to coax him to stay open, and eased the other one down. Before entering Lavi again, he gave his penis some strokes and squeezes, eliciting a shiver. He inserted a finger, and then two--from the silence, he knew that Lavi was holding his breath.
"Lavi, relax…It's ok."
"It…hurts." Lavi murmured, almost apologetically. And then he flashed a mischievous grin, something that jolted Kanda back to their youth. Lavi really had been…so bright, and bold--
"This is so weird." Lavi laughed, lying back and raising his hips only a little as Kanda pressed deeper. "I'm not used to being the one prepped." But in the next moment, when Kanda really started to move, Lavi's thighs immediately flew up and gripped Kanda's arm. His playfulness was gone. He didn't know it, but he looked scared. "Ow! Yuu, fuck…! I can't…"
"It'll be fine, Lavi." And then taking a chance, Kanda said "It was fine last time, wasn't it"
"You did it really fast then--"
"And it hurt like hell when I actually went in, right? I'll do it slow this time. It won't hurt as much later--so…" Kanda dropped his voice, saying something he couldn't remember saying before. "…you'll be able to enjoy it."
"That a promise?" Lavi gasped lightly, blowing on that spot of cheer again. But soon enough he was on his back, legs spread and writhing and making noises of discomfort as Kanda worked him open.
Kanda could hear him: his soft "Fuck…no…please, no…" But Lavi didn't draw his legs closed, or try to take away Kanda's hands. Kanda took this as a sign that it was okay for him to keep going. He was right, because when he added a third finger Lavi panted out a strained plea: "Yuu…Yuu, hey…please kiss me…please?"
Kanda knew Lavi needed something to distract him from something that he had definitely not associated with pleasure before. Kanda did him one better and drew Lavi's cock into his mouth, flicking his tongue against the head to taste the precum as he continued to get Lavi ready.
"Wait, I didn't mean--!"he head Lavi exclaim. Kanda jerked his head up from between Lavi's legs for clarification. Lavi seemed to be taken off guard by Kanda's patience with him. "Well, uh…I didn't mean stop… you can um…keep doing it…" he trailed off.
Kanda rolled his eyes and went back to what he was doing. Soon, even with Kanda's fingers thrusting in him hard and fast, Lavi's cock was completely hard and twitching in Kanda's mouth. His breathing was ragged between moans. Kanda expertly pushed down his hip when he started to thrust and pulled up, leaving a trail of saliva on Lavi's skin.
"Lavi, you ready?"
He took so long to reply that Kanda thought (worried?) that he was going to say no. But before he even heard the word, he felt Lavi's warm hand reach over and brush the back of his.
"Yeah…"
It didn't go as smoothly as the first time, as in, Kanda wasn't able to come without interruption. Lavi held out for only a minute or so, his face twisted in intense pain. Then he had to ask Kanda to stop. And Kanda did. He waited until Lavi took a deep breath, wrapped his arms around him, and told him to move again. It happened one more time before Kanda made contact with Lavi's prostrate, which led Lavi grabbing his hand and closing it around his cock. With Kanda jerking him off, Lavi came first. Kanda made him deal with the unpleasantness of continued thrusting until he was able to get off deep inside Lavi's body. Despite this, Lavi gave Kanda only a tiny glare before kissing him and taking his hand as they slept side by side.
So, it was only his best guess the next morning when he woke up with Lavi's fingers still loosely interwoven with his, and the bizarre thought Lavi looked beautiful with half his face buried into the pillow and messy red hair strewn everywhere. But Kanda thought that they might have made love.
--
Some place close to Kanda's replica ancestral home, a Noah was sniffling, pressing her gray cherubic face into her knees. The night sky was as lush with stars as a nativity scene, and from where she sat on the cold hill she could have been a shepherd child about to be visited upon by an angel of good news.
Instead, there was a creak of invisible hinges someone opened a square of space next to her and stepped down with a graceful hop. He had no wings, but when she heard him walking up behind her, she twisted around her waist and flung her arms around his in a flounce of white petticoats. He crouched down to her level and stroked her hair as she clung to him.
"It's tragic." Rhode huffily emphasized the latter word. She pressed her cheek to her brother's chest. There were real tears in her eyes.
"Oh Rhode, my little love. What's troubling you?" Tyki soothed her, stroking her dark hair.
"I'm so bored, Tyki. There's nothing to hurt. There's nothing trying to hurt me. It's so still, and so quiet, and I hate it!" she sobbed softly into his shirt-- such clean white linen, he could have very well been a heavenly messenger. Or a society man. Sometimes they dressed alike.
"It's good. You know that. Nice and peaceful for the babies."
"No!" Rhode whined at him. She clutched at the fine stitching of his front. "Even Lavi-bunny's been boring lately… I said I'd kill the heartless lotus princess for trying to hurt him, but he made go away…And now he turns me away if he's at the castle of the lotus-princess, but if I even look cross-eyed at him, Lavi won't talk to me even when I go to see him at his house! Tyki, what do I doooo~? They both such bores!"
"Actually, I think they're quite interesting."
Rhode's lip trembled. She was looking for a shred of hope to salvage from this mess.
"That exorcist was the best out all the Order with a sword, yes?"
"Yes."
"Very interesting then, that he came at the Bookman from the side, instead of running him through--a nice clean, killing motion. Is that a coincidence?"
"They were friends." Rhode pouted. "Lavi said so. I know when I think about killing you, Tyki honey, I just can't keep my head straight."
"Maybe." Tyki allowed affably. "But look at this. The Bookman tried to keep a man alive to kill him. The man feinted killing him so he could find out that a greater punishment would be for the Bookman to live. But by forcing the Bookman to live in guilt, the man found that his own suffering was eased. And in turn, he eased the Bookman's suffering."
"So?" Rhode asked querulously.
"So few things have such a neat endpoint, Rhode dear. We're humans and Noah--cycles are in our blood. Suffering forces the hand of the victim to deal a greater blow. They've somehow gotten to equilibrium. Incredible, isn't it? It makes for a good story…"
Rhode certainly did look incredulous as she tilted her chin up like a baby bird to meet Tyki's face. Then she threw him off, falling back in a poof of netted white lace.
"Who cares, who cares, who cares?!" Rhode chanted, her temper in perfect three-fourths time. "Lavi-bunny's never going to be fun again! If we try to play with him, he'll just think about his lotus princess--but if we do anything to him, Lavi won't play with us again either! "
"We can still watch whenever we want." Tyki offered, deadpan serious. "They're not bad at it, actually. And since they switch, it doesn't get boring." Rhode was not very receptive to this consolation prize.
"You're being gross again, Tyki!" she fumed.
"Well--"
She threw an accusatory finger in his handsome face. The black nail was like an arrow pointing to the smirk lining his mouth.
"You're thinking with your human heart again, aren't you? 'It makes a good story' … Disgusting!"
"Well, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black." Tyki retorted coolly. "Are you sure you're ready to be a big sister again, if you can't get over your little games? Better not tell the Earl that."
Rhode shot up on her party-shoe heel. Pushing past Tyki with a brusque brush of tulle, she climbed up a few gravel-loosening steps before making a violent yank at the air. The door she created was a thing of obscene beauty--all harsh reds, blacks, and gold, cast into roses and hearts. It was unseemly in the setting of serene natural beauty. A piece of baroque furniture dropped into a landscape painting.
"No fun at all!" she stuck her tongue out at him as she slammed the velvet-paned door in his face.
Tyki shook his head. The thing about being as old as humanity itself, and the special favorite of its tempter for just as long, Rhode had always been indulged. Humans in her world had always been the toys in her toy chest to amuse herself with as she wished. Oh, she'd long played at being a "big girl" who didn't really need them--look at her, helping in daddy's workshop to make the puppets! But now that the patriarch had decided that he didn't need the clutter in his house, he'd emptied it out and the child was bawling from the loss.
The Bookman's human side, and his lover, had been like the last toys that the father's sweep had missed, and Rhode had loved them dearly for it. Mementos of childhood. But Tyki had spent too much time as a human to be won over by such a silly simple idea. He saw it as it really stood. Rhode needed to get over her sense of entitlement and stop sulking about not having humans to play with anymore. Their children were coming from the egg soon. Raising them would be serious business.
And, well. If Rhode were a good older sister, she would be more gracious, and accept that all her things belonged to the youngest children now. The Bookman included. They needed a schoolmaster more than she needed a release for her perverse pleasures.
The Earl needed his daughter to stop being a child and help him with greater things. Princess becomes employee in family business. Maybe a tragedy to some, but not to Tyki's aesthetic.
"…Baby!" Tyki called meanly after her.
--
One day, Kanda was going through the last day's dishes as Lavi ate breakfast at the table. They were at his house.
"I'd like to find out about what happened to a certain person." he said suddenly. Lavi looked up from his plate at Kanda's back. "I was thinking about leaving."
"Oh." Lavi said back simply.
"Just 'oh?"
"Yeah. Sure. I'll come with you." Lavi answered agreeably. He put his spoon back in his food.
"I don't want you to come."
"Still. I'll come with."
"I'll abandon you while we're traveling."
"I'll get the Noah to bring you back."
"Maybe I don't care. Maybe I'll try to fight them and they'll kill me. And then you can be alone with them, like it was supposed to be." Kanda suggested. The corners of his mouth might have been quirking.
When Kanda turned around, Lavi's head was buried in his arms, one laid down on the table, the other one wrapped around his skull.
"Yuu, can't you make this any easier?" he spoke through the muffler of his own flesh.
"You think you deserve it?"
"Fine." Lavi got up. He took his dishes to the sink and dumped them in a noisy clatter. "Do what you want." He stalked off in the direction of the hallway. Kanda quickly twisted the tap shut and went after him.
"Lavi!" Kanda grabbed Lavi's shoulder. Water and suds dripped off his hand and left wet streaks on Lavi's shirt. "We were joking. Both of us. You knew that. We should be past this shit by now, we--"
He was promptly dealt a neat uppercut to the jaw. Kanda fell back into the wall. As he grimly rubbed his face, it occurred to him that Lavi had never forgotten how to land a good punch from his basic hand-to-hand training. That was going to leave a mark.
"Asshole!" Lavi snapped at him. "Don't bother me, I'm going to work!" He went into his study and pulled the door shut after himself. There was the sound of papers being moved with unnecessary force. Kanda waited an appropriate amount of time before knocking. No answer, but he had expected that.
"Lavi! Can you get me some seeds and gardening tools?" he called through the wood. There was another rustle, stiff with anger, but nothing else.
Kanda nearly fell into him when Lavi suddenly yanked the door open again. By the look of his face, he hadn't come out to make peace.
"What the hell for?" he threw down abruptly. Kanda could feel the place where he had been hit throbbing as he spoke.
"For a garden, obviously."
"A garden? I don't want a goddamned garden! What, you thought I'd want to frolic in daisies and roses or something?"
Kanda was reminded of Lenalee yelling at Allen over family planning. He resolved to remind himself to do a thousand push ups later in the dojo to get that out his head.
"I meant a vegetable garden." he nevertheless kept the conversation/fight going.
"I don't want that either! I don't have time to be a goddamned dirt farmer."
"Lavi, calm the fuck down. It's for me, alright? You don't have to do shit." One might not have thought this the most considerate reply, but it was. Kanda had ever let someone talk to him like this without retribution before. It wasn't that he didn't have the urge to hit Lavi. He just held it back for the first time ever.
"Fine! Like I said, do what you want. I can't be babysitting you all the time anyways!" Lavi shouted, glowering. Then he blinked. "Wait, why do you want a garden? I never got the impression that it was hobby of yours or anything."
"Lavi…"Kanda said impatiently. This was just like him. Taking simple things and turning it into a gigantic shit storm. "It's been more than two years already. We're not getting many fresh supplies anymore--just canned things. Maybe the akuma can't find things where they used to anymore. Or they just not trying as hard. Either way, we've got a problem."
"Oh." Lavi deflated, the way he always did when someone noticed something he hadn't. It didn't matter if it was in his realm of expertise or not. Common sense, Kanda had figured, counted as "not". "I don't know…I never thought to ask the Noah about it…"
"I think you're used to eating crap anyways since you always lock yourself up working. Maybe that's why you didn't realize. But I don't want to have to do it if I don't have to. Besides." Kanda reached out without thinking to smooth out the strands of hair sticking out in Lavi's bed-head. "No matter what lip you give me about things being the way they are, and just getting used to it--I'm never going to like depending on Noah or akuma. Couldn't deal with it even when it was just humans."
"Yuu…" Lavi was at a loss for words.
"We could use some chickens or something too. I'll figure it out. Never did a single thing for the villagers when I was a kid, but I know the theory." There was the tiniest trace of a flush in Kanda's right cheek.
At Lavi's unrestrained gaping, he sighed. "What else am I going to do? I've got nothing but time here."
Kanda could feel himself freezing up all the way to the base of his spine when Lavi threw his arms around him. "You're so cute, Yuu."
"Okay, okay…Get off me."
"No."
Kanda belted him. He went to the dojo. Lavi went back to work. They got into bed together and touched each other before going to sleep.
And life went on.
---
Author's Notes:
I edited some chunks out of the previous chapter if you want to look at that.
A kaishakunin is the dude who assists with a seppuku. Usually a close friend or comrade.
I (try) to write realistic sex. Sometimes it's weird. Sometimes it hurts. It helps when your partner cares, but that's not a cure-all. Sex involves two bodies coming together, and like all mechanical systems, sometimes there are technical difficulties. Simple love will not overcome total lack of experience and make everything awesome right away-- so take a lesson from Lavi and Kanda about talking through it, and practice! J
Okay, mini unsexy lecture on sex over.
Anyways. This was a serious lesson to me that I should write endings first. I really enjoyed writing the parts when the Order still existed, with Kanda and Lavi interacting with their respective colleagues. But once they were alone together, it was just hard coherently explain, even to myself, how that would work exactly.
I'd written everything else on the assumed scenario that Kanda and Lavi would be kissy-kissy at the end. You know, living together, something deep and soulful about how the both chose to live for each other at the end of the world. The verbal "I love you" was supposed to make an appearance. Everything was supposed to lead up to that. But it just didn't feel right--now they're either thinking it without telling each other, or fell into the natural behavior after "…I don't want to die old and alone" occurred to them separately. After all, they should be in the mid-thirties at the end of this.
So they may be friends-who-are-lovers-and-love-each-other. Or something. I think I'm OK with that. I hope you guys are too. Writer's block lulz handed me what it did.
I don't usually do this, but it really would mean a lot to me if you reviewed this one, even if you don't usually leave them. I spent a lot of time trying to make this conclude meaningfully. I knew I had it in me to finish it, but sometimes I had motivation to stop myself from dropping it other than knowing that someone, somewhere, might want to know what happens to them. I'm not happy with how it turned out, but you guys can point out where you feel the last part is lacking, maybe I can go back and fix it.
Thank you so much for the faves and previous reviews that helped me see a project through. ---Bow--
The titles of the chapters and the overall fic was inspired by the song
Home by Intercept
Phone calls and photographs
Songs from a better year
Summer nights and hotel rooms,
Memories of emptiness
We can be happy here
Til' you asked if I'm brave, am I fast, am I strong
No no not at all
And I wait for you and I don't know why
Maybe you're a friend of mine
Maybe you're alone somewhere
And I pray for you and I don't know why
Maybe I'd be better off thinking of someone who--
Doesn't laugh the way that you laugh
Or move the way you move
Or dream the way that you dream about finding somebody new
Won't you come take me home?--
Won't you come take me home?--
Wait wait wait is the last thing I wanted to say
You can't mean that, I'm certain
You're killing this way
I'd be happy to burn
For special new drinks
With some poetry candles and lies
And I'll wait for you and I don't know why
Maybe I'd be better off
Thinking of someone who--
Might be right here to me
While I'm sitting here writing to you--
Won't you come take me home?--
Won't you come take me home?--
Oooo Yeah.
Won't you come take me home?
---
It's quite pretty. You can find it on Youtube.