http://gilgrado.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
gilgrado.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dgray_man2008-11-03 09:39 pm
gilgrado.livejournal.com) wrote in dgray_man2008-11-03 09:39 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
177 is hot, omg. But aha, it has nothing to do with this post, I guess? I'M SORRY, my intros are so non-sequitur. Or however that's spelled.
Fic post because this has been waiting for a long time to get posted.
Title: What It Means To
Fandom, Pairing: D Grayman, Lavi/Kanda
Rating: PG-13, AU modern-time fic
Warnings: Language and technically unsound grammar
Wordcount:
A/N: Inspired by a conversation I had with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nitrojen about kittens. Go figure. Incidentally, is anyone willing to beta for me?
Everyone.
“Eat something,” Kanda groans over dinner at a pale, squirming redhead.
Had to eat.
It’s been six months and counting since this had started. Or rather, four years since their first altercation at the water dock back when they were still nineteen and confused, and only one true year’s worth of time spent between them since. Lavi is The Bookman; Kanda was An Exorcist. The distinction between their stations were pronounced, worth its capital letters, and often the source of many an argument between them, because maybe in the 1900s Kanda’s attitude would have been ennobled by his sheer veracity to the point of stubbornness, and Lavi’s unwavering stand to never have a stand would have been overruled by stringent morals – but it is the 21st century, and insubordination was a more important matter than transparency, and organizational hierarchies are about as muddy as a pigsty after hard rain.
But yes, it’s been six months since this started.
“You’re going to die if you don’t eat, for God’s sake.”
Lavi hadn’t been eating.
“It’s not that I don’t want to eat,” the redhead says, Lavi says this by rolling the words around his mouth before spitting them into the wind. “I just can’t stomach anything anymore.”
“I call bullshit, Lavi.” Because Kanda never believes anything Lavi ever says, anymore, except when he’s in a special state of desperation. “You eat like a pig would. You’re sick.”
A pause.
“Just shove in a few spoonfuls, at least.”
And just as quick.
“I can’t.”
And dinner, of course, is now ruined.
*
“He’s not eating,” Kanda said over the phone, as his cat’s children danced over his feet and kissed his ankles with their tails. “He’s been home for two weeks now and the most he’s eaten was half an egg and a croissant. That was three days ago.”
The voice on the other made a sigh, and Kanda’s ear would have twitched if he could do the action.
“Is he just drinking his meals, then?” Lenalee asked, the sound of running water heard in the background, as dishes clinked against tile. “If he’s eating soup, at least, he might just have a problem keeping his meals down?”
“Clear soup,” Kanda conceded, unwittingly kicking a tiny kitten that had started scratching his ankle. “And this is driving me crazy.”
“That he’s not eating?”
“That he’s acting like he’s sick” he said, angrily. “He’s never sick.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Lenalee replied. “Or he’s never been so sick that you’d notice right away.”
“He’s—are you telling me I’m dense?”
“Well, it did take you two almost seven years to—“
Kanda hung the phone up, and just in time – the cats had knocked some jars off the top of the refrigerator.
*
A whole evening of sweeping sugar, cereal and various granulated things later, Kanda was ready to smack each and every kitten he had, even if he never really does no matter how many times he says he will.
Food cost money.
Money came from Lavi, most of the time.
Time was something Kanda now had too much of.
The war had ended, and Kanda lost the mark on his chest, now simply replaced by a scar over his heart and a weak feeling that faded on some days, and burned on others. He’d died before – his Innocence brought him back. It never left him, not when it had lodged its essence in him, and while the material form was abandoned by time the energy of it kept Kanda’s heart beating. For which he was grateful.
And not grateful for, as he watched people waste away with their normal bodies, in their normal jobs, with their normal homes and normal lives, and he wondered how he got through his life before the war when things were a simple matter of whether or not to punch someone for calling him pretty.
He had decked Lavi a lot. More than he could count.
And he had nursed his bruises, then, too.
Nannying was never fun for him, as much as being nannied was never good for his temper.
“I heard the cats running away,” Lavi peeked his head from the kitchen entryway, a small smile twitching along his mouth. “They broke something again?”
“Bloody fucking jars over the cooler,” he answered, washing sugar grains and rice off his fingers. “I’m going to hit each of them for this.”
“You never do.”
“I will.”
You said that last time.”
“I—“ he started, and stopped, and he had words on his tongue that wanted out, but he didn’t know what they were. “Go back to bed.”
“I’m feeling hungry.”
“So eat.”
“I ca—“
“Give me a break!” Kanda yells, hands dripping water onto the tile, and he’s left the faucet on. “You’re hungry but you don’t want to eat. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“…I keep vomiting.”
“Are you bulimic?”
“Now that’s just—“
“Because that’s what it sounds like, Lavi.” This was what it sounded like to Kanda, and it bothers him to sound right when he feels he shouldn’t be. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
*
Four days later, Kanda met with an old man who smelled of old paper from old buildings with old people.
He never liked talking to Lavi’s grandfather.
Never mind that they’re probably not related by blood.
“Has he told you why—“
“If you’re not deaf yet,” Kanda gritted out, patience worn thin the moment he saw the man, “I said that he said he doesn’t know why.”
“He said that he doesn’t know,” the man said. “He didn’t say he didn’t know why.”
“Are you asking me.”
“I know my boy,” Bookman Senior said, setting his pipe down on its tray. “He knows his reasons. He just doesn’t want to tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
A pointed look, from an old man to his younger.
Kanda hated this conversation.
“I know you never liked me, even before we met,” Kanda chose his words carefully, because it was so easy to say what he wanted and that would have been the worst thing to do. “And I know you hated the fact that your grandson almost chose us over you—“
“Lavi knows what happens when he chews off more than he can swallow.”
“That’s poor phrasing, coming from you.”
“No man can serve two masters, Kanda Yu. One has to suffer, if they try.”
“Bullshit,” Kanda started.
And kept going.
*
“What made you think it was a good idea—“
“You know I wouldn’t have talked to him if—“
“This is the biggest problem about you!” Lavi had only raised his voice a notch, all he could do when it hurt just to stay on his feet. “You think there’s a problem when things don’t go your way, but you just make things worse because you just won’t—“
“Have you seen how you wear your belts?” Kanda threw back. “All the way to the last notch, and every time I put my arms around you I feel like I’m going to snap you in half if I hold you too tightly.”
“You suck at telling people you’re worried, did you know that?”
“Did you know that you’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever met?” Kanda snapped, a sneer creeping into his expression. “And that’s something, coming from me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, it doesn’t suit you.”
And Kanda couldn’t take it anymore.
*
“You broke his arm?!”
Marie’s voice went uncharacteristically shrill, for this moment, every note in his tone rising with every syllable of his question. Kanda didn’t have to look at him to see the frown on the other’s face.
“He was—“
“For crying out loud, Kanda, he’s going through something you can’t just order him out of,” Marie cut him off. “He probably said something that burned you, though, didn’t he.”
Kanda snorted. “As always.”
“As always.” Marie repeated. “And you stay with him, because…?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now you’re being like him, with your answers.”
Kanda wanted to rub at his temples. The migraine feeling, Kanda thought. “He wears me down faster than anything. I hate it.”
“Learn some compassion, then,” Marie jested.
“Tell him that!”
And Marie made the smallest smile ever that Kanda barely caught it, and then he understands.
He wasn’t the problem. There was no problem.
They were just too alike.
*
Kanda set the dinner that evening, leaving out forks and spoons for Lavi, and sticks for himself. He cooks their meals, now; Lavi couldn’t cook worth shit to save his life, to begin with.
Then he remembered he’d broken the other’s arm, and now had a legitimate reason to be forcefed.
Thank the Lord for good decisions borne out of frustration. Even if it’s in hindsight.
*
“No.”
“Yes.” Kanda held the crab meat potsticker between chopsticks, gleefully having dipped it in a mix of soy sauce, fried garlic, crushed chili, baby onions and citrus juice.
Lavi hated citrus.
“Eat it,” Kanda more than ordered as he forced it into the mouth.
“I’ll just thr—mfff—“ And Lavi started to gag, started to choke just a little as he made a disgusted face, and Kanda made a little satisfied sound as Lavi swallowed it down. And begin to curl. “I’m going to hurl, Yu.”
“You’re not,” Kanda insisted, picking another one off the plate he’d brought in. “Pretend it’s thick water—“
“Water doesn’t taste like crab,” the redhead answered, taking hold of Kanda’s wrist as he attempted to shove another one into his mouth. “Stop it.”
“I will if you eat it.”
And he waited.
And it was probably the grossest thing yet, because just as Lavi started to say something his face paled and made a small pitiful sound, tried to get up but instead started to cough, and cough wetly, and Kanda knew what—
He dropped his chopsticks onto the plate quickly, and covered Lavi’s mouth and nose, and it was likely the worst way to deal with a person suffering from an eating problem, but after a few painful moments of vacillating between throwing up and trying to breath Lavi finally managed to keep his stomach from upending itself out of his mouth.
Then he kicked Kanda on the shins.
“Some fucking thanks I get,” Kanda spat out, hands itching to just stab Lavi’s knee with his eating utensils. “See, you didn’t throw up.”
“I couldn’t breathe, hello to your logic,” Lavi returned, with half his usual enthusiasm. “Don’t,” he said, too, as Kanda had picked up where he left off with feeding.
“I don’t want to—“
It just kept going.
*
Bruised arms and broken plate later, and Kanda—
Was sound asleep at the foot of the bed, and Lavi’s sitting against the headboard, knees tucked up and hand scratching Kanda’s ankle, as one of the many cats in the house sat on his lap. And against Kanda’s back. And another between Kanda’s arm, licking at a oil stain Kanda took with him from the kitchen.
How Lavi managed to sweep broken glass barefoot without cutting his own feet was a peculiar thought.
He sighed, blew against his fringes, made a small noise as yet another kitten darted across the bed and towards their loving owner.
“Hah, that,” he muttered, amused with the thought of Kanda being soft and gentle. If he’d not seen it with his own eyes, years before, how fragile Kanda could be at times—
And who was the cause of that?
Not that it’s anymore an issue. It wasn’t an issue.
It was unresolved.
Then the phone rang. It was Marie.
“Yu’s asleep,” Lavi said by way of greeting, “but I can wake him up, if it’s pressing.”
“You always assume I’m calling for Kanda,” Marie replied, amused as he sounds.
“I’ve never been wrong yet,” Lavi said. “You never did seem to like me much, that much I’m sure.”
“I still don’t, really.” Marie’s voice turned serious. “I want to talk.”
“All ears here.”
“Kanda mentioned your eating problem to me, today.”
Lavi grumbled. “Don’t you start, too. Everyone I know is getting on that.”
“He’s worried.”
“It’s nothing.”
“At least tell him why,” Marie said. “You know what he’s like when he doesn’t understand something.”
“You’re awful perceptive, hm,” Lavi breathed into the phone, and ignored an improper stab of guilt and jealousy somewhere in his chest. “But you’ve been his friend longer than I’ve been with him.”
“I don’t appreciate nor like the insinuations, Lavi,” Marie cut through between the lines. “Nor do I think your subtle rudeness is becoming of you.”
“Then hang up.”
Silence.
Then.
“You know that you own half of his life, don’t you.”
“I do.” Lavi stopped. Held his breath. It’s not like they’d understand this part. “I didn’t ask for it.”
“But you both wanted it.”
“Beside the point.”
“What is your point, then?”
“I…” Lavi held the phone away from his ear, then, seriously considering hanging up then and there, because this wasn’t a call for him as much as it was about him. And he didn’t ever like himself at all. “Everything leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Even the truth?”
“Especially the truth,” Lavi confided. “Most especially when you decieve to obtain it.”
“How ironic, coming from you.”
“Lies beget the truth.” Pause. “When you say what you think is true, you end up lying to yourself.”
“I fear for what you mean.”
“Not about Kanda, don’t fret it.”
“Do you love him?”
“None of your business,” Lavi answered, now knowing he’s being humored, and that he welcomed the gesture. “But I do love his hair.”
“It’s wonderful hair.”
“That you have none of, I’m sure.”
Their conversation ended moments after that.
*
“I can eat now.”
“No shit.”
“I mean it, really.”
Kanda stopped scratching the mother cat, let her jump off his lap to nurse her kittens, and he tipped his chin at Lavi as a gesture of “oh?”.
“Just let me say this one thing.”
“So say it.”
“I.”
Lavi is sitting in front of a table, and behind him a child dies from hunger, and Lavi sits there, paying attention, listening to a man talk about the children as means to feed his pigs. No one looks for the beggar children. No one wants to look at them.
But people do look for meat to eat.
Lavi leaves without the rest of the children. He would have taken one with him, bought her for himself to send home later, if he hadn’t let her die in that room. Not that she had a home to go back to, if a cardboard sheet was a home.
Not that it mattered, because this was the truth in this business.
He finds the child-seller, and finds the children themselves, and he leaves with nothing, having written everything in his head.
He sells these men to the police, in turn selling the children to the other men waiting in the shadows for their turn at the trade, and still he leaves with nothing.
Then he goes back to the Archives, to write a new set of lines in his current record, and now he knows he doesn’t have to go back. Not that he wanted to go back.
And finally he leaves with something.
That horrible taste of bitterness in his mouth.
“I have.”
And this time it’s himself he’s watching, out of his own eyes, as the back of his head swam with the smell of crystal and he saw lights under his eyelids, and the idle laughter in the room made him want to writhe, made his skin crawl—
And hours later he’s trying to clean his arm of needle marks, cursing the world and trying to set his vision straight, and belatedly he thinks of disease and oh fuck and he wished he wasn’t alone to do this, but he hasn’t found anyone to replace him yet as he’s too young and learning and already he wants out—
“Are you okay?” Someone asks later, but all Lavi could think of was the illegal immigrant they consciously ran over on the way to the meth lab.
“I feel sick.”
“You what, Lavi?”
”I can’t take this anymore, Gramps.”
“You knew what it meant—“
“I know.” Lavi couldn’t look anyone in the eye. “It’s getting harder.”
“You had your chance to choose.”
“This isn’t going to end with me, you know that.”
The old shrugged, eyes closed as he drew a breath from his pipe. “Sounds like you have one only option, then.”
Lavi protested. But he already knew.
“I have to leave you.”
And it’s a slap in the face, that Kanda forgets for a moment what the words meant.
“What.”
“Because I can’t work when I have to come home to you.”
“What?”
Hysterics. Or not, but it would’ve felt less painful if it were.
“I can’t have both, Yu.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, you know what, I mean it,” Kanda hissed, eyes smarting, fingers digging too deep into his skin and how he wished he were still the invincible one that he was before, so he could pretend he could live with this. “Fuck you..”
“I’m not leaving you—“
“Go to hell.”
“Yu—“
“How the fuck is about me?” Kanda was going to kill him. He knew it. This wasn’t fair. “How is… this isn’t… you can’t just—“
“I never picked a side.”
“It’s not your fault, Yu. It’s mine.”
”Because if you want to survive, intact, Lavi,” Gramps had told him once, as a child, “You need to lose your heart.”
And Lavi thought, “never love”, when all along he’s been told “love and never forget”, so he can understand the cruelty of the world, and why the words they write are the only ones that can be read.
*
Years later and Kanda is cleaning out his home, throwing away the things he never needed, keeping the things that reminded him of a better time, and he knocks over a box with his name written on it, and it wasn’t something he knew he’d ever owned.
Bad feeling, this.
And he picks up the sheets of paper that scattered, and drops them as if burned, because this was years and years of careful notes and old memories and things that still hurt, but he sees a little picture, one of him being younger than he is now, more naïve, less jaded, and around him are strong arms he still sometimes feel in the cold of the night and wishes for.
But never says so to anyone, not even himself.
So he forges on, through pictures, and discs, and even more paper, text written in his mother tongue, and various things that have accumulated. Things taken out of his possessions, like a long-missed hairtie, and a torn kerchief he threw away, and even the grocery receipt that he’d scrawled the words “you owe me for this shit” on.
It was the most personal record Lavi had ever written.
Lavi lent to him the other half of his life.
*
He was going to come back for it.
*
And he did.
*
“You could have told me,” Kanda said over the phone, when Lavi is in bright, cheery Hong Kong and Kanda is stuck in gray, rainy Whales. “Before, why you couldn’t eat.”
“I would’ve broken you, I think.”
“Just a little,” Kanda replied. Then. “Alright, maybe a lot. You still fucked me over.”
“Can’t say I’m really sorry for that.”
Eye roll. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” In the background was the sound of airplanes. Kanda never liked the sound as much as he did now. “I can eat you now. Literally.”
“Please don’t.”
“It’s romantic,” Lavi reasons. “We’ll be one.”
“It’s gross,” Kanda answers, looking out of the bedroom window and into the grey, gloomy sky. “And I never want to see your intestines.”
“You won’t if I don’t eat your eyes, though.”
“Is this your idea of a come-on?” Kanda said, with a small laugh. “Come home already.”
“Only if you cook. I’ll be dead starved when we land.”
And everyone had to eat.
Fic post because this has been waiting for a long time to get posted.
Title: What It Means To
Fandom, Pairing: D Grayman, Lavi/Kanda
Rating: PG-13, AU modern-time fic
Warnings: Language and technically unsound grammar
Wordcount:
A/N: Inspired by a conversation I had with
nitrojen about kittens. Go figure. Everyone.
“Eat something,” Kanda groans over dinner at a pale, squirming redhead.
Had to eat.
It’s been six months and counting since this had started. Or rather, four years since their first altercation at the water dock back when they were still nineteen and confused, and only one true year’s worth of time spent between them since. Lavi is The Bookman; Kanda was An Exorcist. The distinction between their stations were pronounced, worth its capital letters, and often the source of many an argument between them, because maybe in the 1900s Kanda’s attitude would have been ennobled by his sheer veracity to the point of stubbornness, and Lavi’s unwavering stand to never have a stand would have been overruled by stringent morals – but it is the 21st century, and insubordination was a more important matter than transparency, and organizational hierarchies are about as muddy as a pigsty after hard rain.
But yes, it’s been six months since this started.
“You’re going to die if you don’t eat, for God’s sake.”
Lavi hadn’t been eating.
“It’s not that I don’t want to eat,” the redhead says, Lavi says this by rolling the words around his mouth before spitting them into the wind. “I just can’t stomach anything anymore.”
“I call bullshit, Lavi.” Because Kanda never believes anything Lavi ever says, anymore, except when he’s in a special state of desperation. “You eat like a pig would. You’re sick.”
A pause.
“Just shove in a few spoonfuls, at least.”
And just as quick.
“I can’t.”
And dinner, of course, is now ruined.
*
“He’s not eating,” Kanda said over the phone, as his cat’s children danced over his feet and kissed his ankles with their tails. “He’s been home for two weeks now and the most he’s eaten was half an egg and a croissant. That was three days ago.”
The voice on the other made a sigh, and Kanda’s ear would have twitched if he could do the action.
“Is he just drinking his meals, then?” Lenalee asked, the sound of running water heard in the background, as dishes clinked against tile. “If he’s eating soup, at least, he might just have a problem keeping his meals down?”
“Clear soup,” Kanda conceded, unwittingly kicking a tiny kitten that had started scratching his ankle. “And this is driving me crazy.”
“That he’s not eating?”
“That he’s acting like he’s sick” he said, angrily. “He’s never sick.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Lenalee replied. “Or he’s never been so sick that you’d notice right away.”
“He’s—are you telling me I’m dense?”
“Well, it did take you two almost seven years to—“
Kanda hung the phone up, and just in time – the cats had knocked some jars off the top of the refrigerator.
*
A whole evening of sweeping sugar, cereal and various granulated things later, Kanda was ready to smack each and every kitten he had, even if he never really does no matter how many times he says he will.
Food cost money.
Money came from Lavi, most of the time.
Time was something Kanda now had too much of.
The war had ended, and Kanda lost the mark on his chest, now simply replaced by a scar over his heart and a weak feeling that faded on some days, and burned on others. He’d died before – his Innocence brought him back. It never left him, not when it had lodged its essence in him, and while the material form was abandoned by time the energy of it kept Kanda’s heart beating. For which he was grateful.
And not grateful for, as he watched people waste away with their normal bodies, in their normal jobs, with their normal homes and normal lives, and he wondered how he got through his life before the war when things were a simple matter of whether or not to punch someone for calling him pretty.
He had decked Lavi a lot. More than he could count.
And he had nursed his bruises, then, too.
Nannying was never fun for him, as much as being nannied was never good for his temper.
“I heard the cats running away,” Lavi peeked his head from the kitchen entryway, a small smile twitching along his mouth. “They broke something again?”
“Bloody fucking jars over the cooler,” he answered, washing sugar grains and rice off his fingers. “I’m going to hit each of them for this.”
“You never do.”
“I will.”
You said that last time.”
“I—“ he started, and stopped, and he had words on his tongue that wanted out, but he didn’t know what they were. “Go back to bed.”
“I’m feeling hungry.”
“So eat.”
“I ca—“
“Give me a break!” Kanda yells, hands dripping water onto the tile, and he’s left the faucet on. “You’re hungry but you don’t want to eat. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“…I keep vomiting.”
“Are you bulimic?”
“Now that’s just—“
“Because that’s what it sounds like, Lavi.” This was what it sounded like to Kanda, and it bothers him to sound right when he feels he shouldn’t be. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
*
Four days later, Kanda met with an old man who smelled of old paper from old buildings with old people.
He never liked talking to Lavi’s grandfather.
Never mind that they’re probably not related by blood.
“Has he told you why—“
“If you’re not deaf yet,” Kanda gritted out, patience worn thin the moment he saw the man, “I said that he said he doesn’t know why.”
“He said that he doesn’t know,” the man said. “He didn’t say he didn’t know why.”
“Are you asking me.”
“I know my boy,” Bookman Senior said, setting his pipe down on its tray. “He knows his reasons. He just doesn’t want to tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
A pointed look, from an old man to his younger.
Kanda hated this conversation.
“I know you never liked me, even before we met,” Kanda chose his words carefully, because it was so easy to say what he wanted and that would have been the worst thing to do. “And I know you hated the fact that your grandson almost chose us over you—“
“Lavi knows what happens when he chews off more than he can swallow.”
“That’s poor phrasing, coming from you.”
“No man can serve two masters, Kanda Yu. One has to suffer, if they try.”
“Bullshit,” Kanda started.
And kept going.
*
“What made you think it was a good idea—“
“You know I wouldn’t have talked to him if—“
“This is the biggest problem about you!” Lavi had only raised his voice a notch, all he could do when it hurt just to stay on his feet. “You think there’s a problem when things don’t go your way, but you just make things worse because you just won’t—“
“Have you seen how you wear your belts?” Kanda threw back. “All the way to the last notch, and every time I put my arms around you I feel like I’m going to snap you in half if I hold you too tightly.”
“You suck at telling people you’re worried, did you know that?”
“Did you know that you’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever met?” Kanda snapped, a sneer creeping into his expression. “And that’s something, coming from me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, it doesn’t suit you.”
And Kanda couldn’t take it anymore.
*
“You broke his arm?!”
Marie’s voice went uncharacteristically shrill, for this moment, every note in his tone rising with every syllable of his question. Kanda didn’t have to look at him to see the frown on the other’s face.
“He was—“
“For crying out loud, Kanda, he’s going through something you can’t just order him out of,” Marie cut him off. “He probably said something that burned you, though, didn’t he.”
Kanda snorted. “As always.”
“As always.” Marie repeated. “And you stay with him, because…?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now you’re being like him, with your answers.”
Kanda wanted to rub at his temples. The migraine feeling, Kanda thought. “He wears me down faster than anything. I hate it.”
“Learn some compassion, then,” Marie jested.
“Tell him that!”
And Marie made the smallest smile ever that Kanda barely caught it, and then he understands.
He wasn’t the problem. There was no problem.
They were just too alike.
*
Kanda set the dinner that evening, leaving out forks and spoons for Lavi, and sticks for himself. He cooks their meals, now; Lavi couldn’t cook worth shit to save his life, to begin with.
Then he remembered he’d broken the other’s arm, and now had a legitimate reason to be forcefed.
Thank the Lord for good decisions borne out of frustration. Even if it’s in hindsight.
*
“No.”
“Yes.” Kanda held the crab meat potsticker between chopsticks, gleefully having dipped it in a mix of soy sauce, fried garlic, crushed chili, baby onions and citrus juice.
Lavi hated citrus.
“Eat it,” Kanda more than ordered as he forced it into the mouth.
“I’ll just thr—mfff—“ And Lavi started to gag, started to choke just a little as he made a disgusted face, and Kanda made a little satisfied sound as Lavi swallowed it down. And begin to curl. “I’m going to hurl, Yu.”
“You’re not,” Kanda insisted, picking another one off the plate he’d brought in. “Pretend it’s thick water—“
“Water doesn’t taste like crab,” the redhead answered, taking hold of Kanda’s wrist as he attempted to shove another one into his mouth. “Stop it.”
“I will if you eat it.”
And he waited.
And it was probably the grossest thing yet, because just as Lavi started to say something his face paled and made a small pitiful sound, tried to get up but instead started to cough, and cough wetly, and Kanda knew what—
He dropped his chopsticks onto the plate quickly, and covered Lavi’s mouth and nose, and it was likely the worst way to deal with a person suffering from an eating problem, but after a few painful moments of vacillating between throwing up and trying to breath Lavi finally managed to keep his stomach from upending itself out of his mouth.
Then he kicked Kanda on the shins.
“Some fucking thanks I get,” Kanda spat out, hands itching to just stab Lavi’s knee with his eating utensils. “See, you didn’t throw up.”
“I couldn’t breathe, hello to your logic,” Lavi returned, with half his usual enthusiasm. “Don’t,” he said, too, as Kanda had picked up where he left off with feeding.
“I don’t want to—“
It just kept going.
*
Bruised arms and broken plate later, and Kanda—
Was sound asleep at the foot of the bed, and Lavi’s sitting against the headboard, knees tucked up and hand scratching Kanda’s ankle, as one of the many cats in the house sat on his lap. And against Kanda’s back. And another between Kanda’s arm, licking at a oil stain Kanda took with him from the kitchen.
How Lavi managed to sweep broken glass barefoot without cutting his own feet was a peculiar thought.
He sighed, blew against his fringes, made a small noise as yet another kitten darted across the bed and towards their loving owner.
“Hah, that,” he muttered, amused with the thought of Kanda being soft and gentle. If he’d not seen it with his own eyes, years before, how fragile Kanda could be at times—
And who was the cause of that?
Not that it’s anymore an issue. It wasn’t an issue.
It was unresolved.
Then the phone rang. It was Marie.
“Yu’s asleep,” Lavi said by way of greeting, “but I can wake him up, if it’s pressing.”
“You always assume I’m calling for Kanda,” Marie replied, amused as he sounds.
“I’ve never been wrong yet,” Lavi said. “You never did seem to like me much, that much I’m sure.”
“I still don’t, really.” Marie’s voice turned serious. “I want to talk.”
“All ears here.”
“Kanda mentioned your eating problem to me, today.”
Lavi grumbled. “Don’t you start, too. Everyone I know is getting on that.”
“He’s worried.”
“It’s nothing.”
“At least tell him why,” Marie said. “You know what he’s like when he doesn’t understand something.”
“You’re awful perceptive, hm,” Lavi breathed into the phone, and ignored an improper stab of guilt and jealousy somewhere in his chest. “But you’ve been his friend longer than I’ve been with him.”
“I don’t appreciate nor like the insinuations, Lavi,” Marie cut through between the lines. “Nor do I think your subtle rudeness is becoming of you.”
“Then hang up.”
Silence.
Then.
“You know that you own half of his life, don’t you.”
“I do.” Lavi stopped. Held his breath. It’s not like they’d understand this part. “I didn’t ask for it.”
“But you both wanted it.”
“Beside the point.”
“What is your point, then?”
“I…” Lavi held the phone away from his ear, then, seriously considering hanging up then and there, because this wasn’t a call for him as much as it was about him. And he didn’t ever like himself at all. “Everything leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Even the truth?”
“Especially the truth,” Lavi confided. “Most especially when you decieve to obtain it.”
“How ironic, coming from you.”
“Lies beget the truth.” Pause. “When you say what you think is true, you end up lying to yourself.”
“I fear for what you mean.”
“Not about Kanda, don’t fret it.”
“Do you love him?”
“None of your business,” Lavi answered, now knowing he’s being humored, and that he welcomed the gesture. “But I do love his hair.”
“It’s wonderful hair.”
“That you have none of, I’m sure.”
Their conversation ended moments after that.
*
“I can eat now.”
“No shit.”
“I mean it, really.”
Kanda stopped scratching the mother cat, let her jump off his lap to nurse her kittens, and he tipped his chin at Lavi as a gesture of “oh?”.
“Just let me say this one thing.”
“So say it.”
“I.”
Lavi is sitting in front of a table, and behind him a child dies from hunger, and Lavi sits there, paying attention, listening to a man talk about the children as means to feed his pigs. No one looks for the beggar children. No one wants to look at them.
But people do look for meat to eat.
Lavi leaves without the rest of the children. He would have taken one with him, bought her for himself to send home later, if he hadn’t let her die in that room. Not that she had a home to go back to, if a cardboard sheet was a home.
Not that it mattered, because this was the truth in this business.
He finds the child-seller, and finds the children themselves, and he leaves with nothing, having written everything in his head.
He sells these men to the police, in turn selling the children to the other men waiting in the shadows for their turn at the trade, and still he leaves with nothing.
Then he goes back to the Archives, to write a new set of lines in his current record, and now he knows he doesn’t have to go back. Not that he wanted to go back.
And finally he leaves with something.
That horrible taste of bitterness in his mouth.
“I have.”
And this time it’s himself he’s watching, out of his own eyes, as the back of his head swam with the smell of crystal and he saw lights under his eyelids, and the idle laughter in the room made him want to writhe, made his skin crawl—
And hours later he’s trying to clean his arm of needle marks, cursing the world and trying to set his vision straight, and belatedly he thinks of disease and oh fuck and he wished he wasn’t alone to do this, but he hasn’t found anyone to replace him yet as he’s too young and learning and already he wants out—
“Are you okay?” Someone asks later, but all Lavi could think of was the illegal immigrant they consciously ran over on the way to the meth lab.
“I feel sick.”
“You what, Lavi?”
”I can’t take this anymore, Gramps.”
“You knew what it meant—“
“I know.” Lavi couldn’t look anyone in the eye. “It’s getting harder.”
“You had your chance to choose.”
“This isn’t going to end with me, you know that.”
The old shrugged, eyes closed as he drew a breath from his pipe. “Sounds like you have one only option, then.”
Lavi protested. But he already knew.
“I have to leave you.”
And it’s a slap in the face, that Kanda forgets for a moment what the words meant.
“What.”
“Because I can’t work when I have to come home to you.”
“What?”
Hysterics. Or not, but it would’ve felt less painful if it were.
“I can’t have both, Yu.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, you know what, I mean it,” Kanda hissed, eyes smarting, fingers digging too deep into his skin and how he wished he were still the invincible one that he was before, so he could pretend he could live with this. “Fuck you..”
“I’m not leaving you—“
“Go to hell.”
“Yu—“
“How the fuck is about me?” Kanda was going to kill him. He knew it. This wasn’t fair. “How is… this isn’t… you can’t just—“
“I never picked a side.”
“It’s not your fault, Yu. It’s mine.”
”Because if you want to survive, intact, Lavi,” Gramps had told him once, as a child, “You need to lose your heart.”
And Lavi thought, “never love”, when all along he’s been told “love and never forget”, so he can understand the cruelty of the world, and why the words they write are the only ones that can be read.
*
Years later and Kanda is cleaning out his home, throwing away the things he never needed, keeping the things that reminded him of a better time, and he knocks over a box with his name written on it, and it wasn’t something he knew he’d ever owned.
Bad feeling, this.
And he picks up the sheets of paper that scattered, and drops them as if burned, because this was years and years of careful notes and old memories and things that still hurt, but he sees a little picture, one of him being younger than he is now, more naïve, less jaded, and around him are strong arms he still sometimes feel in the cold of the night and wishes for.
But never says so to anyone, not even himself.
So he forges on, through pictures, and discs, and even more paper, text written in his mother tongue, and various things that have accumulated. Things taken out of his possessions, like a long-missed hairtie, and a torn kerchief he threw away, and even the grocery receipt that he’d scrawled the words “you owe me for this shit” on.
It was the most personal record Lavi had ever written.
Lavi lent to him the other half of his life.
*
He was going to come back for it.
*
And he did.
*
“You could have told me,” Kanda said over the phone, when Lavi is in bright, cheery Hong Kong and Kanda is stuck in gray, rainy Whales. “Before, why you couldn’t eat.”
“I would’ve broken you, I think.”
“Just a little,” Kanda replied. Then. “Alright, maybe a lot. You still fucked me over.”
“Can’t say I’m really sorry for that.”
Eye roll. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” In the background was the sound of airplanes. Kanda never liked the sound as much as he did now. “I can eat you now. Literally.”
“Please don’t.”
“It’s romantic,” Lavi reasons. “We’ll be one.”
“It’s gross,” Kanda answers, looking out of the bedroom window and into the grey, gloomy sky. “And I never want to see your intestines.”
“You won’t if I don’t eat your eyes, though.”
“Is this your idea of a come-on?” Kanda said, with a small laugh. “Come home already.”
“Only if you cook. I’ll be dead starved when we land.”
And everyone had to eat.