Niamh's computer ate a bunch of reviews again. I'll try to find them slowly through the week, but no promises. I'm lame and lazy and busy and tired. So... I'm sorry.

Warnings: BL. Etc. Poor Lavi. Poor Allen. Poor Kanda. Poor Tyki. What have a I done to my plot?

DISCLAIMER: Hoshino Katsura owns all.

– – –

Seventeen: Just go and Leave this all Behind

She found him in the living room, though Tyki did not remember how exactly he had gotten there. He had been in the bedroom, thinking about what he had done, what he had let happen, how it had all fallen into place, and then the world had shifted on its side and turned inside out. The hurt had turned to blind rage. He had lashed out at anything and everything, and yet he hadn't destroyed the house like he might have before. The bedroom window was broken. The lamp by the door was cracked. But mostly, Tyki realized belatedly, he had been loud without much actual expulsion of power, and yet he had worn himself into a bedraggled heap of tired flesh all the same.

The fire had gone out, at some point, but he hadn't noticed. In fact, he did not notice anything until Road's fingers brushed through his hair and her tiny, childlike arms draped themselves around his shoulders. He noticed then that the sun had come up at the back of the house. He had spent the entire night, and much of the morning, completely alone.

"Tell me what happened, Tyki." Road's voice was like that of an old woman seeking to sooth a struggling child, heavy with age that was never reflected in her form. Her shoulder was as sold as stone under his forehead. "Tell me what the Exorcist did."

He did. He told her about the swordsman and about Lavi meeting him, about the blade that Tyki had forgotten about until it was much too late, about his decision that he would not kill the redhead simply because of how he felt. And he told her that, too. How his chest hurt, how he wanted Lavi, how angry it made him that the apprentice Bookman had not even attempted to talk his comrade into leaving without him. Tyki understood the boy's logic, of course, but he was a selfish creature. What did it matter if someone else thought Lavi dead if it meant they were together despite everything else?

Road smiled at him when he was finished. It was the kind of smile that made him feel like a fool.

"You'll see him again, Tyki." She said with such certainty, he had to wonder if there was something she knew. "Because you do want to, don't you? Even after everything he did?" She shook her head, closed her eyes. There was something decidedly adult about it, something that made Tyki feel small and silly, and yet like she understood like no one else, not even Sheryl, would ever be able to.

"I don't know what will happen when I find him, but yes." Tyki responded at a whisper.

Road simply nodded. "And in the meantime?"

He hadn't thought of it. He had only thought of what had happened and what would happen, not what might occur between. A small, cruel smile started at the corners of his mouth. "How long has it been since we made a show over finding the Heart?"

She smiled back at him, though there was still a shadow in her eyes. "Quite long enough."

– – –

Yuu didn't sleep until just before dawn, and even then his rest was fitful at best. Twice on Lavi's watch the redhead had to shake and talk the swordsman into continuing to breathe, and both times Yuu didn't outright thank him, but looked grateful afterward. It was likely that Yuu would wake again even if he died, but not dying was better overall, they both knew. Or maybe, if Lavi let himself think about it, it was better not to die like this when so much death waited.

By mid-morning, Kanda was bleary-eyed, though he seemed to have gone from completely septic to about how he had been before the worst had began. His breathing slowed, and he could follow the little monologues that the apprentice Bookman had with himself, and a thin, shining layer of sweat spread across his forehead. Lavi found himself smiling softly down at that one midnight-gray-blue eye, and found it frowning purposely back at him.

"Good morning, Sweety," Lavi chimed in a quiet whisper. "Did you want tea and crumpets, or coffee and scones?"

The look that Yuu gave him was murder personified. His right eyebrow twitched with restrained violence while his tongue clicked behind his teeth in a muddled insult, his upper lip curled with disdain. It was an expression that Lavi lived to see.

"Fuck you."

"Sorry, too early."

Kanda rolled his eye like it might physically hurt the redhead if he did it hard enough. "With the brat." He jerked his head in the direction of Allen's half-sleeping body on the mattress not five feet away, his face turning suddenly amused. "Crooked."

"Ouch, Yuu-chan. That hurt me right in my nothing."

"Is that what you're calling it now?"

Allen made a low, sleepy growling sound, and opened just one eye at the two of them. After a short moment of studying them – his silver eye lingered on Yuu for some reason – he yawned and pushed himself up to sitting, sending his tousled white hair into mad fits of static as he moved. With a strange, lazy sort of smile, he met Kanda's gaze and tilted his head to the side, all sorts of bright and adorable and bloodthirsty in the morning light. "Oh, I see, Lavi's back so I don't get the good morning snog, hm? Ah well. Back to daydreams of Lenalee, then..."

For a moment, Lavi thought he might have heard wrong, but a pillow went sailing over the left of the bed and collided rather ineffectively with Allen's face. "Shut up. I was making a point."

"Eh?" The redhead turned to Yuu, who looked as if he now regretted throwing away his only means of neck support. Without preamble, Lavi shifted until the swordsman was leaning on him – because that was where Kanda belonged and it didn't matter that Allen was in the room right now, it just felt right. There was a moment of awkwardness and a line of tension in Yuu's neck, and then both melted away with a lift of the youngest Exorcist's eyebrows. "What's this about snogging?" Lavi prodded, and pretended to be inspecting the bandage around the swordsman's right eye while he asked.

"Che."

"Mr. Misunderstood, here—"

"He wanted me to talk about us, so I kissed him." Yuu said it so flatly that it stopped Allen from going on and brought a blush to the British boy's cheeks so bright, Lavi could see it from his peripheral vision. The tone in Yuu's voice, however, made it obvious that it had really been that simple – and that Allen was being a sensitive teenager, also. "Stupid bean wouldn't shut up after that, either. Ditched him in the hospital we left that Crow member in. Ringo, or whatever."

"Link." Lavi corrected with a little smile. It didn't bother him, he realized, that Yuu might have been lonely while he was gone, nor did it do more than tighten his chest at the thought of Allen and the swordsman becoming close as a result. He had no reason to pay the little spark of white anger in his chest any heed when there had been so many worse things between himself and Tyki.

"It doesn't matter." Yuu sighed, and his whole body seemed to relax even further. He had every right to be exhausted.

Allen fumbled his way off of the mattress and headed for his suitcase, a deep frown pulling at his lips. "We need to get back to him as soon as we can – for all I know, he has half the Order thinking I've betrayed them and fallen off the face of the Earth. That cheese-eating surrender monkey Leverrier will have me crucified and vivisected by the time we get back..."

"Cheese-eating..." Yuu started, seeming confused.

"He can't do both, Allen. You'll die before he gets to one of them."

The boy looked up at Lavi with sarcastic eyes and opened his suitcase. "Lovely."

Lavi looked down at the Japanese Exorcist and decided that, for the time being, he would pretend that nothing at all had changed between them. That meant that talking to the swordsman in small, understandable sentences was called for. "A cheese-eating surrender monkey is a Frenchman, and Leverrier sounds pretty French. If I called you a yellow slanteye, I'd be calling you Asian."

"Shut it, Cyclops."

"Watch it Yuu, you're all bedridden and stuff. Besides, you're the one with one eye at the moment, silly—"

Allen made a rather miffed sound as he riffled through his things, eventually looking up with a clean shirt and a pair of underwear. "I'm taking a shower and getting breakfast. You two control yourselves before I get back."

– – –

Kanda hated to be useless. What was worse, however, was being more than useless but less than perfect. The sunlight was sharp and white and cold, draining the will to move out of him, making even the slightest noise ring like a painful bell in his head. The dirty glass in the window did not help in the slightest. The sound of Lavi's voice, textured like course gravel and high like yellow chalk, however, sent little thrills of warmth dancing across his skin, familiar like the caress of hungry fingernails or the wanton touch of an exhausted sigh. That made being one quarter dead more bearable, somehow. Even if Allen was the one who was silently working to take care of him, it was the apprentice Bookman's voice that made the swordsman close his eyes and face the feelings in his gut.

Those stupid emotions were more troublesome than his wounds, and about a hundred times more persistent.

"...like I said, he's here, taking care of Yuu." Lavi was saying in a voice that was tinted by a lair's smile. "If Allen wanted to run off and join the Noah family, he woulda. Not that you can take my word for it, I was sleepin' with the enemy, you know? Heh heh."

Kanda pushed aside the cold tightening in his chest and swallowed. Was that true? How close had Lavi gotten to Tyki? He didn't care. Not really. But there was still the past to be dealt with, and a hundred things that needed to be explained, and those things would require time. Healing would require time. Time better spent tied up in situations too intimate to be comfortable, too close to not be betrayal, and all of his half-human existence pledged to just one more instant of contact and ecstasy and selfishness. He shivered. It had been far too long. It was hard not to think about it with Lavi's voice turning in a slow, sweet decrescendo down his spine.

"...is he finally sleeping?" It must have looked that way, considering his eyes were closed.

Maybe Allen nodded. In any case, the bed dipped and a wide, familiar hand came to rest on the crest of his hip.

"We can put off leaving until tonight. Any Noah around here won't think to look so close – we would be long gone if we were smart – and Yuu needs this." His fingers moved in an oddly suggestive little squeeze. It was almost enough to make Kanda break the illusion and turn to him, tell him to do it properly. "Fuck, after yesterday, I think we all need some sleep, but him..."

"He really missed you."

"I know." There was so much certainty in the redhead's voice.

The darkness outside of Kanda's eyelids became even darker, likely from the closing of the shutters. "Why?"

Lavi didn't answer for a long, quiet moment. Instead, his body changed angle until it was laid out against Kanda's back, warm and soft and just a little too close to be friendly. The apprentice Bookman didn't try to hug him or draw him in – such things would wake a sleeping bedmate and that wasn't the boy's intention. "Because he and I are close." Lavi whispered, and his breath spread against the back of Kanda's neck with the words. "Were close. God." He seemed to laugh, only there was no amusement in the sound. "It's easy for me to pretend that nothing happened while I was gone, but it feels wrong, you know? A lot of stuff happened. I did a lot of stupid things, but they didn't seem stupid at the time. Not until it was too late. But at the same time, when I remember what I did, where I was, that stuff, it's like... it's like I really meant it, like I really felt it. And that makes me want to feel for Yuu and everybody else, too."

Allen made a sort of agreeing sound, not that he could possibly understand that giant lump of Bookman jargon if he wanted to.

"I don't know who or what I want, but I know that I screwed up. I know I can't go back. And I know that, when I figure out what happened, if Bookman doesn't kill me, I might be happy." Lavi was talking to himself now, or maybe to Kanda, the swordsman could tell by how those fingers tightened against his hip. "It's telling the truth and confessing what I did, that makes me feel...bad." He broke off in an awkward laugh in an attempt to bring them back to conversation. The sound was like cool fingers on the back of Kanda's head, but the breath that produced it felt exactly opposite.

"Lavi...what did you do, exactly?" Allen prodded in a whisper.

"In every way that there is..." The redhead turned his head down so that the round of his forehead rested securely against Kanda's spine, bone to bone, the way he liked to apologize when they were alone. "I betrayed him."

So it was like that.

"And Bookman."

"If that's true, between the two of them you'll die quickly."

The redhead's breath came out in a laughing sort of puff. "There are a million things worse than dying, Allen. Will you go get breakfast already, I'm starving." It was Lavi's way of saying that he wanted to be left alone.

The British boy took the hint and slipped out of the room without more than a moment of protest, his voice quiet and distant as if he were thinking about food already. His departure left the apprentice Bookman and the half-sleeping swordsman alone together, the redhead's forehead still pressed to the curve of Kanda's back.

Kanda counted to thirty-five before he broke the silence that settle like a warm, soothing blanket over the two of them. "You fucked him, didn't you?" It came out differently than he had intended, mostly because he was tired beyond reason and his lungs did not like speaking. But the point was still conveyed. He felt Lavi lean painfully into his spine. "You just let him do whatever he wanted, and then some. I bet your stupid mouth wouldn't stop until he did it, too." That little spark of anger fanned into a flame and Kanda struggled with it, struggled with the mental image of how those two had looked on that bed, the words he had overheard between the two of them. "I don't care."

"Yuu?" There was something oddly broken about the way his name sounded.

"I do not care." He said the words again, and felt the fire twist and morph in his chest until it exposed the hurt that lay beneath it. Kanda shivered. "Do you think running into someone's arms when you're alone makes you a traitor? Do you think I care that you said you loved him because you felt like it at the time? Che. You're here now, that's all that matters. Capable of anything but love." The last part he did not mean to say, or even to think, but it still seeped through his lips in a terribly honest whisper. He felt Lavi shift and so tried to shift with him, the warmth against his back withdrew and returned as hands that rolled him, a leg that circled up over his hips and laid him prone, the redhead suddenly above him. The change was momentarily uncomfortable. The swordsman's stomach was not in a state to be sat on anytime soon.

"That isn't true." Lavi looked him directly in the face as he spoke the words, even if his expression belied every twinge of uncertainty he felt. His two eyes, the right slightly lighter than the left, searched Kanda's gaze like they might be looking for a needle in a haystack, desperate and quick. The redhead's hands closed on the Japanese Exorcist's shoulders. "And it's way more complicated than you're letting it be. I didn't just fuck him, Yuu. And you know as well as I do that it drives you nuts thinking about me that close to anybody. Especially when I never told you..." The apprentice Bookman tightened his hands on Kanda's shoulders. "Look, I know I felt for him. Still do. And I know I feel for you. But it's different. It's all wound up in months of letting people die and years of trying to figure you out, you know? If love is what made him let me go, I don't know if I feel that for him. I don't know if I'd do the same thing. If love is what made you come after me, what made you live through the shit he put you through, I don't know if I feel that for you, either. But I know that I can love." Lavi's voice dropped to a hardly audible whisper. "But what does that help when I can't..."

Kanda sighed. He was too tired for this. Far too tired. So he did what he thought was right at the moment, even if it was painful and did not solve anything at all.

His left arm circled Lavi's shoulders and pulled him down, guided him closer, and did not stop until he could close his eye and feel the tickle of the redhead's breath on his lips. "Idiot." He wanted to arch backward, to press his mouth to Lavi's, but it was too soon for something like that, he could feel it in the tension in the other boy's shoulders. "It never mattered to me before that you didn't love me, so why would I give a damn now?"

Lavi gasped softly, hotly, like the words were enough to burn.

"You're...safe." Kanda heard himself say, and this time the idea seemed to resonate in him, it sank into his chest and his mind and was true. Lavi was safe. The idiot was fine. It really had been too long. "Lavi..."

It was slow and agonizing and strange, but it was still a kiss, tender and hungry and unfamiliar. There was no fight for control, no time to wonder what it meant, no tingle of electricity, or slowing of the Earth's rotation. It simply happened. Kanda did arch then, despite how tired he was, and he felt Lavi pause as if uncertain, felt the apprentice Bookman tense with apprehension. But there was still a second kiss, and a third, and Kanda's left hand turned to a ghost of a touch on Lavi's neck. He did not want to force the redhead to continue, even if he felt like a starving man faced with a feast of plenty.

When they broke apart, the swordsman found himself with his eyes still closed, breath moving in deep billows, his blood roaring in his ears. Too soon for either of them, he knew, and still he wanted it.

Lavi's forehead against his was as familiar as it was frustrating, but he did not say so. Instead, he listened to the harsh sound of his own breathing and the slow, nearly silent counter-beat of Lavi's.

"I'm sorry." Lavi could just hardly break the silence. "I fucked up and I'm sorry. But I'm back now. Or maybe I'll never be back. I don't know. But I'm sorry."

Kanda almost laughed. "You think that's what I want? You think I need you to apologize?" He didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to open his eyes, for fear of what might come out of them. Instead, he wound his fingers in the red hair he had imagined so often, and breathed in the scent he had tried so hard to remember. It was like every dream he had had about Lavi's return, only he couldn't welcome him properly. "I don't care what you did. Even if it hurts. But I heard what he said to you. That you'll see each other again. That's what I care about. I care about how many times you're willing to offer that man yourself on a silver platter just because he saved you after he tried to kill you."

"But Yuu—"

"Che. I care that there's him between us. I care that you can't kiss me without thinking about him. I care that you don't know who you're betraying."

"Yuu—"

He was not done. He had to say it now or he would never say it. He had to show just the smallest shred of vulnerability, because he could not lose Lavi. "I care if you do not want me by your side."

The redhead did not protest. His fingers touched Kanda's hair, and stroked it with shaking caresses, slow and tender. "What am I supposed to do, Yuu? Am I supposed to just run with whatever I feel like I did before? Without direction, blind and confused, but living on that raw emotion like I'll die without it?" Lavi stopped short and barked out a harsh, self-deprecating laugh. "Please, Yuu just..."

He was desperate. And Kanda could not stop himself from being half-desperate himself.

Without further words from either of them, the two settled against the mattress once more, Lavi sliding from Kanda's hips with careful ease. The swordsman used his good arm to fold the apprentice Bookman against his chest and offer whatever comfort he could, whatever reassurance he could, simply because there was nothing else he could do at the moment. Kanda wanted more, but he would not hurt either of them. Not for his own sake. Perhaps the distance between them, however small, would once again show Lavi the things he had wanted so much to change more than a year ago. Or maybe, Kanda thought, and cursed his body for being too weak to remain alert, they would simply fall asleep from the closeness, and melt together so the distance would not matter any more.

– – –

The day was far too fast, and far too full of bloodshed. It was easy enough for Tyki to know where Lavi had gone – the two Innocence wielding Exorcist's with him made the remaining Akuma in the town antsy and nervous whenever they came too close. When Road left him, Tyki was able to fake a smile at her. His thoughts were in a more logical order, even if he felt no more sure of himself than he had before she had taken him out in search of Finders and equally easy targets.

She was not gone an hour and Tyki found himself looking up at the building he knew the Exorcist's were staying at. She had not told him in that painfully adult voice that now was not the time for sacrifices to lose themselves to their humanity no more than two hours prior, and still, he found himself there. Anger and a thirst for revenge would have been acceptable. Exhaustion and turmoil were not.

He threw pebbles at each windowsill, and hid in the shadows until each room's occupants came to see what might be pecking at the glass. The sun was more or less set by the time he found the right one, nothing but scarlet tendrils of the faded disk grazed along the lowest clouds, casting the sky in shades of purple and pink. The periwinkle clouds contrasted too heavily with the flash of red that poked from the inn. Tyki almost did not step from the darkness in time for the apprentice Bookman to see him.

They looked at each other for a time, without speaking. Lavi nodded uncertainly, and then vanished once more into the half-lit shadows inside.

Tyki waited with his back pressed to the nearest building, feeling the cold emanate from the brick and through his suit. He felt vaguely tired, but the feeling seemed less important when he caught sight of the apprentice Bookman at the end of the alleyway, his arms wrapped securely around his shoulders.

The boy's expression was unreadable, a sort of neutral combination of fear and hurt and longing. Tyki swallowed hard and pushed himself away from his hiding place, the better to let the growing moonlight fall over him and illuminate his pocketed hands. For a time, the two of them stood without moving, the silver and gold of the ending twilight casting their shadows in long blue lines between the two buildings. The shadows never touched – Lavi's stretched out into the street in front of the inn while Tyki's inevitably faded before it could reach the boy's feet.

"I told Allen I'd be right back, so I can't stay." It was just a whisper, and the words carried with them all sorts of unwillingness. Lavi shifted on his feet, but did not come closer.

"Did I hurt you?" Tyki whispered back, and found that he really was curious and sorry if he had. To his surprise, Lavi's eyes widened at him, their perfect green flashing like fire.

"You did a lot of things, Tyki, but no, my arm is fine." The boy didn't turn his eyes away even for a moment.

Tyki closed his. "I know that I cannot convince you to simply not go back to the Order. But..." He hated that he was so human sometimes, even if those times were less often than they had once been. At the moment, just hearing the younger man's voice was almost enough to make Tyki never want to kill again. The feeling roused something dark and bloodthirsty in him, and sent him rocking onto the balls of his feet. If Lavi would not come with him, why not go through with what he had originally wanted? Why not keep the boy's heart and nothing else? "I just... without you..." Tyki had had some idea of what he had wanted to say when he had first thought to come but now, with the redhead in front of him, he hadn't the slightest clue. His tongue had turned to something thick and cold in his mouth, and the words had slipped away like sand through a sieve.

Lavi shook his head, and cracked a smile that was neither amused nor apologetic. "Without me, what? I told you, I need to think." The redhead brought a hand up to his forehead before racking his fingers through his hair in a viscous motion that likely would have displaced his eyepatch had he been wearing it. "I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about how I feel to tell you anything. I know that you're important to me, Tyki, but there are a lot of important people in my life. I can't just... pick without thinking about it." He sighed, and the exhaustion that filled his face was obviously real. The boy had been through too much the last few days. Tyki felt suddenly like he had been selfish.

But he was selfish. Pleasure was always selfish.

It was only four impossibly quick steps to be behind the redhead, and only the slightest movement of his arm to have his hand pressed to the boy's mouth, stilling his lips, cutting off his air. At first, Lavi's body went deliciously rigid, a muffled sound of protest in his throat, and then he seemed to gather himself, to wait, to relax. Tyki placed his second arm around the boy's chest, holding them flush.

"I've done a bit of thinking, Lavi..." Tyki found that he wanted, somehow, to make the limp back against his chest tense again. "And it strikes me that if you really want him that badly, why should I tear you apart? You can keep him if you like. In the basement, or in the Ark. It doesn't really matter, as long as that sword of his turns to powder." The dark was writhing beneath his skin, Tyki thought, willing him to just snap the boy's neck and have it done with. But no. He loved Lavi, even if the emotion was not as pure as it might have once been. "As long as I can still have you there, beside me..." Tyki relished the little shiver that went up Lavi's back. "It wouldn't be sharing, I don't think, and if it is, then surely he would have the worse half of the deal but... I'm rambling. The point is that without you, without my darling Bookman with me, I might lose myself in blood again, or simply forget that I wanted to let you go. I am... hanging onto the barest threads of my humanity, love, do you think I would lie about something like that?"

Lavi's right hand tugged at Tyki's rather gently, as if it would remind the Noah that the redhead could not breathe at the moment.

"It may not be proper for a person to hurt and caress with the same hands – the same weapons – but that is all I have. I love doing both. It is what defines me. And now that I love you, you, who I naturally despise, I cannot fathom what it would be like to not have you. The idea of it makes me ache for so many things..." Tyki smiled too widely at the fingernails biting into his skin. "For blood, for death, for sleep, for warmth... and I haven't the slightest idea how to sate those desires. But when I'm with you, even now, the need is just an itch or a tickle, and your presence soothes me." He felt Lavi try to trash, try to get air, and tightened his hold over the boy's nose and mouth. Tyki only partially understood why he wanted that power, and only half-thought of the repercussions of it. If he moved now, the redhead would be a noisy coughing mess and attract attention. He didn't want that.

"When you are with me," Tyki felt the boy begin to sag against him, and closed his eyes, knowing it was far too late to let go. "There doesn't have to be two of me."

– – –

Allen was worried by the expression that Kanda made at the ceiling, and even more worried by the fever that still ravaged the swordsman's body, even if Kanda seemed not to notice. The fever was just strong enough to make Kanda weak, just high enough to make him slower to think than normal, and just subtle enough that the swordsman could not possibly realize his cheeks were lightly rouged by it. That, perhaps, was what worried Allen the most.

Kanda blushing. Oh, the possibilities.

It was just the British boy's luck that Lavi would excuse himself from the room at the exact moment that Kanda decided he might as well do a series of laps around the room, his restless nature winning out over self-preservation. Allen was beginning to wonder if Kanda had any desire to preserve himself at all, what with how he moved even when his legs shook, and cursed himself in deadly whispers when he nearly crumbled into the dresser.

Allen did not think twice about catching him.

So it was, some three minutes after Lavi had left the room, that Allen found himself with both hands balled into tight fists on the front of the swordsman's loose-fitting shirt, and Kanda's right hand tangled in his hair.

"Bean—" It sounded like the Japanese boy was going to tell him to let go and leave him be. Allen was not about to do either.

"Be quiet," Allen rocked a little on the balls of his feet, and watched Kanda's single visible eye widen at the violence in his whisper. It was not too difficult to hold the swordsman standing, but it was difficult not to think of a thousand insinuated things, all of them a thousand times more intimate than the brush of his knuckles on Kanda's chest. The fact that Kanda's hand, which was large and hot and terribly bad at closing, was pressed to the back of Allen's skull made the boy want to lean in and brush his lips across the swordsman's. "I get that you're restless and I understand that you'd rather have Lavi with you right now, but you'll forgive me if I'm a twinge disgusted by your intimacy and lack of self-restraint. You need to lie down. You're so bloody weak right now, I could overpower you if I weren't such a nice person. And here you are, undoing all the healing from last night." Allen clicked his tongue and narrowed his eyes at Kanda's half-surprised features. "This isn't a battlefield. I don't give a damn if you leap in front of a bullet to save a little girl – but this is pointless."

Kanda looked as if he wanted to protest, but he didn't. Instead, he worked his right hand to Allen's shoulder and got his feet more or less under him. "I can't follow him, so what am I supposed to do? Sit here while he goes out to meet his boyfriend?" The way the swordsman growled the words and narrowed his eyes made his cutting gaze burn like a blade of ice. "You naïve git."

"Shut up." It was an angry hiss.

"Why should I?"

Allen almost allowed himself to sneer. "Because I don't like to think about the two of you snogging in the dark, and I don't like to think about what might happen if Lavi gives up whatever happened between him and Tyki."

The confusion in Kanda's eyes and the furrowing on his brow made Allen risk a small smile.

"I don't like being jealous, Kanda."

Realization, the kind that made the swordsman's eyes shine like bluish onyx, lit Kanda's face for a moment. "You like me." He said rather baldly. "You actually like me."

"Admittedly a great deal of my attraction to you is how bloody good you look in your jacket, but yes. Or without it. Or wearing nothing at all."

"Che. You think that one kiss meant something?"

"No. But I think this one does."

It was hard and forceful and filled with all the violence and yearning that Allen felt, even if Kanda leaned away in an effort to end the contact as soon as it had started. Allen was not going to let that happen. Instead, he put everything he knew into that bit of content, delving into memories that weren't his to find techniques that might bring the swordsman to his knees, keeping their bodies close with the hands he still had twined in Kanda's clothes. When the fingers that were wound into his hair tried to wrench him away he fought the weak attempt, and a growl formed in the back of his throat.

When the British boy finally pulled away, the expression on Kanda's face told him that his death would be slow and painful, but Allen could not find it in himself to care. His heart clamped in his chest as if there was no blood in him, seizing whatever it could. "You're stupid and a great big arse sometimes, and I know that there are a billion and one things between you and Lavi that I can't understand. Honestly, I realize that it's stupid of me to even entertain the idea of being with anyone, yet..." Allen lost a bit of his gusto, and excused the loss by shifting them both close to the bed. "I can't not try. I won't pretend because that makes it easier on everyone else. Especially not a great big jerk like you."

To his mild shock and absolute horror, Kanda laughed.

"You're fucking serious."

Allen frowned as he placed Kanda more or less on the mattress, and felt his face fall further when the Japanese man's hands slipped from his clothes. "You think I would lie?"

"I think you're a martyr complex and a twelve year old. You don't have the time or the resources to think about sex, Bean Sprout." The way the swordsman sighed, the way he brought his hand up to touch his own face and rub at his temple, was almost enough to make the British boy angry. Instead, the tired eyes that looked up at Allen sapped the fight from him, and the thoughtful tilt of Kanda's face sent a strange little sliver of understanding slipping into the corners of Allen's mind. "Che. All of this – Lavi, you... it's like a Goddamn romance novel, isn't it? Someone pulled our names out of a fucking hat and handed off hearts to whoever they wanted." He shook his head, a strangely amused smile curving his tired lips. "It's bullshit."

"What?" Allen prompted lamely.

"Between the three of us you'd think at least one of us liked Lenalee."

Allen could not stop himself from laughing. It was true, which might have been the most amusing part. For Kanda to have any feelings at all for Lavi, for Lavi to have any feelings at all for Tyki, for Allen to be madly in lust with Kanda – it was terribly irrational and unlikely, and somehow did not revolve around the one girl they were all familiar with. For just a moment he forgot that Kanda was who he was – that Kanda was wounded and sick and angry and violent – and simply laughed as if he were alone, the thought too strange to stifle. When the British Exorcist had regained control of himself, he found Kanda making a truly unfamiliar expression at him, the corners of his mouth lifted in the barest hint of a smile. "I'm sorry, Kanda, but as cute as Lenalee is, and as hard as she hits, there's still..." Allen waved his hands ineptly. "You. And all of your... you. I know I'm not being very articulate, but the point is that you're stuck with me, one way or another."

"Che."

"And I'll take that as something along of the lines of, 'you are still a brat and I still do not like you.'"

Kanda's left eye rolled with enough intensity to make up for the lack of motion in the right. "I meant that you're still stubborn and stupid and twelve, so I guess there isn't a lot I can do to convince you that it's a lost cause."

"It is not a lost cause." Allen corrected, and found that he was terribly comfortable talking about this now that it was in the open. The tension, the uncertainty, and the guilt had all melted away with his confession. The laughter, too, had helped. "It's not a lost cause until one of us dies, and we both know that isn't going to happen. You can't and I won't."

"Great."

"Yes, it is. Hope is great."

"Whatever." Kanda sighed again, and relaxed a bit into the bed, sagged against the mattress. He seemed tired. He seemed weary in ways that made Allen wonder if the swordsman was older than he said. His single dark eye glimmered like a polished piece of onyx before it was shaded out of sight, the lashes that covered it feather soft against Kanda's cheek. That one blink might have lasted a short lifetime. "I don't care. I don't... you're bean sprout. We fight, you don't... do shit like like me."

Allen smiled one his soft, sweet, genuine smiles, and shook his head. "Then what? Shall I wait it out while you decide where you want to stab me? Or shall I show you my arse?"

For a moment, Kanda didn't get it, and then his eye narrowed. "Once you admit to something, you don't let it go, do you?"

"I tend not to let go of anything – admitted to, held on to, sucked on—"

"Bean sprout."

"Which isn't to say that I'm trying to seduce you with those ideas. I mean, I wouldn't mind it, but it's not like my goal is to have something in my mouth – besides of food, of course because I love food, which isn't to say that I don't have some kind of feeling for you that I can't quite but my finger—"

"Walker." It sounded so strange, so perfect, that the British Exorcist fell immediately silent. He clung to the intonation, to the soft sound of the L, and waited to see if he would hear it again. "Quit before I gut you, Old Man."

The return to familiarity felt like solid ground to stand on. With a curt nod, Allen made a vague sort of gesture at Kanda and the bed, intent on changing the subject. It was good to have things out in the open, yes, but lingering on them for too long would simply make them awkward. It was a start. Even if they continued to hit each other and call each other names, even if they only remained as close as they had come in Lavi's absence, it was a bond of honesty. A bond that Allen could feel. There was something small there, even if it remained undefinable. "You stay in bed this time, alright? You heal fast, but not that fast. When you came back and I saw what had happened... I thought of how long it took you to recover after Victorio. I'm not really the right person to tell you this but—" Allen stopped there. It was a delicate bond. He did not want to break it.

Kanda did not quite frown. "Che. You sound like the other idiot. Shut up."

For the moment, Allen did as he was told.

– – –

He felt like he had been run over by a train, but he knew that that could not be the case. Trains did not suddenly appear in alleyways and trains did not leave him feeling like he had pneumonia. Trains did not stroke his hair with delicate, sweeping fingers and cradle his head in their lap.

The memory was slow to come. It trickled back into his mind like thick syrup, with the rhythm of that hand in his hair, with vague details. His first reaction was not to feel frightened or angry but rather to feel comfortable – without his eyes, this was the same as it had been. Without thinking about how he had come to wake to a weak body and sore lungs, Lavi pressed a palm to the one moving through his hair and stilled it, then slowly wound his fingers around the palm. Tyki's hand. If he ignored what it had done, what it had killed, what it had hurt...

But no. He couldn't ignore it all. It wasn't right to ignore it all.

"I meant to be gone before you recovered." Tyki said the words in what might have been one of the least threatening voices Lavi had ever heard him use. He seemed powerless. The velvet, the soft, dangerous texture was gone. He was hollow. "I thought that if I let you go, you would scream until the swordsman came running. And I thought that you would leave as soon as you woke." The hand began to move again, but only as a motion within those restrained fingers. The rhythm was the same.

Lavi didn't speak or open his eyes or wonder what the soft thing was that he was curled on. He only paid attention to the way the Noah spoke, to the desperation in his words. There was more at stake here than a heart. There was so very much more.

"I meant to take you with me so I could make you suffer. I meant to kill you if you recalled your past. I meant to let you return if you did not want to stay with me." The fingers faltered. "I meant to hate you. I meant to love you. I meant to kill you all." They regained their pattern as Tyki's voice began to tremble in their place. "But my intentions don't mean anything anymore."

"Tyki..." Lavi let his eyes come open and noted the unfamiliar room, the dusky windows. It was not a cell or a dungeon, but they were not where they had been. It was a room designed for sitting and talking, with a warm hearth and two long black couches, one of which the two of them shared.

The Noah was not looking at him, but rather into the flames of the fire, his molten eyes reflecting the light in perfect sharpness. "I came to this place wanting to return to the human I was – the half-human. My friends, the ones with me when I met you, have not seen me in far too long simply because it is difficult to be that person with this skin and these scars and these thoughts. If my part in our war was finished, perhaps the Earl would leave me to find that part of me while he ravaged the corpse of the world we left behind. But then..." Tyki shifted enough to look down at Lavi, to meet his gaze with irises filled with so many emotions, so many fears and pains, so many unspoken horrors and desires, that it was difficult for the apprentice Bookman to understand how one person could contain so many feelings. But beneath it all, behind the mask of human emotions and human desires and human shape, there was something decidedly dark and hungry, more evil and destructive than anything Lavi had seen in any war. "I fell for you."

Shuddering, Lavi turned his face away.

This man who he knew and yet did not know had more power over him than the redhead had ever wanted. What did Bookman matter when compared to this? What did anything matter? Lavi didn't want to think about it yet. "You fell for me." He repeated, hating his unsteady voice.

"Me. The thing that isn't human but isn't Noah but acts like both. The thing your Walker-boy created."

"I'm sorry."

The words were like a wall between them. In the stillness the crackling of the fire seemed like a thunderstorm.

"Time is what you asked me for, I know that." Tyki still did not sound the way he had before, and instead his tone spoke of uncertainty and loneliness. "I mean to give you that time. But everyday that you take, every time I remember what was and what isn't, I lose something. Today, Road and I murdered more Finders than we had any right to, even in war. And I felt nothing from it." His fire-lit eyes closed. "She made me think it would help."

"Tyki..."

"I didn't really want to do it."

Lavi gave up trying to understand. Though he could guess when and what the Noah meant, he did not want to try. He shifted himself up enough to lean rather delicately against the older man's shoulder, the familiar scent of cigarettes momentarily reminding him of happier times. At first he simply reclined awkwardly, until an arm curved around his back to draw him closer to the Noah's side.

"Can I stay with you, for now?" Lavi whispered, and twined his cold fingers in Tyki's, perfectly aware of what they had done and unable to pull away at the moment.

"Of course, Lavi. For as long as you like."

– – –

Do tell me what you think, please? I want to know if you're all hating me for this love square bit, or if you're going D8 "YES. It's so horrid, but YES!"

Next chapter: ACTUAL plot! Not romantic PLOT! Bwahahaha! *scurries to work*