laaaaaaaaate. boy. what a month. Hope you enjoy! lovely reader if you're here, I may have to extend the finishing deadline to February. It will be done but by god, have I had other things to do

Daisya rolled over, waiting for his toes to heat up before he fell asleep. Another anonymous inn, this time with dark, wide rooms that seemed like they slanted one way or the other. He'd put the Charity Bell down on the sawdusted floor and watched it roll before they went to bed. He'd also made Kanda move the furniture around so that the headboard was on the uphill side. Well, he asked him to. Then Kanda did it. Daisya counted that as a win. Even if he did have to shove the other end of the bed around.

"Kanda," he whispered. "Kanda. Hey. Kanda."

Nothing. The lump holding the other end of the sheets stayed still as far as he could tell.

One last try. "Are you there?"

"What."

"Are you awake?" Daisya asked, deadpan.

He heard Kanda groan from the other side of the bed.

"Hey, move over."

Daisya was about to give him some a reason, but—surprise surprise, Kanda actually did it.

True to Kanda, he did it wrong. Daisya kicked him below the knee.

"Not that way, I can't reach you if you're over there."

"You said 'move over.'"

"I don't know! Let me—" Daisya gave up and pulled his shoulder towards him, signalling to Kanda that he should roll on to his back. "—There."

The body turned as Daisya tugged, face appearing in the middle of the black rat's nest of hair like a mostly-full moon. Kanda faced up and strained his neck to the side, glowering at him. The tendons stood out on either side of his throat to Daisya's eyes.

"That's right," he said.

"What?"

"Nothin'. I need something to do."

Daisya slid on to his elbow in a half-raised pose, leaning over Kanda like a sickbed attendant with no sense of personal space.

"What d'you think?" he asked.

"Hm," Kanda just grunted.

Well, that wasn't a scoff or a click of the tongue. Daisya took it as agreement.

Feeling the scratchy weave of bad sheets underneath his body weight, he planted the other elbow on the other side of Kanda's head. He was careful to thread it under his hair. Wouldn't be nice to pin him down to the bed like that. Besides, Daisya liked it when he could move too.

Daisya looked down at the man that was a few millimetres away now. His back complained at him putting all his weight on his shoulders now, but he'd had a light pack on. It wouldn't be too bad to strain them a little bit. Besides, he couldn't stop now that he had Kanda's plain, downturned face in front of him. He'd always just been trying to put another look on there.

While he stared, Kanda swung his chin up expectantly.

"What?" he asked.

"Make up your mind," said Kanda.

He narrowed his eyes like he judged him for moving so slowly. So he wanted to blame Daisya for taking in the scenery, whatever. Daisya wasn't about to stop when he was having so much fun.

"Give me thirty seconds, geez."

Daisya sank his fingers into the bed like claws and made sure he was steady, first. Kanda was strong enough to bat him to the floor by accident if he got carried away. Okay.

Now that he was locked down…

"—mmf!"

He didn't have time to take the next step before Kanda cut him off impatiently. Head raised, shoulders drawn together underneath him, he had Daisya's head in a grip and his mouth forced open. Come on, would it kill him to wait?

Against him, Kanda started to move. Daisya sank into the feeling like a hot bath until—

Wait, no, no, him? Again? Now? It was supposed to be the other way around!

The fuzzy moment passed as his thoughts caught up to the rest of him. He'd been the one trying to have fun. Him. It wasn't Kanda's idea, but here he was stealing away the initiative. Daisya didn't have a chance to wheedle, whine, convince him into playing along. It was…weird.

Wait. Was this how Kanda felt whenever he went ahead and did what he wanted?

That line of reason sent out more questions to every part of Daisya's mind like hot iron threw up sparks. Kanda fought him off when they were little. Kanda didn't push him away now. Last year he didn't, either. Kanda was the first one who kissed him and the second one too. Did that mean that he just liked this? It had to…

Daisya felt himself split between the two parts, a mind that was lighting up like a chandelier and a body that was a lot less energetic. Oh, well. Who cared.

Daisya did what he wanted. Right now he wanted to follow Kanda's lead.

He dove in right after Kanda, pushing back with the extra advantage he had from the high ground. That'd give him something to think about!

The gravity helped him lock in closer, too, against Kanda as he kissed him like he had any idea what he was doing.

While Daisya tried to match him, Kanda's hands moved down from his cheeks to his hips for some extra support. How nice of him. That kept Daisya from pulling a muscle as he fought for a more comfortable position.

He was better at this than him. Daisya couldn't figure out why.

It wasn't like Kanda thought a lot about this romance and stuff, did he? This kind of thing didn't seem like him at all. Even when he played whatever part he thought he was supposed to for Daisya's sake, he didn't bother to do anything else the way he should. Hell, he didn't even tell him anything. Daisya just guessed the whole way until he planted one on him, and then after that he still kept guessing!

Daisya shifted again, straddling Kanda properly so that his weight was on his knees. That felt better. Plus, it freed up his hands.

Avoiding the tangled hair, Daisya gripped the back of his head to keep him still. Not that he could hold Kanda in place by any kind of force, but he could at least tell him that he wanted him to slow down a bit, leave his head upturned and jaw loose.

Something gave out beneath his hands.

Just like that.

Daisya leaned forward under Kanda's steady glare. That was the other weird thing, Kanda closed his eyes the first few times, but now he watched whenever Daisya kissed him. Hah! Anyone could play that game.

He dipped his tongue into Kanda's open mouth and held them tight together.

It felt…nice.

His legs were finally starting to warm up.

It'd been a long day walking. Another couple of minutes, and he could go to bed and leave Kanda in peace like he probably wanted.

For now, Daisya soaked it in like a cat on the pavement. This was way more fun than jumping jacks before bed.

Then something moved underneath him. Kanda wanted to shove over a bit? Let him. Daisya wasn't strong enough to have a say. Yet.

"Mmph—"

Thunk!

They were both figuring out what limbs went where and which teeth were whose when somebody knocked on the door.

Daisya groaned.

What a pain.

The burst of curiosity Daisya had about who was coming in this late didn't really make up for having to pull off of Kanda and give up the grip that was, now that he thought about it, kneading bruises into his sides. He never noticed how hard Kanda held him until the blood rush stopped.

"I'll get it," he groaned.

"Yeah."

Kanda let him go cleanly, rolling back on to his side like he was a cat that got put down. Like he'd been sleeping anyway. He could at least pretend he cared!

Daisya stuck his tongue out at his back as he slid off the edge of the bed. His nightshirt was the good wool one he took with him in winter, but it was still draughty now that he'd got warm.

It was a good thing he had his bandages on as well. The moment he got into the room away from Lavi, he'd rolled each of them back up his body and closed the pins over the seams. You didn't know how much you got used to it until you had to walk around without them.

Daisya shuffled to the door and ignored the complete silence coming off of Kanda behind him. It opened with a wooden groan. Staying behind the door, he peered around the corner, and got surprised by that shock of obnoxious bleached-red hair.

"Hey, you got bored already?" Daisya asked him.

"Sure," said Lavi. "I'm coming in."

As he tried to deliver on that promise, Daisya slipped into the doorway and blocked him.

"No way," he said dryly. "Kanda's going to flip out if I wake him up again."

Lavi's eyes narrowed in a smile. "Mm, I didn't need to speak to him."

Daisya stared doubtfully, daring him to give any kind of elaboration. He wasn't going to move from this spot for anything short of—

"I've got something to show you," Lavi said carefully.

"I'll be out in a sec."

He closed the door in Lavi's face as fast as he could without slamming it. Once that was done, leaned right against the back.

"Throw me my jacket?" he stage-whispered.

Kanda gave him the stink-eye, but he did sit up. He leaned over the side of the bed, grabbed his own jacket, not Daisya's, and whipped it at his face hard enough to sting and way too fast to catch.

"Thanks," he said as it fell into his arms. "See? I told him you'd flip out."

Daisya slipped on Kanda's coat and cinched the belt around his much-larger waist, threading the buckle through the very last hole while Kanda grumbled something and lay back in bed.

"See you later," he said, and ducked out through the door.

Lavi was waiting there like a haunted stage-puppet, lounging against the wall as if he didn't have a normal person's tendons. The one eye winked at Daisya and the other was blacked out as usual. What was he even keeping under there? He had to have met Marie by now, right? Why bother hiding his bad eye?

"So, you got anything to tell me? If it's not important, I'm going back to sleep," Daisya played it off.

"Don't worry about it," Lavi said evasively. He pushed away from the wall. "You go to bed. I can show you in the morning."

"Uh huh."

"Just figured I'd pay you back when I could."

"I definitely didn't cover your food," Daisya said.

He grinned when he saw Lavi's regular eye twitch. It took a while to find his buttons, but he was getting there. Just a few more and Daisya would be playing this guy like an organ. They smiled at each other.

Lavi dipped his head first, looking up at Daisya somehow from a few inches above him. "Not actual money. An eye for an eye, and all."

He drifted on to the soles of his feet and down the hall to his own room. Daisya followed with heavier steps in bandaged feet.

"You're not saying much. Just show me…" Daisya threw his hands up. "Whatever it is."

"All right, all right."

Lavi paused before he opened the door to his closet-size single room. Was he waiting for something? He moved like a cat, spending extra time on everything.

"What?" asked Daisya.

"You know, it didn't have to take this long if you let me in," said Lavi.

"Why'd you want to? You looking for something."

"Nope," Lavi said cheerfully. "Promise, I'm just curious about you guys."

Another flat lie. Daisya was sure he was doing that on purpose, smiling so faintly as he opened the door. He looked stupid. The old man had a way better harmless act.

"Yeah, right," he said, but he followed him in anyway. "You can tell me, I don't care."

The room wasn't dark at all. Kanda had shut off the lamp in theirs before Daisya had a chance to complain about it. Since he had other ways to pass the time, he didn't try to relight it by feel, so they'd both been scuffling around in the dark when Lavi interrupted. His eyes hadn't adjusted yet.

This room had two or three lamps in it for half the space. Had he paid extra? There were three dogeared books piled up on the tiny nightstand that Lavi must have been reading now that they weren't sleeping rough in the mountains.

"What are those about?" he asked.

"The books?" Lavi seemed genuinely confused. "They're histories."

"Yeah, and what do they talk about?"

"They're not very, uh, organized…"

"Let me take a look—"

Daisya crossed the room in a dash before Lavi could stop him. He didn't try, but he definitely looked like he wanted to. Hah! So he was hiding something. Probably hoped Daisya couldn't read, huh?

He flipped through the one on the top of the stack.

Oh.

The pages were covered in characters kind of like Chinese or Japanese kanji, but written in a style that was so weird even Daisya couldn't match to the few words he knew. The scrawl was going to be unbreakable even if he could understand the actual shapes.

"Man, your handwriting sucks!" he said. "You can read it?"

"I can," said Lavi, standing still beside the now-closed door. There wasn't much space for the two of them in that room. "You ready?"

"Huh? For what?"

Lavi huffed a little laugh that actually sounded like a real one. "What I was going to show you."

"I am, you're the one fucking around."

Daisya shut the book's floppy cover with as much of a snap as he could get out of it. He stayed standing as a challenge. He wasn't here to hang out, he was here to take what Lavi was going to give him and then scram.

He faced him. Lavi had done exactly the opposite and settled into a little lean against the door. His weight was all precariously balanced on one of those skinny legs while the other one crossed over.

"What d'you want to tell me? Don't make me wait," he warned. "Or I'll get disappointed when you actually say it."

Lavi nodded easily, fidgeting with his headband. With that shaggy hair, he looked like a long-necked setter dog. "No, no, it's not like that," he said.

"Good, then—"

Lavi's fingers slid his eyepatch sideways.

With all those lamps blazing, Daisya could see everything underneath. That didn't make a lot of sense. There wasn't anything underneath. There was even a lack of something.

There was definitely something that should've been there that wasn't. Marie's eyes were still there, just damaged…

It was better to say that Daisya could see everything inside.

"Want to see up close?" asked Lavi.

"Yeah," said Daisya without thinking about it. He skipped over to the front of the room to do exactly that.

The wound didn't look that messy. He expected to see the inside of the socket all ripped up with those leftover nerves and tendons sticking out or frayed. Like the inside of his mouth after he'd spent years gnawing on it. From the edges of the kerosene glow he could see that it was smooth.

Something else tugged at his attention.

Lavi had some really bad garlic breath from the sausage they'd had for dinner. Jesus. Was Daisya's that strong? Kanda's sense of smell couldn't be as good as his vision if he was still kissing him like that. Daisya scrunched his face up as he tried to power through it.

"Hey, can I feel it?" he asked. He couldn't tell from here if the patchy look on the bottom edge was texture or just scarring.

A hand pushed him away. Daisya didn't fight it.

"Maybe later," Lavi said. He smiled, and set the eyepatch back down over his squeaky-clean socket.

"You didn't get that eye hurt, did you," Daisya said.

"Nope," Lavi popped the 'p.'

"You know I'm going to find out now," he said.

"Someday."

Leaning forward again, Daisya flicked him lightly on the patch.

"Hah! It's going to be soon. Why'd you show me now, anyway? You could've saved that up."

Lavi shrugged, looking aside like he was answering to somebody else. "I figured I owed you."

"Huh?"

"You took off your bandages."

Daisya wandered off now that Lavi was distracted, seeing if there was anything else weird in the room. Just a stack of books that he was surprised somebody that thin could carry.

"Yeah, I guess. I wasn't showing you because I thought you'd like it."

Maybe there was one written in Roman script…? Or Cyrillic. Hell, he could read Armenian and Georgian from way back before he joined the order. Visitors came from all over. Daisya flipped through a couple more.

"Sorry…did you want to see my eye for fun?"

"That's not your eye that I saw," Daisya said. "It's kind of the point they it's not there. Was there another reason, or something? I thought this was, like, bonding or whatever. You gave me something I want."

He shrugged, flipping open another page at random. Different scribbles this time. Korean? Ah, who the hell knew.

"That's—how did you even—never mind. What I'd like to tell you is that we could have something in common," he heard Lavi finish.

"Yeah, you're not stupid either," Daisya muttered.

He held up one page of what he was going to call Lavi's diary and looked through it by the bulb of the closed lantern. No secret text popped up between the lines that he could see. Damn!

Daisya gave up and sat down on the bed to go through the next one. The giant pain-in-his-ass was still blocking the door and explaining himself. Didn't he get that Daisya had him figured out? It was no fun guessing at, he'd just been sucking up to him the whole time. He should call back when he was rattled.

"You get a lot of weird looks if you don't cover up." Lavi curled a hand up under his chin and looked at Daisya. "It's the same thing for me."

Daisya remembered. "Hey, that's right! You sure caught on slow. Huh." He thought abou it. "Yeah, I think I'd stare at you too."

"You just did," Lavi said unhelpfully.

"You asked me!"

"Mm, I guess I did do that."

Trying to focus on the page of nothing he had open in front of him, Daisya realized that he was losing the fight if he stayed here any longer. He had stuff to do.

"So how'd you get it?" he asked.

"You won't believe me," said Lavi.

That did it. Daisya closed the book and lazily put it back on top of the pile, far enough over that it was just about to tip. He stretched out his re-bandaged arms in the bizarrely bright room. That much concentrated light in that small of a space, the air was bright but the shadows were darker. There were three of them for everything that moved.

"Fine, then I won't tell you how I got hurt, if you want us to be even."

He stood up, then sauntered over to the door where Lavi was still practically leaning on the handle.

"That's okay," said Lavi. "Whatever you like."

The guy did look like he was off-balance. Not disturbed, confused. He wasn't used to dealing with someone who didn't do what he expected. Daisya just couldn't figure out if he liked the feeling or if he hated it.

"Y'know," he said generously. "I did wonder what you had on under there. The only guy I know with bad eyes just leaves them out."

He tapped his cheekbone to illustrate, stepping into Lavi's personal space. Instead of resisting like Kanda would, he wilted with grace.

"Didn't think you'd have that," Daisya finished.

"Hm?" Lavi didn't act like he was confused.

"Usually you should wear an eyepatch to protect your eye if it hurts, or if you've got some kind of infection."

"You're right," said Lavi. "Or keeping an eye adjusted to the dark."

"You're just wearing it to look cool."

Lavi finally stepped away, holding his hands up in surrender with a smirk that didn't match them.

"Isn't that a coincidence?" he said.

"You said that already," Daisya shot back. "So, I guess we're pretty much the same, hey? Look weird, annoying, all that. There's only one or two things different."

"Oh?" Lavi folded his arms, content to let him continue. The twerp thought he had the upper hand.

"I know Kanda, you don't. Yet. We don't come together," he said. "You're not going to get to him if you're trying to go through me."

"Oh, but Yuu's not so bad," said Lavi.

Daisya put his fingers on the doorknob, then stopped.

"Why d'you keep calling him that?" he asked.

"Who, Yuu? It's fun."

He breathed out. He faced Lavi again. "Doesn't seem like he's having any fun."

"If he uses my name, then I'll use his name. What, is there a reason you call him Kanda? You guys seemed close."

Something about Lavi's smile turned even worse than the smarmy grin he had on before.

How'd he guess?

Daisya cut to the chase. "You seem like you're hiding a lot of stuff. It's fine if you want to tell me some, if you don't, whatever. I'm not going to do anything I don't have to."

"Hey, I was just curious," said Lavi.

"I know! What I'm saying is, I'm also going to do anything I have to. D'you get it? If it's you or us, I will kill you. Don't mess with me."

The warm lamplight didn't flicker as Lavi's face stayed the same colour. No flush, nothing pale. Only the grin faded.

"You won't have to," said Lavi seriously. "That's not…what I want."

"Hey, that's what I was thinking!" Daisya crowed. Lavi shot him a warning glance.

"You're right, I don't plan on sticking around long," he said. "I just want to know about the Order. Kanda's connected to them more than the other exorcists. That's why I followed him. He's interesting."

Daisya hardened his grin, then he shrugged. He'd given him enough of a scare.

"Yeah, same here. He's got something weird going on, doesn't he?" he said conversationally.

"Superhuman strength, good Innocence synchronization, bad personality," Lavi listed off.

"I take it back."

"Which part?"

Stepping back, Daisya shoved one hand into Kanda's pocket. He waved Lavi out of the way of the door with the other.

"You're not much of a spy if that's all you've got on Kanda," he said. "Thanks for this, by the way."

He tapped the eyepatch to the side of Lavi's nonplussed gaze and cracked the door open at last. Funny, it was as hard leaving here as coming in. Lavi made a mistake not just doing this out in the hall.

"It's all good," Lavi said, not getting it, clearly.

"G'night."

"I'll see you tomorrow."

Lavi followed him out the door as Daisya stepped through, blocking the threshold just like Daisya did a few minutes ago. Let him! Daisya already looked at his books.

He was going to need to show Lenalee. She was good with chicken scratch.

so ends the Lavi episode! my beautiful wife (joking) showed me that he's in Lavi's dreamscape of friends, so I wanted to see what their dynamic might be like! they're still a bit tense by the end here, but Daisya's too interested in his whole deal to stay that mad. On the other hand, I feel like Lavi would respect Daisya for catching him off-guard. if indeed he would. Probably not the most common take to have them sort of gnawing at one another! I'm not too good with Lavi's character, so it was a real headache getting this out. let me know what you think! Don't have enough time to show them from here on...just know that they hang out all the time and snipe at each other a little just to see who gets the upper hand