So you might be wondering where Niamh went. The answer is more complicated than it should be. I only ask that you forgive the lateness and the typos, and enjoy the fic.

I don't know D. Gray – Man. There's sex and boys and stuff.

– – –

One Moment of Love

It was the middle of the night when Kanda heard that the world was falling apart around him. He had been denied a mission for his physical health, even if Komui had not insisted that he spend time in the infirmary. It had been almost five days since Lavi had left.

And now Lenalee was in his room, looking as if someone had torn out her insides and made her hollow corpse travel through the Ark and back to the Order. He knew that was how she looked because he had felt that way before. And he knew at once what had happened – instinctively. She did not even need to open her mouth. Perhaps it was something that came from growing up together, or something that came from knowing what it was to lose someone, in either case it did not matter. He knew the moment he saw her.

He didn't feel anything. He couldn't.

They were not close enough to find physical comfort in each other, but he let her sink down to the floor next to the door without a word. He let her pull her knees up to her chest and stare into the center of his room like she expected something to crawl up between the cracks in the floor and say hello.

He let her fall asleep and slipped out when she was nestled in a blanket from his bed.

Numbly, Kanda made his way down the long, dark hallway that lead to the very back of the Order's main building, where he found a flight of narrow, short, dimly lit stairs. He climbed them. The stairwell simply was not used most of the time, because traffic jams were common and often long in solving, but he liked it. It was the easiest route to take to the most isolated part of the building, especially at night.

The roof was cold, the rain – rain he had not even heard – coming down in half-frozen sheets. It would snow before morning.

Kanda closed his eyes to the thought.

– – –

Allen hated Tyki more with every passing moment, though it was the kind of companionable hate he had only ever felt once before. He would have been somewhat amused by the Noah's death – if it was a good or ironic one – and yet he didn't want to kill the man outright. In fact, a part of him appreciated Tyki Mikk's existence simply because of what he was. A man and a Noah, fighting his fate.

Still, it was a little far fetched that a plan like his would work, or even be worth it. To start with, no one was going to believe Allen if he said he found by some friendly farmer unless they actually found a friendly farmer, and in the meantime, he was kind of running out of blood. The bandages became moot at some point, and began to unwind themselves with every step, oozing blood and some clear goo as he went. That was a two-sided blessing. Without the bandages, maybe he could just say no one found him – assuming he didn't bleed out before he actually got to the Gate.

Maybe Tyki had planned it this way. Maybe the Noah wasn't after Lavi at all. Maybe the plan had simply been to lead Allen away long enough to kill the others, and then...but that didn't make sense. That made even less sense than the whole bloody love story, even though that was pretty Goddamn ridiculous, even by Allen's teenage, hormone-blinded, happy-ending addicted standards.

He threw up something almost black on the wall of a building, and made a noise that was half between a retch and a moan. It was two steps and then he simply could not walk anymore. He fell. He fell and landed with his right hand balled into a fist next to his face, blood running out of his mouth, out of his chest, down his stomach. The bandages were gone. And the rain – when had it started to rain? – fell like little pieces of razor against his skin.

Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe he would just die here.

The thought was not as horrifying as it had once been. The thought of dying, of letting himself go, of never waking, offered so many things he had never known. Truly, if he died, that would be the conclusion of his own path. Surely, he would be going forward into eternity, taking the fourteenth Noah with him.

While he lay there, thinking about the attractiveness of death, the world faded into clouds and gentle movements, and eventually, into darkness.

– – –

The morning was an eventful one for everyone, with people moving back and forth from one station to another, searching high and low for very important, missing people. Snow had fallen in a thin, wet layer sometime during the night, casting the entire Order in a blanket of soft white and gray, leeching the color out of the trees outside. It started again just after breakfast, thicker and colder than before. A storm was coming. A storm that would likely be the first true storm of spring.

Kanda never came back from the roof during the night. In fact, the warmth of hands on his shoulders and the changing of the light was his first warning that maybe going up there alone had been a bad idea. The hallway was frighteningly hot, and the lights sinfully bright. He wanted to have a blanket – not that he would ever ask for one – and a dark, empty room, and cooler air. He did not, in the least, want to be put on a bed in the medical wing with a hot bottle of water under his feet and a nurse at his shoulder. He also did not want to give in to the serious feeling of nausea in his stomach, but he did that anyway. All over the table next to him.

Someone let out one of those weak, sickeningly amused laughs.

It took the swordsman a moment to realize that they were trying to heat him up as gradually as possible, and another moment to realize that that wasn't working. After that, he tried to find the origin of that grotesque laugh and found himself with his head tilted to the right, eyes greeted by the last sight he had ever thought to see. It made him smile though, a little. The ironic sort of grin that made him feel like maybe, if the room would just stop spinning, this would be funny. Fate was playing a trick on him. There was no other logical explanation why Bean Sprout would be in the bed beside him, bloody and pale and shirtless, looking for all the world like a delicious juvenile corpse awaiting sacrilegious embalming.

Sacrilegious embalming. Kanda figured that involved a lot of bruising and biting, but he didn't want to think about the details.

Someone took away his blanket and snarled at whoever had thrown it over the swordsman. He wanted to protest, but the cool air of the room did feel better than the heat had. The same person yelled and pointed at two angry looking figures next to Bean Sprout, and sent them toward the hall. Kanda knew those figures, he just didn't care enough to place them at the moment.

The stillness grew slowly. There was still so much commotion, but the people worked in near perfect silence, only speaking when they needed to.

And the damn room wouldn't stop fucking spinning.

"Kan..." The brat was trying to talk to him, even though there was blood running out of his mouth and a woman looking down at him like she was about to either throw up or scream. Idiot. "Kan..."

He took a steadying breath and narrowed his eyes at the British boy. "What?"

The boy's silver eyes turned suddenly very sad, and his left hand twitched a little against the bedding, like a spider with too many broken limbs. When he opened his mouth, Kanda couldn't see his tongue. "Sorry...sorry... I'm... sorry..." It was all Sprout would say. With his weakening breath, his potential dying breath, he was just going to apologize.

Kanda felt a glare narrow his eyes even further, and heard the nurse start to protest even before he was moving. And then he was next to Allen, peering down at him, anger and something hot in his chest, sick and dizzy and tired and blind to what it was that had made him move in the first place. He only knew that whatever Bean Sprout was sorry for, it wasn't anything meaningful or worth it. It wasn't worth the brat's life to get those words out. It couldn't be, no matter what he had done.

"You..." The swordsman almost teetered over, but caught himself on the wall that just would not stop moving to his right. "You shut up. Don't talk to me until you aren't..." Someone was trying to pull him away, and he shrugged his shoulder to get them off. His tongue felt numb and slow, and his jaw tight. He hands were starting to shake. "Bleeding so much."

Allen smiled at him. "But... Lavi..."

It hurt to, but Kanda knew that he did not need to hear what the British Exorcist was trying to tell him. Not when the cost was so high. "Che. Tell me later, idiot." The hair against his hand was almost course – not silky at all – and tangled. "Alright?"

"Madrid." It was the clearest thing he had said. "The twenty-third."

Kanda felt that the information was somehow more important than a thousand apologies, and basically had nothing to do with Lavi. He didn't know how that idea was conveyed, or why his whole body was starting to tremble now, but Kanda was not about to let that strange, tingling feeling make him fall. He was not about to let the woman tugging at his shoulder turn him away unless she grabbed him by the ear. "Why?"

"To end the war."

Kanda couldn't talk after that, or hardly stand. He was shivering, he realized. His body had been too cold to shiver. And now there were goosebumps everywhere, and his teeth were clacking together, and the blanket that was draped over his shoulders and the hands that were guiding him back to the bed were like stoppable things. He still did not feel cold, though. He felt that his bones were not bone anymore, and that he was not spinning so vigorously now. He was tired.

He couldn't look at Bean Sprout. In fact, the easiest thing to do was close his eyes and let the dark wash over him.

– – –

The day was over by the time Lavi found himself looking at a rundown, beat up shack of a house, the man holding his hand hesitant and yet yearning to go inside. There were other people there, maybe two or three by the sound of it, and a kind of gentle warmth that even the broken gutters and peeling paint could not hide. Lavi had seen much worse. Yet, he had the feeling that even if he told Tyki that, they were still going to turn around and take an all night train to some other city, far away from this house and the Gate they had crept through to get here.

Perhaps the worst part of it was that it was beginning to snow. That made the little shamble of a house look cozy, even if it was likely just as cold on the inside as it was out.

The hand in his was trembling.

The apprentice Bookman looked at the Noah, at the man he had run away for, and watched him shake his head, a weak smile tugging at his lips. "When you told me to take you home, I thought of them." He explained, and turned his head so the crystalline drops of ice collecting in his hair glittered ever so gently in the golden light. "But I haven't been with them in so long, it wouldn't be like coming home at all. They don't know about my duality, and they shouldn't. Lavi," Tyki looked back at the tiny little door and the steps that lead up to it. "Would you be alright if we rented a room for the night, and then figured out where to go in the morning?"

The redhead nodded. "I understand."

There was something sad about how the older man leaned over him and drew him closer, and also something wonderful about the placement of Tyki's lips on his. Knowing what had happened between them, and knowing that Tyki had watched every moment of his exchange with Lenalee, sent an uncertain hand fluttering to the Noah's chest. They were lucky that standing there in the dark, no one came out of the house to see who was having an intimate moment on the street. Everything was silent until Lavi pulled slowly away, his hand still pressed to Tyki's shirt.

"We should talk, but I really don't want to." Lavi whispered.

"About where we are going, who might die, how we plan to survive..."

Lavi met the Noah's golden eyes and held them. "You still want to kill Exorcists. You would have, if I'd told you it was alright to go after Lenalee."

Tyki shrugged. "Of course."

"Will you stop me, if I decide to kill the other Noah?"

This time, the older man frowned. "We should talk about these things tomorrow, Lavi. There are... things we might decide when the situation doesn't feel so pressing. Look," his hand was very gentle when it touched the redhead's face, tilting it up a little higher. The sincerity in Tyki's eyes was almost staggering. "Let us call a truce for today and tomorrow – no killing, no maiming, no hostility. And then, when we are both tired and clean and enjoying the feeling of relaxing in a rented bed, we can talk about where and what we are going to do, how far we are willing to abandon fate for the sake of our liaison. If they try to call me in... I don't know. Maybe I can pretend I didn't hear."

It was so easy to let himself become convinced that Lavi almost shook his head for the sake in doing it. But there were some things that even if his mind was not completely at ease, his body would not allow him to forget. Those fingers on his chin, however delicate, made him shiver. "You didn't have a plan after finding me, did you? You had thought that... I would just..." He stopped because it was too hard to think about. Too hard to believe how close he actually had been to walking away. And how he had done exactly that to Yuu. "It's pretty obvious that you didn't think about what would happen if I came with you if your plan consists solely of sex."

"Noah of—"

"Pleasure, I know." Lavi could not stop himself from smiling. "Alright, alright, fine, okay, yes. Take me to your hotel and sweep me off my feet and I won't worry about anything else."

Tyki's eyes, still that same gold, turned suddenly warmer, softer, gentler. There was true, dark happiness behind those eyes. "Really?"

"Yes. If you can pretend that I did not do what I did... if you can pretend that I never went back to the Order with Yuu and—"

The Noah chuckled and shook his head. "I'm not pretending, Lavi. Honestly, like I told you before," Tyki's mask wavered. "I don't care if you keep him when all of this is over, as long as I don't need to know he's there."

Lavi shuddered and a cold ripple of fear tingled up his back – icy fear and something much, much hotter. But he felt his smile turn cool, felt his features take on an expression that Lavi simply did not wear. Lavi was not alright with that kind of cruelty, and yet he found that he could be, given the right circumstance. If it wasn't Yuu. If it had been anyone else, he knew, Lavi might have given it a thought. "You aren't pretending I didn't almost leave ya?"

"Well, are you pretending I didn't ask to kill the little girl in the frilly skirt?"

"No." Lavi blinked. "But I'm kind of pretending I'll always want to tell you no."

Tyki tilted his head to the side and finally, with a thin-lipped frown, turned them away from the house they were not going to enter. He walked them slowly and deliberately away from where they had come, moving at a casual pace. Their feet made soft sounds on the stone walk, wet sounds, now that the snow was sticking. The architecture here was distinctly western European, but Lavi did not try to place it. He did not need to know where he was at the moment – he didn't need to record it. He could close his eye, if he wanted.

He could take off the eye patch, if he wanted.

That didn't make him feel free.

"Did you want to grab dinner someplace? Or should we go find a room first? Maybe a change of clothes is in order for both of us..." Tyki changed the subject and acted as if he was dissatisfied with something near his hip, scoffing lightly under his breath. "I have dust on my kneecaps. What would Sheryl say about that?"

"Um... Please, Tyki, let me lick it off?"

The Noah roared with genuine laughter. They were not touching as they walked, though they were intimately close, and the sound filled the space between them so easy and naturally, it was refreshing. When he stopped, it was with one hand in his pocket, the other pressed to his chest as if he was finding it hard to recover. "Really? I didn't think you had picked up on that." He seemed to reconsider that statement and rolled his eyes.

"You know, I'm kind of a—"

"Bookman's apprentice, I know."

Lavi nodded. "And... it's kinda hard to miss."

Tyki took the younger man's hand and pulled him down a street toward the better side of town. "I suppose. Did you want dinner or—"

"We can always get something from the place we stay..."

"We can."

"And I'd hate to be spotted before I get something to wear besides, you know, Exorcist clothes."

Tyki looked sidelong at the boy walking beside him. "I got so used to you wandering around the house in my shirts, it's almost a shame you now have one that fits."

Lavi laughed softly and squeezed the hand in his. "I'll maybe steal them sometimes. When you aren't around. But I'm going to get my own clothes, not just wear yours."

The Noah cocked an eyebrow. "I suppose I'll have to float you a loan for that."

"The jacket will be good for it. I can get enough free things to get by, sell off the Order's silver, then find myself something to do for money. That's assuming we stay in one place long enough for me to actual work, of course." The redhead frowned. "I guess I should look into legal things, and anything that might require knowing how to write." Lavi had never thought about what he might do if he was no longer an apprentice Bookman.

In fact, the whole idea that he wasn't anymore had yet to completely sink in.

"If you don't want to sell it..." Tyki was saying gently. The Noah was so understanding, so full of mirth, it was hard to believe that the darkness underneath of that was likely just as amused as the man outside seemed to be, if for different reasons. "I suppose it's up to you."

"It might just gather dust if I keep it." Lavi said logically. The thought, however, was not comfortable. He didn't want to rid himself of his coat, even if it was the safest thing to do.

Tyki stopped walking.

The snow was falling in flurries and waves, glistening like falling bits of glass in the dark air. Above them, illuminated by nothing but the light from inside the building, was a sign that read Pig and Still. The simple carved letters looked like folded gold, frosted with diamonds. The small, adorable pig brewing at a still at the bottom of the sign was almost lost in darkness. The windows were only slightly fogged, ringed with cold, which left the heart of the main room open to inspection, the huge fire burning in the hearth directly in sight, the smiling men gathered around the second closest table quite visible. They had bowls of something dark and thick, and a plate of bread between them.

Lavi's stomach rumbled.

With a slow, wide smile, Tyki tugged his coat off and draped it over the boy's shoulders – creating the effect of a robe, rather than a coat. It made Lavi frown.

"Did you want to go in so they could describe you?" Tyki asked, and opened the door without waiting for an answer.

Lavi wiggled his arms through the sleeves and tugged the too-large garment closed. After a moment of hesitance, he pulled off his eye patch and thrust it into his pocket. "They still can, Tyki. It's not like you rejected their eyes."

– – –

Painkillers, even if they did not work as effectively on parasitic types as they did on normal humans, were swiftly turning into Allen's favorite thing outside of mango pudding. Most of his body and much of his brain was numb. It was so easy to answer the Inspector's questions, he hardly even thought of what was coming out of his mouth, and yet he knew that there were things he couldn't talk about. He didn't talk about Tyki or the new Ark or any of that. He did talk about Madrid. A lot. And some Akuma who had spouted in the information in the fight that had left him wounded.

He was wounded?

Oh, yes, right. Very much wounded.

It was a little distracting how Kanda was sitting there to his left, reclining on a set of pillows that looked too fluffy to be comfortable, his face drawn into a neutral sort of frown, his hands folded under his blanket so Allen could just make out the lump on his stomach. The distracting part was not that Kanda was there, exactly, but that he seemed to be paying so much attention to Allen, and hiding it behind a very disinterested mask.

Link asked him where he had been after he had been wounded. Allen quickly babbled something about the woods – which was true – and fainting – which was also true – and then made up some believable story about dragging himself to his feet when he woke up, tearing open his chest, and stumbling back to wherever the Hell they had found him.

At that point, he was about ready to fall asleep mid-question. It didn't help that the two of them had such uninteresting voices, or that they just stood there without giving him anything to focus on. He already felt tired and sick and hurt and distant – he didn't need an Inspector and an assistant Inspector making him feel worse.

In the end, Link had to explain how the two of them were separated. After that, the two of them were left alone, and the nurse moved Link to the far side of the room – because it was rather obvious that Allen was not going to be awake long, and she did not want him to be forced to talk out of his undying desire to be polite.

So he was given a moment of privacy, while the world faded toward darkness.

"Beansprout." Kanda's low tenor was just a bit louder than a whisper. One might have thought he was trying not to bother the boy, rather than trying not to be eavesdropped on. "What were you trying to say about Lavi?"

The British boy felt a wave of guilt in his chest, felt his eyes try to stay open, but he was losing that fight very swiftly. "I didn't think... he would still be there. And if I had..." Allen couldn't keep his brain on the proper track anymore. It was wavering dangerously between reality and something less tangible. "Kanda..." He tried to turn his head and pull the swordsman into focus, and he heard panic in his own voice. What was he trying to say, again? What was important about Lavi?

The last thing he thought he heard was Kanda's voice, speaking to him in that gently begrudging tone. It wasn't real, Allen knew, because the swordsman never said his name.

– – –

The room was warm and well lit, with one large bed covered in a billion pillows, each one a distinct shade of deep green. It was nicer than any place Lavi had stayed as an Exorcist, that was for sure, and smelled of fresh linens and dried summer flowers – which were kept in a vase next to the wide, dark mirror over the low dresser. There were tasteful details everywhere, little things, like how the fabrics matched. In fact, the weave of the sheets might have been six hundred thread, if his two eyes weren't lying to him at the moment.

Anyone else might have missed those things, the important things, the expensive things. Anyone not trained as a Bookman, at least. Anyone not interested in the bruising, hungry hands on Lavi's flesh, the teeth that sought his skin only to graze it. Lavi was interested in that – very interested – but the other things bled into his mind like strange gray stains, anything but distracting, anything but important. And yet, with his back against the mattress and Tyki's coat tangled around his arms, they were infinitely important in their own regard. The Noah was doing this for him. Every part of it. Paying for such a spectacular room was only a small part.

Lavi could hardly catch his breath, the older man was so intent on his actions. It was not that Tyki swept him up too quickly – that might have been better – but rather that the man moved with such purpose, such finality, it made the redhead feel that this was meant to be the end of something, not the beginning. There was such tenderness, even with Tyki's strong fingers wound around his wrists, that the emotions between them were as undeniable as they were unvoiced.

What surprised him was that the moment the Noah had him pinned, they paused. Tyki simply studied his face in the lamplight, shadows dancing across his features and making them unreadable. It took him a long moment to frown.

"Before we do this, I want you to look at me." Tyki released Lavi's right wrist so he could run his finger's under the boy's right eye. "I mean look at me. The way that you said you could. I want you to see... to see the dark in me, as I have seen it in you." There was something almost melancholy about the man's smile.

Lavi knew that Bookman would not approve of it, but he closed his eyes and prepared to do exactly as the Noah asked. "I'm not afraid anymore." He whispered. "Not of what you are, or what I am, or any of it. I'm not... worried that I'll see something and stop feeling for you." He slowly let his eyes come open, though for a time, his gaze remained unfocused. "Because we are all sinners in this war. Maybe us more than you."

The man in front of him – who was indeed still a man – did not radiate evil in a black aura. He did not twist or morph or swell with killing intent. But he was different. There were bad things – evil things – that clung to him as closely as his skin, parts of him that were darker than the sea on a moonless night, moving in the same sort of waves. The face behind Tyki's – Lavi could make out them both – was covered with what might have been a knight's helm, blood splattered, and deadly. The hands that touched Lavi were almost clawed, gnarled, and shining like black talons. But it was the eyes, jet pools of reflective water, that were the strangest and the most obviously inhuman, though Lavi could hardly see them. They showed everything that he had seen until now with absolute perfection. Mercilessness, cruelty, fearlessness, lust, apathy. And beneath that, behind the things that had created this creature of restrained madness, there was the emotion Lavi had not understood most of his life.

And it was selfish. Cold-hearted and selfish.

The glimpse left him shaken and weak, left his right eye blurry and aching, but it did not leave him feeling any differently for the Noah that straddled his black clad legs against the olive green comforter. It left him without a shadow of a doubt. There was more, of course. There were terrible things that the Noah had done, people he had killed, hurt, stolen, and if Lavi looked long enough, he would be able to name those sins one at a time, moving toward the very beginning of time.

It was hard – very hard – but Lavi was willing to try and forget about all of it. He was willing to close his eyes and let it go.

Because he was sure that his own reflection looked something similar.

"Lavi... I shouldn't have—"

He shushed the older man, and realized only with the sound that his right eye was indeed crying silent tears down the side of his face. He wanted to wipe them away, but the Noah did it for him. "No, I'm happy you did. Because now, if they ever find me, I can tell them that I know what you've done, and that I don't give a fuck." He laughed, and the sound was broken to his ears.

The Noah kissed him softly, and the hand that rested on his cheek fell slowly to his side, and finally to his hip. The kiss was slow. When they parted, Lavi let his eyes come open again. The man above him was smiling softly, his dark eyes filled with relief.

The hand on his hip traveled to his thigh and jerked away; Tyki hissed softly, his golden eyes wide. "Innocence." He said it like a curse. "I forgot all about that."

Lavi reached down enough to take the tiny hammer from its holster and hold it in his hand. He hadn't Fallen. Not yet. And he did not feel anything out of the ordinary from the crystal-made weapon. It felt the same as always – his, and nothing more. "Yeah, you should be careful..." He almost pulled the weapon away when Tyki curled his fingers around his hand, encasing it almost tenderly. Instead, he waited, and watched the Noah's eyes on the Innocence. "Maybe if you look at it long enough, it will tell you what it thinks of you, and then you can be friends." He offered in a small voice with an equally small smile.

Tyki's eyes flicked from Lavi's face to the Innocence, looking none too confident in either. After an awkward moment, he cleared his throat and spoke in a solemn, authoritative voice."Alright little... hammer. We need to have an accord." Tyki looked perfectly serious, his eyes not even the slightest bit amused. "You irritate me to no end, but you are welcome to stay with us peacefully. As long as you do not harm me or Lavi, you can stay in a box under the bed and out of the way."

"Hey!"

"Or on Lavi's person, assuming he isn't in bed with me."

The redhead pulled his hand back, taking the Innocence with it, and leaned up just enough to touch his forehead to Tyki's. "Good. If you're done, I think you need to have an equally serious conversation with the rest of me." Somehow, it didn't seem odd to phrase it that way, and the Noah didn't question him outright. Perhaps, Lavi thought, Tyki understood just how much the weapon was a part of him, now that they were this close with it in the same room. "Because I swear, if I don't get a long, quiet lecture about how stupid of me it was to think I had to go back—" He was cutoff by the press of Tyki's mouth against his, by the tilt of the Noah's hips in a hard, suggestive grind. The bed beneath him creaked. Lavi wanted to put his hammer away, but realized it would be difficult with Tyki's fingers wrapped around his wrist.

When the kiss broke, it was only long enough for them to breathe. The Innocence slipped from Lavi's fingers and he decided that it could just stay there on the comforter if they were careful of it. It did not feel like it was about to hurt anyone.

Lavi thought that maybe Tyki had interpreted his request for a lecture perfectly when a hand took hold of his belt and began to pull on it. The hum in the older man's throat made him want to reach out and divest the Noah of his shirt, but that also was not about to happen in their current position. And to make matters worse, the older man pulled back just enough to look him directly in the eyes.

"Lavi," Tyki breathed, and rested his weight on Lavi's hips.

"What?"

The Noah did not seem to notice the disappointment in Lavi's voice. "If... we do this..." There was something strange about the phrase, something wrong. It was as if Tyki wanted with all of himself to stop talking and continue with what they had started, but something dictated that he couldn't. He shook his head, and his tousled hair just barely brushed at Lavi's forehead. "No, never mind. We should do this. I just... I don't want to make you feel as if this is the only thing I missed about you. I also missed..." He paused, and his expression turned playful. "Your cooking..."

Lavi snorted. "Yeah, right. You realize that I burn everything I cook by myself, right? I mean, you didn't give me much of a chance to try when my sight came back, but—"

"Oh, I'm sure that we both have our shortcomings." Tyki cocked a curious eyebrow. "But you know what I'm getting at, Lavi. As dark as I am, there is more to me than what we both want at this moment." He moved just the slightest bit, and his smile widened. "Really want, I should say, shouldn't I?"

"No use lying about it." Lavi shrugged with just his shoulders and matched the Noah's expression. He felt suddenly like there was nothing wrong in the world if they man could smile at him like that – the mask was so perfect it was a part of Tyki's face. Despite that, Lavi understood perfectly well that it was untrue – lovely, and untrue. "What d'ya say? You wanna keep kissing me, or do you want to take things slow for the sake of sanity?"

The Noah's face split in a too wide grin. "Well, if you don't mind..." Tyki's hands began to roam again, slipping just two fingers into one of Lavi's front pockets. "We all go a little insane sometimes, do we not?"

The redhead found himself nodding, found himself arching from the mattress, pulling the older man into him. He let out a little growl and nipped softly at Tyki's throat. "Only a little?"

Tyki nodded into his shoulder wordlessly. He unbuckled the Exorcist's belt and then went for the button of his pants, his bottom lip momentarily pressed between his teeth. His long fingers made short work of the fastener, and then slipped upward, under Lavi's shirt and jacket, and across the pale expanse of flesh that made up the boy's stomach. The Noah's topaz eyes held Lavi's gaze unwaveringly. "Some of us more than others..." It was a distant sort of observation, not something he truly meant; his attention was wholly devoted to drawing a slow, tender line across the top of Lavi's pants and down into the newly divided valley made by the parting of his fly.

Lavi did not mind in the slightest.

The prelude had been slow, but there was simply no denying what they both wanted any longer. With fierce moments and uncaring fingers, Lavi moved to free Tyki from most of the restraints of his clothing. His fingers did not shake, and his eyes did not wander. He worked with everything he had ever known, everything he had ever done, and used every bit of his knowledge to his advantage. It didn't matter that there had been someone else, or that the two of them had only half-known the truth before. It also did not matter that Lavi was looking almost up at the Noah, or that the room was dim with only one lamp lit, cast in tumultuous shadows.

Lavi's pants found their way to his knees and he did not think the heat in him would wait to get much more naked. He pushed his boxers down with them, and ran a clawing hand down the backside of Tyki's pants.

Tyki shivered. His mouth was open and pressed to Lavi's throat, his hair tangling against the boy's chin. He kissed downward for a moment, changed his mind and came back to Lavi's mouth, so desperate he didn't seem to notice how little foreplay had actually gone on. It was as if he was in the midst of blind bloodlust, only his eyes were soft brown, and his forehead unmarred by the scars of his family. His touch, however torturous, was surprisingly tender.

And the instant Lavi ask him, the Noah nodded. Lavi didn't think about what he knew about Tyki, or what he thought the Noah might like from their time together – he acted on instinct. And when he heard Tyki say his name in a broken, shaken whisper, and watched the man frantically search through his clothes for a tiny bottle of something cool and slick, Lavi knew that he had done what might have been morally sound, but what had been right. And then thinking felt difficult. He realized, a bit belatedly, that Tyki was trying to figure how they might maneuver into a better position without rejecting any amount of their clothing.

Lavi rolled onto his stomach without even the slightest hint of embarrassment and turned over his clothed shoulder to look back at the other man, all of his weight on the heels of his hands and his knees. The expression on the Noah's face was almost comical. "Is something wrong?" It was the most wit he could muster at the moment. And it was better than pleading.

To his mild surprise, Tyki leaned forward and pressed his fingers gently forward in place of his length, the liquid that covered them making the intrusion easier. His eyes were dull gold, but the scars that so often covered his face were missing. "No." It was uncharacteristic of him to let the word stand alone, but he paused, though his fingers kept moving. Before he spoke again he blinked very slowly. "I can't help but think of how I felt when all of this started – when you were just a toy that had not turned out as I had expected. When I had thought..." His eyes closed, and when they opened again they were full of the same emotion as before, only it could not be cold and selfish now, for some reason. It was fire, as hot and dark as Lavi has ever seen it. "I was such a fool."

"You didn't know... that doesn't mean you were a fool." Lavi wished a little that they would stop talking – it would make pressing himself back into those two long, gentle fingers a little less awkward. "I didn't know, either, Tyki. I didn't know we would..." He searched for a word or a phrase, but he couldn't think of the right one. And it wasn't as if the words were important anyway. Not at the moment.

Tyki's fingers left him, slipping out slowly, gently, as if he would break if handled too strongly. "But we do now, don't we?" The Noah whispered, and replaced his fingers with his length, a change that made Lavi shudder with a soft, breathy sound.

The redhead nodded, and balled his right hand into a fist against the comforter. "I feel that I love you." He said, and knew that that was not the proper way to say it, but he didn't know exactly how to convey what he meant. "But how do you know that you love someone if—" He cut himself off and leaned back when Tyki moved forward, and his back pressed flush to the Noah's chest. "If you don't know anything about..."

Tyki laughed in a rumble that Lavi could feel all the way down his spine. His voice was husky and dark. "And you think I do?"

"Heh." Lavi bent a bit more toward the bed, the better to arch his spine without tearing the clothes still wrapped around his knees. "Good point."

From there, talking had very little to do with the situation. He gave himself up to what he had wanted for so long, and simply allowed himself to enjoy their closeness, their inseparability. After so long, it was difficult to stay slow, to stay gentle, and so Lavi informed his lover that they didn't need to be – they had never really been before, so why start now? The mention of before brought teeth to his clothed right shoulder, and a hand to his, both of which were somehow more reassuring than they had any right to be. But he didn't have time to think about it. He had only enough time to think about the sensation, how familiar it was, how he knew exactly what the older man might want.

He remembered the first time he had fumbled and fallen into bed with Yuu.

He remembered the first time he had clawed his way into bed with Tyki. Figuratively speaking.

He remembered feeling sick with himself when it had all tumbled back into his head like a handful of marbles.

Lavi could not, no matter how he tried, push the thoughts and memories away completely, so he eventually gave up on trying. Instead, he let them wander in front of his minds eye while his fingers did interesting things with the newly exposed sheets, tracing lines and circles Tyki's scars. Eventually, there was nothing between them breath before the Noah somehow pulled away and slipped turned beneath him, dark eyed and expectant. Wanting to see his face. There was no reason to think of the past then. No time to contemplate their future. There was only pressure and a little pain, fingers on his hips, and a gasping mouth just out of comfortable reach, his heart beating like a drum in his chest.

There was more emotion in it this time – more confusion. The aftermath left him drained and unsure, tingling with physical ecstasy that could only fog the edges of his vision and twinge the lining of his heart. But the moment the Noah's arms draped him in warmth and gathered him beneath the blankets, he did not think he could bear to the think about his insecurities anymore.

"No matter what happens, Lavi," Tyki's voice was heavy with what might have been exhaustion or contentment. "No matter what happens now..."

"What?"

The answer was nothing but a whisper, laced with things that were unreadable without an expression to go with it. "I will be as human as I can, barring the apocalypse."

Softly, a knowing smile spread across the redhead's lips. "Yeah, me too."

– – –

Continuation to come in... a while?