They followed the dirt footpath another few hundred metres. Even in this season, there were still birds that swooped between the trees digging worms out from under the bark or picking shrivelled berries off last winter's vines. Daisya felt his face sting with the branches he walked straight through on the way to Kanda's hidey-hole.

The day had already turned over in his head, switching from 'yesterday' and passing right through sleep to get to 'tomorrow.' A dozen half-connected thoughts tripped over each other trying to get his attention. All the things he'd planned for the real tomorrow after he woke up. Only one of them managed to get through the pile-up to the front of his brain: one song that looped over and over.

"Are we there?" he asked.

"No," said Kanda.

"You said it was another five minutes at least…definitely five minutes ago," he said.

"I said we were close."

"Close means five minutes, or a hundred metres. Whichever one's closer. Hey—!"

Suddenly, Kanda yanked him off the path through the underbrush, tugging him into the gaps between bushes as Daisya clattered along behind him.

"Geez, d'you see something? How good is your night vision, anyway? You never tell me—"

They stopped suddenly. Daisya ran right into Kanda's back.

"We're here," said Kanda.

Daisya opened his mouth to say something and closed it. He tried again. Kanda turned around to face him, or, more accurately, look down at the top of his head.

"Hah. Hah. Yeah, I get it."

"What?"

The trill running up and down Daisya's side quieted a little. Way to ruin the joke.

"'Here' isn't on the path. We weren't there. We are here," Daisya explained tediously.

Oh. Wait. Kanda wasn't just dumb. He also played dumb. Sometimes he played dumb badly. It was fun to figure out which one it was, and Daisya just let all of it go by. Now he was the one ruining the joke!

"No, you said you wanted to do something. What is it?" asked Kanda.

Sometimes, Daisya could sit still if the world around him was just going to be that good of a show. That was what was getting to him right now. The song that wouldn't leave him alone kept coming back around, but his tired legs were starting to turn to tree trunks the longer he and Kanda stood here, and that was all right with him. Did he really want to break away into something else?

Of course he did.

Daisya raised their clasped hands up between them.

"We're dancing," he said.

"Huh," said Kanda.

Not the answer he could've got, but at least Kanda didn't complain. Good boy. He knew the drill. Enough of the two-person kata were like dances and enough times Daisya got bored enough to drag everyone out to the town squares at night.

"'S not much space here. Let's do one of mine. That's the only way I'll get tired."

A lie. He was dead tired already, the problem was, he wanted to stay awake too much to go to bed right now. He had to be right up to the point of falling over if he was ever going to sleep.

"That doesn't leave me a choice," said Kanda.

Whipping out his arm, Daisya plucked the Charity Bell off of his hood and flicked it gently.

"Innocence," he whispered, "Activate!"

He pushed Kanda back lightly and stepped back himself. One foot behind the other, he tested out the width of the clearing Kanda brought them to. A good half-metre of shorter grass or clover and another metre of long grass around the edge.

"You lead," said Kanda.

"Hang on, you gotta wait for the music."

Daisya tamped the grass down underfoot while he tried to set the Charity Bell. It would be nice to have some drums, but the thudding in his ears would have to do. The Charity Bell could only provide a hollow sort of rattling noise for percussion. He'd tried out a lot of different things just to get there. For the notes, though, he could do better.

He started off on the beat. Simple 4/4 time with a slow pace. They'd start off slow to get warmed up, then switch to double-time for a surprise. Over top of that he laid a peal of descending notes. The problem with doing the song and noise at the same time was that he couldn't switch up the tone like he usually did without the rattle getting out of hand. So, one note per beat, four beats per measure. He picked one pattern and let it repeat so he could focus on the real fun.

Hopping from foot to foot, he swung his head up to look at the hole Kanda cut out from the scenery with his long black hair, long black jacket, long black boots, and black eyes. Kanda wouldn't ever talk about them taking this detour. He didn't talk about anything, just watched. It was like having his own personal shadow.

Daisya loved it. What'd his Ma always say? He kept his own company.

"…five, six, seven, eight, go!"

He started the dance.

The favourite dances he grew up with were more about keeping time than showing off any fancy flings like the ones he learned later. It was all about having that control over your body to make sure your feet hit the ground in the exact right places. He kicked up and carried out a full two, three rounds of the sequence while Kanda waited, foot tapping in time to the beat. Then he moved sideways with it, forward, still tapping out a tattoo on the poor downtrodden grass, and over to Kanda's side. He linked their arms together, and the round started again. This time they moved in sync. Daisya had set out the pattern and now that Kanda'd seen it, they would follow it around until he changed it.

Each impact jolted his ankles so that he winced. That became its own secondary beat all at once. Who needed drums when you had nerves! He could practically hear the end of one bone grinding into the other like a keel skidding against the rocks. For Kanda, who was walking all day, it had to be worse.

Daisya snaked around to his other side, spinning one arm over his head, and grabbed on to the other arm. They'd switched positions.

"Your turn," he said.

"Tch."

Because he wasn't all nice, Daisya shifted the Bell's rhythm up to double time. Not that they moved any faster. He just felt like he needed to move. It was more frantic. The Bell was telling him that whatever he was doing, he wasn't putting enough into it.

"I'm waiting," Daisya prompted. He nudged Kanda's side without losing count.

The arm through his tightened up. "Don't fall down," Kanda said.

This time he set the pace, but Daisya didn't need to watch. He knew all the parts of this dance by heart. He'd taught them all to Kanda, and to Lenalee and everyone else. He didn't need to see to know the steps. When he felt Kanda's legs swing through the motions, out, down, half-height, he followed the pattern. This just happened to be the hardest one he knew and faster than they did it even in training. Lucky for Kanda, Daisya didn't need to think about it that much. His body would do the work for him as long as he managed to keep it moving.

That was becoming a lot harder.

"Hey, are you trying to mess me up?" he asked.

"You wanted to get tired," Kanda said back.

He swung Daisya out so that they faced each other, reaching into each other's space so that the offset kicks never quite clashed. Daisya kept to the beat. The repeating notes from the Bell were turning what was left of his brain to mush, the same loop endlessly driving down and never bottoming out. He found himself looking for an end. What was that supposed to be? He should just change the tune if he was bored.

So he did. Holding one hand out, he swivelled his wrist a few times to change it. Then, he realized he hadn't changed it when he switched to double time. He had twice as many notes he could use, he could even make a real melody out of this one!

While his ankles ached under him from keeping balance on the long grass, he wove in a stuttering descant where the old reliable four-note arpeggio had been. See how Kanda liked that.

"Bored already?" huffed Kanda.

"I'm trying not to be. You'd better help out."

"I don't know any other steps."

"So follow me again! C'mon, let's switch. Keep the same footwork and I'll throw other stuff in."

"What are you—"

Interlacing their fingers, Daisya threw Kanda around in a move that he took straight out of combat training. He tripped up one foot and used the other as a pivot to fling Kanda around to face him, then bowed down in front as Kanda kept up the dance.

"Just hang on," he said.

"Say that before you push me," said Kanda.

Except, he didn't need telling twice. Kanda followed him like his life depended on it as Daisya spun him around some more, hitting four corners of a square that only he could see. He would've climbed a tree to watch the patterns they both made if he could do it without leaving the dance. That was the other level. Just doing the steps, you could feel the dance yourself, but moving all sorts of bodies all at once, you could see how it felt. Daisya remembered the first time he was old enough to see all the older kids in town join into one line and weave through the streets.

The music was pumping him full of energy, now, instead of any blood. That was all pooled in his head. Daisya felt less like he was fighting the force that pulled him down, more like he was just pushing off the ocean floor back into a sea that would hold him. He could even find the surface if only Kanda would just let go of him.

Daisya looked up.

…

Kanda saw the whites of Daisya's eyes when he tipped his head back. He saw them flow across his sockets as the irises disappeared into his head. Then Kanda felt the hands loosen up from where they held on to his arm.

He caught Daisya's body just as it started to fall.

Kanda sighed.

"I said 'don't fall,'" he muttered. Daisya wouldn't listen even if he could hear him.

Stepping away, he laid Daisya down in in the flattened grass where he'd made them dance.

That meant he'd have to set up camp.

Kanda sniffed. Besides the smell of crushed vegetation, it was damp out. Would it rain before morning?

He crouched down by their two packs and pulled the two bedrolls out of his. He put them both down side-by-side. As soon as that was done, he picked Daisya up like a sack of flour and laid him down on one of them while he set up the canopy.

Lee was too good at his job. Whether Lenalee asked him, Kanda didn't know. The Chief been sending Daisya out to all corners of the European territory ever since Kanda brought it up, that he could be in danger. Somehow, Daisya didn't seem to notice that he spent most of his time away from the Order. Most of the time he wasn't even near a city.

Kanda sighed. More than anyone else he knew, Daisya belonged on the road.

He dumped his own pack's remaining contents on to the other bedroll and started taking the bag apart. The waxed canvas was folded into three layers and reinforced with a coil of rope in the bottom. Kanda stabbed two stakes through the holes in one end of the canvas sheet and threaded the rope through the holes in the other end. Those ones, he tied to the two closest trees in the thicket. It'd do. Daisya was short anyway, he'd fit into the space under the tilted sheet. Any rain or mist would flow to the ground once it hit the canvas and leave them dry.

He didn't have a choice. Daisya didn't do what he was asked. Not even Tiedoll had any influence over him, since he was a kid. Kanda just had to hope he didn't get a taste for blood while he wasn't looking. The longer he spent at the Order…he'd killed because Kanda was there. The only thing he could do to stop that was to make sure that Daisya never had another reason, and that the Order never had another lead. It worked. They spent their time together when there was no one else around.

Now Kanda unpacked Daisya's bag, stuffed with whatever garbage he had in his room in that inn. Kanda tried to fit it all in to be more compact. The trinkets made it hard. How the hell did he manage to buy so many weird figurines when he hadn't been in any village bigger than five hundred people for months. That, and the crumpled bunches of paper, and the pencil stubs. Kanda gave up and just ended up folding his clothes. They could switch bags so that he carried the heavier one.

It felt like he was doing something wrong. He didn't know how the self that never stopped thinking about her would ever feel about him. That would mean he had to stop thinking about her. Kanda had already warned Daisya that there would be a day, soon, where they'd see each other and never speak again. He remembered that this wasn't the way things were supposed to go. The person he loved was there from one life to the next. If it was Daisya, then he had to leave her.

He didn't do that.

Kanda put his things at the top of Daisya's bag and cinched the drawstring shut, placing it at the foot of the bedroll right where the canvas met the ground. It weighed down the blanket that he'd laid down over top of Daisya, anchoring in case the wind blew up.

He straightened up again so he could check for anything he left out in the open. The grey-black colour of his night vision still let him see movement. The only thing sticking out from under the canvas was…one of Daisya's hands and one of his legs. Kanda shook his head. He didn't get how Daisya managed to throw half the blanket off in the quarter-hour it took to sent up the tent. Kanda was there the whole time.

Relaxed, Kanda sat down on his half of the bedroll with a familiar flutter in his chest. He'd already argued with himself about staying so close to Daisya. He realized it was stupid a few months ago. It took effort to fight against the forces pulling them together. By now he had to bite back whatever he was about to say to him instead of struggling to make up words. He had to work at it if he was going to stay away. Just look at them here, he thought. Kanda had put their sleeping mats one next to the other and crammed them both under the same canvas shelter without thinking about it. He wasn't as sharp as most other people that the Order left alive.

A raspy snore started up next to him. Lenalee said Daisya didn't snore. He and Marie knew better. After his once-broken windpipe healed up, Daisya never breathed the same. Kanda could hear it lying up in bed next to him when they were forced to share. Half the time he was there to spare Marie the hassle of earplugs. In, and out, the air whistled around angles that shouldn't be there.

Kanda rolled over so that his body was flush against Daisya's. It was the only smart thing to do with the damp air out.

That was one time that Daisya knew better than him. When the living Innocence was lashing out at them, Daisya kept him safe. He'd figured out what was at risk.

He did that most of the time.

Kanda breathed in. His ribs swelled into Daisya's side as he breathed out.

Next to Daisya, he wasn't in control. He could try to force him in one direction or the other, but there would always be some time when he wasn't there, wasn't paying attention, wasn't awake, wasn't even alive, and Daisya step in and would mess everything up. Smiling about it, like he knew something Kanda didn't.

That's how he'd thought about it when he was a kid.

Kanda just realized a few years ago that it was the other way around.

His eyes shut like a tomb. Keeping them open was more than he could do.

Daisya only smiled because he wanted to. There was nothing he was hiding. Warm against Kanda's back, everything about him was what it seemed to be. He could forget himself, forget where he was, fall asleep, lose himself entirely, and Daisya would take care of him.

Kanda slept without dreaming.

I can't believe I got this far without including dancing...

Calling out references to defeat the point of having references:

1. There's a fic in French called On My Back that is sort of like my bible for Daisya-Kanda relations

2. The English dub has Kanda ask the Finders to take care of Daisya when he leaves the corpse with them