Archive of Our Own ^beta

Kanda missed him. He’d rather die than say it, but it shows. It took him less than an hour  to show up after Lavi returned from his mission. 

Took him about two minutes to drop down to his knees once Lavi was in his bedroom. 

It’s a small blessing that he shares his room with Bookman. Even when the old man’s away, Kanda doesn’t want to do anything in there, too afraid of being found out. (Of course, he doesn’t know that Bookman already knows. Bookman probably knew the moment Lavi first got his eye on Kanda.) This way, he’ll never see inside their chronicles and Lavi’s journals - even if he was interested. Not a big reader. Still, recently, he’s been more curious about Lavi, asking questions and keeping conversations with an unusual regularity, so he can’t be too careful. 

He’s also been initiating other bonding activities. This was his idea. Knowing Kanda, he thought about it for weeks before finally gathering the courage to just do it. He made it look casual, too, like he got the thought in his head right there on the spot, but Lavi knows him better than that. 

Thinking about Yuu Kanda wondering what it feels like to suck his dick drives Lavi that little bit closer to the edge. His fingers tighten around the black hair, where he’s been trying to keep Kanda’s bangs away from his face. 

Kanda’s eyes are closed - God forbid they make eye contact, it might even convey an emotion, and then what? - but now he looks up at Lavi with a dark, focused gaze. It reminds him of when they’re fighting. When Kanda is a deadly, efficient machine of destruction. How lucky of him to get to channel his talents elsewhere. 

“You’re so good at it,” he lets go of his hair and gently brushes the bangs away. Maybe he should let him borrow a bandana next time. He’d make it look good, he looks good in everything. “Have you done this before?” 

Kanda just doesn’t have much of a gag reflex. He choked once, got frustrated, took a deep breath, and his throat opened up for Lavi like he’s been doing it for years. (It’s obviously a joke, because Lavi’s personally taken that man’s virginity. There was very little doubt about the fact, and even less surprise, with his social skills and personality. No one’s been brave enough to get this close to Yuu Kanda.) 

Kanda sighs with disapproval, and his eyes flutter closed again. Shame. Lavi loves having that fierce gaze on him. 

Maybe the lack of gag reflex shouldn’t be surprising, in retrospect. Sometimes it terrifies Lavi, the things Kanda is willing to endure, the pain he’s ready to push and fight through. It makes Lavi feel responsible, which is the opposite of what he expected from their fling. He needs to remind himself sometimes that with all his short temper, it simply won’t occur to Kanda to say that something’s not right. 

At least this, he seems to enjoy. He’s found a comfortable rhythm, and he moves at a steady pace, taking Lavi all the way down every time. His fingers, resting on Lavi’s thigh, curl and uncurl ever so slightly with the movements. He doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s doing it. It’s adorable - Lavi’s heart tightens with warm affection. It does that sometimes. When Kanda’s nose scrunches up, when he clicks his tongue, when he orders the same thing he always does at the cafeteria. He tells himself it’s because Kanda looks pretty doing all that, not because he finds him particularly cute. 

He tucks a strand of hair behind Kanda’s ear, watches its tip blush a soft pink. Kanda makes a small sound in the back of his throat, of annoyance or pleasure - sometimes it’s hard to tell with him. Perhaps it’s both. Three months since they first slept together, Kanda still acts like wanting to touch him is preposterous. 

He’s beautiful. His black hair is thick and soft in Lavi’s palm, his white neck glistens with sweat. His lips are blushed with exertion. 

“Yuu,” he whispers. “A little faster, please?” 

Kanda flashes his dark eyes at him and it takes some self control for Lavi to resist the temptation to just grab him by the ponytail and fuck his throat. He’s still Kanda. He might bite. 

But he likes a challenge, so he does pick up the pace. His fingers curl into fists on Lavi’s thighs, and a drop of sweat rolls down his neck, as he bobs his head up and down, a little frantically at first, until he gets used to it. 

Lavi has a sick little fantasy, about the next war, at the next place, wherever Bookman orders him to (or where he decides to go; looks like this particular war might be a while, and it’s not everyday that a Bookman enrolls as a soldier). He pictures his new comrades - or interviewees, or subjects - sitting in a circle, listening to the tales from his journeys. And he chooses the words he’d use to describe this conquest, to tell the tale of a fierce, untouchable warrior that he had tamed and taken to his bed. 

Then he remembers that his next identity might not like to tell stories. And that he’d rather not think about whether Kanda is still alive at the time when this fantasy takes place. He’s here now, gorgeous, young and strong, and that’s all that matters. They’re not history, they’re together. 

But Lavi wants to make a beautiful memory of it, so at the final thrust, he grabs him by the ponytail and pulls Kanda’s head away. 

“What are you-” the other chokes out. 

His eyes squint shut and his nose scrunches up when Lavi comes all over his cheeks, his lips, his long eyelashes. A little bit gets in his hair - seriously, it looks great, but can’t he put it up with hairpins somehow? Well, too late. 

“I’m sorry, Yuu. Your face was so beautiful, I couldn’t resist.” 

“You fucking rabbit,” Kanda utters. Lavi thinks the nickname was originally some kind of play on his name, but now it’s used to refer to his libido and interest in acts that Kanda hasn’t warmed up to yet. “I’m going to murder you.” 

It’s hard to take him seriously with cum running down his cheek. 

“You’re being scary. I just like you so much.” 

“I’ll show you scary,” Kanda threatens. As gets up to get to his wash basin, it doesn’t escape Lavi that he’s fully hard. 

“You’ll have me begging for mercy?” 

“Exactly.” 

“Oh, no. Anything but that.” 

He dodges the nail brush flying his way. 

Kanda always tries to be quiet, so Lavi savours every sound he can get out of him. The whimpery sigh that escapes him as he releases in Lavi’s mouth will be worn as a badge of honor.

His throat hurts. So does his jaw, his cheeks and the back of his neck. Kanda is huge and Lavi is careless, so he rushed into it with a little too much enthusiasm. He’s a regular, mortal human being with a gag reflex and now he’s sore all over. 

Kanda is lost wherever he goes after they have sex, staring at the wall with an absent gaze, so Lavi gets up on shaky knees and fetches himself some water.

Wherever he disappears, it can’t be a bad place, since Kanda keeps chasing it. When he snaps out of it, he’ll kick Lavi out of the room. The little moments of bliss give him a chance to at least get dressed and put his hair back in its usual disarray. 

It lasts longer than usual. Kanda lays on his stomach, his hand hovering over the floor, like his bed is a raft on a lake and he’s playing with the water. Lavi watches a spider weaving his net in the corner. It reminds him of when he was a child and he’d spend hours at Bookman’s side in the middle of nowhere, in empty fields or crossroads in the woods somewhere, waiting for history to catch up to them or pass over. First thing he learned about war is that most of it is just work. Second, that the rest is waiting. Back when he was little, his extraordinary memory didn’t differentiate yet between a cool bug and a dignitary on his way to change the course of the century. Now his head is filled with vivid memories of ants carrying insect carcasses, cicadas painstakingly crawling out of their old skins, red firebugs joined at the backsides. 

He wants to tell Kanda about it. 

It’s not the kind of thing he tells anyone. His temporary comrades can find out about the pretty Chinese girls he’s messed around with and his hilarious misadventures with cultural differences, but they don’t need to know what’s going on inside his head. It’s so silly and yet so personal. It feels ancient, having survived all his aliases, and yet the memories are so vivid they all feel like he was there yesterday. 

He wants Kanda to know about that. He wants to tell him about the previous aliases. Show him whatever’s lived through all of them until it created Lavi, threw on his skin and showed up in Kanda’s room. 

This is danger. This is what Bookman always warned him about.

“You have a lot of spiders here, Yuu,” he starts and until the words leave his mouth, he’s not quite sure what shape they’re going to take. “When I was just a kid living in the streets, we used to catch them and keep them in jars.” 

Safe. This is still Lavi. Lavi the adventurer, Lavi the naughty kid, Lavi the rascal. Still not real. 

It’s a story he made up for one of his previous identities, tried and untrue. When he was younger, he didn’t understand yet that his life is not the best one a seven year old could possibly have, and so he came up with these tragic pasts, of living on the streets, nonexistent siblings dying of horrible diseases, just so someone would feel bad for him. Bookman didn’t mind, as long as whatever horseshit left his mouth didn’t include any of the clan’s secrets, even the open ones. And the sympathy he received almost felt real. 

The Bookman’s apprentice, seven years old and watching whole towns go up in flames, didn’t need sympathy from anyone, and neither does Lavi. If there’s someone who wouldn’t spill his secrets to anyone, he’s right there in this room. And there’s nothing mysterious or particularly confidential about watching bugs copulate while waiting for a regiment on a dusty dirt road between cabbage fields. It’s just that it’s too real. It holds too much of his childish boredom, and excitement, and fear. Those memories don’t belong to Lavi. They were created and passed along before him, and will outlive him, and go to the grave with him, likely even beyond that. 

Kanda wants to know about him. And Lavi wants to tell him, because normally, that’s how these things go between people. Lavi also wants to tell him because Kanda is one of the Order’s secrets, in the flesh, and if he spills a little bit about some boy who didn’t exist, maybe someday he’ll hear about the one who survived the massacre at the Asia branch. Whatever information about Alma Karma and the second exorcists wasn’t kept under lock and key, it was stored away in China. But the Chang family did lend a very precious eyewitness to their brothers in England. 

Alias number 5 will have to forgive him for stealing his tragic backstory. 

“When was that?” 

“Before Gramps took me in.” 

Before Gramps, he lived with his mother and her sisters, all of whom belonged to the same side branch of the clan. If there were any spiders, they lived hidden in the grasslands that they traversed with their horses. Nobody collected them in any jars. Definitely not Lavi, who didn’t exist back then. And the boy who would become him was being prepared for his role since he learned to stand. 

“Took you in?” 

There’s a note of suspicion in his voice, but maybe that’s just because there always is. Kanda never expects anything good from anybody. Still, Lavi sits down next to him, on the edge of the bed, and starts playing with his hair, like someone who feels real emotions about their real past. 

“Yeah. I’m grateful for him” 

“When you were a kid,” Kanda says carefully, “Was it bad?” 

He wants to know about Lavi, but he’s done such a good job of concealing anything real about himself, he doesn’t even know what it is that he’s curious about. And even if he did, he can’t ask about it. The way Kanda treats conversations is not unlike he does akuma; all he knows is attack, defend, and avoid. 

Lavi suspects that “bad” has a very specific meaning to him, one that carries a lot of pain, loss, and suffering; his childhood couldn’t be much different from Lenalee’s. 

“What do you mean by bad?” 

“Just bad,” he shrugs. “Did you ever go hungry?” 

It’s the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they hear about children living in the streets, isn’t it. Lavi never did. Well, Bookman and him got stuck in a surrounded city for a few months at one point. The rations got thin by the time the siege was broken. It was a very educational experience, starvation. You can’t really understand what it does to a person until you experience it yourself. 

“Not since I’ve been an apprentice.” 

“Cold?” 

He’s spent many a harsh winter night in tents, empty barns and even dugouts. But that had only ever been temporary. There was always someone important waiting with a warm room at the end of it, so it doesn’t count. The soldiers who were left to stay for weeks or months, they were cold. 

“Well, yes, but it was long ago.” 

Kanda is quiet for a little bit. His conversations often die down like that, all of a sudden, especially if they talk about themselves. Half the reason they get along the way they do is because Lavi is great at filling the silence. His sore tongue tingles with words, more fantastical tales or just stupid jokes about all the dust in Kanda’s room that are sure to get him kicked out, but the other speaks up before he has a chance to open his mouth. 

“Alone?” 

Was he alone? Well, isn’t that the point? 

There’s two of them since he can remember, since he’s the next in line, but that’s just for now. The end goal is for him to be the only one. Keeper of unrecorded history. It’s a silly question, but of course, Kanda is asking about the boy who caught spiders in the street before a kind stranger found him, not about the man sitting on his bed. 

“Alone? No. I always had friends.” 

Kanda sits up, raises one eyebrow and stares him up and down.

“You’re lying,” he decides.

“I’m not,” he chuckles, at Kanda calling him friendless - always knows how to get someone where it hurts - but also at how he knows something is off. Kanda may not be the sharpest blade in the Black Order’s armory at times, but he’s got a hell of an intuition. Only he doesn’t want to be lied to, so he chose to believe in the mildest lie possible. “I always find the best friends, don’t I, Yuu-”

Kanda holds him. 

He does it sometimes. When they have sex, or when they’re making out, he likes to put his hands around Lavi’s neck, or around his back - sometimes he’ll dig his nails in. This isn’t that. His hold is firm, but gentle. Protective. Lavi can almost feel his steady heartbeat through their chests. 

He can feel his face turn red. It feels wrong. Kanda’s hands, resting on his shoulderblades, strong and delicate at the same time. To him, it’s something real, and pure. Kanda is real, and he holds a gust of wind like he alone has the power to keep it. 

It feels good. So good, Lavi wishes he had told him something true. He wants to hold onto Kanda for dear life and spill, start with the bugs, then tell him about the besieged city and the dugouts, and end with the stray bullet and the man with the silver hair. 

What’s so special about this, anyway? What’s special about Kanda? He liked every boy and every girl he ever kissed, and then he left, and never thought about them twice. Maybe it’s just because he’s been  challenge. They started at death threats and look at them now, hugging it out. Or maybe it’s his past - all the secrets inside him that didn’t make it to the official files, that feel like they get a little closer with every kiss. After all, it’s not like something changed about Lavi. 

He squeezes Kanda as tight as he would if he was real. 

The moment he exits the room he’s met with Bookman’s inquisitive eyes, shining up at him from between thick layers of kohl. Against himself, Lavi jumps. 

“Jeez, gramps. Scared the shit out of me.” 

“I’m not even going to ask if you know what you’re doing.” 

“Not curious about the juicy details?” 

“Don’t bother. There’s nothing you two could possibly be doing that would shock or disgust me at this age.” 

“So what’s with the lecture? I don’t think he can get pregnant.” 

That was usually the reason for Bookman showing up out of the blue after Lavi disappeared in a barn with someone for a beat too long - they can’t lose track of his descendants. If anything, he seemed relieved to discover that his apprentice doesn’t mind playing with other boys.

Bookman sighs with all the exhaustion of his almost ninety years.

“Does he love you?” 

“You’re not going to ask if I love him?” 

“I know how to handle you, he’s out of my jurisdiction. Is Yuu Kanda in love with you?”

He should be used to the old panda practically living inside his head and always knowing when to ask the worst questions possible. It’s not unlikely that it’s in their very blood, this telepathic connection. It could also very well be that he’s just seventy years older than Lavi and watched him grow up. 

Is Yuu Kanda in love with him? 

“No,” Lavi scoffs. “He has someone.” 

“On the outside?” 

“I don’t know, he doesn’t tell me those things. He’s searching for him. Or her.” 

The fact that they don’t have heart to hearts about long lost loves seems to put Bookman at ease, and Lavi pats himself on the back for not actually opening up that evening. 

“As long as he’s not searching for you a year from now.” Bookman shakes his head and marches off to their room. Lavi follows, like the good little duckling that he is. 

“It’s the same thing as always, gramps,” Lavi catches up with a grin. “We’re just having fun. It’s nothing. It’s really nothing.” 

Is Yuu Kanda in love with him? Is that what it is? Bookman doesn’t have generations of watching humanity under his belt for nothing. Those gentle hands on his shoulder blades, the soft breathing on his neck. The benefit of the doubt; he lied to Kanda, Kanda knew it, and still let him stay. 

It should be a more uncomfortable thought, one that Lavi should want to stray from. Instead, he wants to poke at it, stick his tongue in it like in a wound left from an extracted tooth. They were talking right outside his door - did he hear when Lavi called him nothing? Did he see red, did he punch the wall? Did he wait for them to walk away so he could grab his sword and run out to the woods to cut at air, pretending that it’s Lavi’s frozen heart instead? 

No, that wouldn’t mean anything. That’s what he’d do if they were really nothing. There’s nothing impressive about making Kanda angry - Allen does it every time they’re in the same room. 

Now, from the start - another satisfying, painful jab at the wound. Maybe if it really matters, he doesn’t get angry at all. Maybe he’s just sad. That would be something, to make Kanda sad - he definitely hasn’t seen Allen do that in the cafeteria on a random Tuesday. And Lavi’s vibrant imagination kindly provides: Kanda sitting in bed, lost in thoughts about them, playing with his bracelet. Trying to calm himself, but unable to hold back the tears rolling down his pretty face. Angrily wiping at his eyes, but the tears won’t stop coming. 

Lavi follows Bookman inside and jabs at the wound, ignoring the uncomfortable thought that does pop up - namely the question of why would he be so happy about Kanda possibly having feelings for him in the first place. 

Ever since the Bookman’s apprentice put his hands on him, with every touch Kanda thinks about his person less and less. It’s not that the memories fade; they didn’t rise from death itself only to be smothered by sex. It’s just that it’s hard to dedicate his every waking thought to a ghost - a memory; he hopes that she’s somewhere out there, a living, breathing woman, not a confused bundle of someone else’s memories in an artificial body - when there’s a corporeal man demanding his attention. Even harder when he’s not around. It’s like he’s stuck to his clothes, to his hair, and can speak to him even without being physically present. 

The yearning for Lavi whenever he’s away becomes only more like the painful longing he’s associated with the woman in the lotus field. He dreads the day after tomorrow, when they’ll be sent away on separate assignments. They always seem to run too long, and before he can even think of going back, Komui’s on the line with a detour or another mission. It never used to bother him, as long as he’d be left alone. These days, he wants to choke Komui with the telephone cord. 

For now, Lavi is in his bed - he’s become a common guest, and the only one Kanda’s ever invited - ass up, face down, resting on his forearms, and Kanda doesn’t know what to do with himself. It doesn’t look like it’ll fit. Lavi has a normal, human body, one that breaks and tears, and then it doesn’t fix itself. If something goes wrong, he’ll be really hurt. Kanda’s pain scale is all out of wack, having lived through full body burns and severed limbs, but going for days with a bleeding rectum sounds like it would be hellish for a normal person. 

“Admiring the view, Yuu?” 

It’s not like Kanda asked for it. He’s been curious, sure, but talking about those things is so tricky, it’s easier to just shut up and do it. Or wait for Lavi to bring up the suggestion in the vilest, dirtiest way imaginable, that makes his face burn and words escape him, which is exactly how it went with this role reversal. 

Kanda runs his fingers across Lavi’s pale asscheek, covered in freckles, and squeezes. Partially to get a better look at the hole he’s supposed to somehow squeeze into, but also to shut Lavi up. 

He doesn’t shut up (never does). He moans. 

“Do you have to be such a tease?”  

Kanda has never teased anyone once in his life. That’s Lavi’s thing. Yet somehow he can’t do anything without the other noticing it and making it out to be some erotic spectacle. If he knew how he does it, he could start doing it on purpose, but he’s also absolutely certain that if he tried, he’d only end up looking like a fool. Lavi can’t shut up about his face, his body and his hair. Kanda doesn’t get it. He just looks like himself. 

“Who’d want to tease you?” 

“I love when you talk dirty,” Lavi chuckles. Again, Kanda has no idea what’s dirty about what he said. He’s just obsessed with him. “Come on, Yuu. Have mercy.”

At first he thought there had to be some kind of agenda to Lavi’s fascination with him. There had to be, with all his questions. Then he realized that Lavi talks like that to everyone, and that he’s much more interested in Kanda’s virginity than he is in any potential information. Lastly, he stopped feeling fake. 

When he first came into the order, Kanda thought that he'd never seen a guy with a less sincere smile before. Damn near murdered him over the pure audacity to come near him wearing that kind of expression. It was glimpses at first, rare moments of sitting with the man behind the curtain. These days, it’s rare that the fake one comes back. 

Lavi feels fragile and breakable in his hands, his freckled skin paper-thin, and if Kanda were to have mercy on him, he’d leave him well alone. 

He slides the tip of his thumb inside Lavi’s hole. He watched the other stretch himself open for a long time, until they were both so hard it hurt, but now the entrance, even all slicked up, feels tiny and delicate. He doesn’t know how Lavi does it to him, that there’s close to no pain. Still, with Kanda, it doesn’t matter. All tears and burns go back to normal within seconds.

“You know I’m merciless.” 

“You are! You’re so cruel, Yuu, teasing me like that-” 

There's a lot of things he likes about Lavi. What he likes the most is the way Lavi treats him like a normal person. He likes that he’s not intimidated by him, even when he pretends otherwise. He likes how his eyepatch makes him look like he’s always winking, giving Kanda a secret sign that whatever happens stays between them; his flaming red hair and the distracting constellations of freckles across his body. 

He doesn't like the way Lavi makes him nervous. How sometimes, like now, he can barely control his heartbeat, his face turns red and he wants to hide and wait for Lavi to coax him out, because he always knows how. It's humiliating. 

Rushing out of his own room and being asked what happened would be even more humiliating, so there’s only one way to get through this. 

He presses himself against Lavi. There’s no way it’ll fit. He’s going to rip him apart. 

“Everything okay?” Lavi glances back at him with his one green eye. 

“Wait,” Kanda scoffs and reaches for Lavi’s jar of lube. Technically, it’s their jar of lube now. It’s been used to slick up Kanda’s insides more than anything else. But it still always ends up in Lavi’s pockets. If anyone ever saw it on Kanda, there would be casualties. “You’re not gonna die if I don’t fuck you right this second.” 

“I think I am.” 

“You might die if I do,” he grumbles as he covers himself with more lube for good measure. 

“Better way to go than an akuma, if you ask me.” 

“You’re so annoying,” Kanda sighs, but can’t bring himself to put any bite into it. “Fine. Don’t blame me if you can’t sit tomorrow.” 

“I’ll be disappointed if I can, Yuu.” 

Kanda strongly doubts that he’ll be disappointed as he presses his tip against Lavi’s tiny pink entrance. When he pushes it in, the act seems a little less of an impossibility. It’s a tight squeeze - Lavi hisses in a breath and Kanda backs away, then tries again, putting in another couple of inches. This way, slowly, methodically, on his third try, he slides over halfway in. 

“Fuck,” Lavi moans, melting under his ministrations, hiding his head between his forearms and pushing himself against Kanda, impaling himself almost all the way down.  

The rooms on each side of Kanda’s are empty. He made sure of that before letting Lavi in for a potentially noisy  activity. He should have known that would only encourage him. 

He was never much of a strategist. 

“Oh, yes,” Lavi whines as Kanda slowly, carefully, pulls out and thrusts back in. “Yes, yes, just like that.” 

Kanda caresses his thighs, running his fingers through the soft red hair, before finding his grip on narrow hips. Lavi’s skin is cool, exposed to the bitter cold headquarters’ walls. He tries to take it slow, in small, controlled movements, but Lavi doesn’t let him; pushes himself against him, propping himself up on his elbows, as soon as Kanda pulls out an inch. There’s a balance between not being intimidated by his eagerness and not taking it as a challenge, and Kanda tries to find it. By the time he thinks he’s got it, a pace at which he could satisfy Lavi without sending him to the infirmary, the other pulls away from him. His dick slips out with an obscene sound that makes Kanda’s face burn, again. He does hope he’ll get used to it eventually. 

After all, he can’t act this nervous when he finally meets his person. 

“We’re switching up,” Lavi announces, rolling onto his back. “I want to see your face when you fuck me.”

It's probably because his arms got sore, but the proposition sends a shiver of embarrassment and arousal down Kanda’s spine anyway. The two emotions are connected, somehow, and he doesn't know if that's the way it works for everyone. Lavi seems to enjoy it when he insults him, so it's probably normal. 

He obliges, and lifts Lavi’s knees up to his chest.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Lavi protests. “I'm not stretchy like you. I don't bend that far!”

“I'm holding you,” Kanda explains, in half-whisper, because at least one of them needs to stay quiet. “You’ll be fine.”

“Just be careful, alright?”

“Now you're worried about breaking?”

“I can fight with a sore ass, not so much with a pulled hamstring.”

“Then you’ll just tell Bookman exactly what happened,” Kanda grins and pulls Lavi’s calves over his head. “And he'll fix you up with his needles.”

“You really are merciless,” Lavi shakes his head with a chuckle, and he's still smiling when Kanda thrusts back into him. His laughter turns into a high-pitched gasp, then to a litany of yes, yes, oh fuck, yes. 

His brow is furrowed, but the ghost of a smile still dances across his face, and there’s something joyful about his expression. It's not the empty smile he has for everyone. This is Lavi enjoying himself for the sake of it. He's beautiful.

“God, you're beautiful,” Lavi says, touching Kanda’s face, running his hand through his hair. “My Yuu. So gorgeous.”

Lavi tells him that a lot. He should be used to it by now. He’s not. He hopes that it looks natural when he hides his face in the crook of Lavi’s neck. 

“Come on, look at me. Don’t be shy.” 

Of course he knows. 

“Who’s shy?” He whispers, and thrusts into Lavi with more force. 

It doesn’t shut him up, but stops him from talking, as whatever clever reply he could be thinking turns to breathless whimpers. 

“You’re so good. You’re so good,” Lavi keeps repeating. Kanda can’t recall anyone ever telling him that, about anything other than the way he cuts down akumas. Like all new things, it’s confusing, but Lavi’s warm and sweet, and he can’t hurt him now. His fingers are gentle in Kanda’s hair. “Look at me. Please?” 

He does, just in time to watch Lavi come, untouched, just from being fucked and looking at Kanda. Kanda doesn’t know whether he should stop, or slow down, so he keeps going and watches Lavi ride it out - head thrown back, red hair sticking to his forehead, chest rising and falling as he struggles to catch his breath. 

If Lavi doesn’t tell him to stop, it must be fine. 

Lavi doesn’t seem capable of saying anything at all. When he comes down from his orgasm, he just whines - no more words, no curses, just soft, high-pitched sounds, biting his lip, as if trying to stop himself from screaming. His arms go weak and limp around Kanda’s neck. 

Is that what he looks like to Lavi when he calls him gorgeous? Because it’s the only word that comes to mind. Kanda hooks his legs over his shoulders for better access at the final stretch. 

Lavi can’t hold back anymore and screams. Kanda’s hand shoots up to cover his mouth in pure reflex. 

“What the fuck?” He whispers. “Are you stupid? The whole Order’s gonna hear you.” 

Lavi’s bright eye fills with tears. His face turns very red, and he keeps making small, choked-up sounds, seemingly unable to help himself. His breath is hot and wet against Kanda’s palm. 

He probably shouldn’t have done that. Lately, he’s been doing a lot of things that he shouldn’t; or rather, things that were fine back when they first met, suddenly feel bad around Lavi. Kanda snaps at him and regrets it immediately, talks bad of others and wonders if it will make Lavi grow tired of him. He can’t recall the last time he threatened him with his sword. He doesn’t want to, even as a joke. He would pierce himself with Mugen before raising it against Lavi now.

It’s probably better not to dwell on that. 

He lets go of Lavi’s face and captures it in a kiss, sucks on his tongue, swallows his muffled screams. It’s so easy to hurt you, he thinks. I don’t want to. I won’t, I won’t. 

The floor is covered in lotus flowers, but Kanda’s head is quiet. They’re sharing his bed until Lavi’s had enough of him, or until Kanda starts getting anxious that people will notice. Normally, he needs every second of solitude that he can get, but now, when the world is silent, when he can finally breathe, he wants to make this last for as long as possible. He’d be fine with staying like this until morning; not sleeping, just him, the illusory flowers and the warm, living Lavi. 

He’d be fine with going to sleep. He could fall asleep like this. Wake up to another person in his bed. Watch the freckles on Lavi’s face in the pale light of dawn. It’s a thought as foreign as the guilt and nervousness that Lavi makes him feel, but it’s not unpleasant. It would be just like the way they are now, but all night. Maybe his head would stay so quiet he wouldn’t dream of anything. 

Lavi’s unhurt - or at least so it seems. He’s lying next to Kanda and watching a spider weave his web in the corner, just like he did last night. Things got weird for a moment there, and it feels bad to remember it. Maybe Lavi got a little too honest, and backtracked; maybe he revealed something he wasn’t supposed to, tried to cover it up - either way, something was off about the way he started to talk about himself. Kanda can’t remember all of his stories. He hasn’t been paying enough attention to notice when something doesn’t add up. 

It seems pointless to wonder about it. Kanda’s not good with people. He won’t come up with the answer anyway. Whatever was bothering Lavi, he would never find the words to make it better. 

“Were you alone, Yuu?” 

He doesn’t need to ask when. Lavi feels exposed and he’s asking for payback. Kanda stares at his lotus flowers. He’s gotten used to them, but it feels weird that Lavi can’t see them, to. It feels like he should. 

Were you alone, Yuu? Wouldn't it be so much easier if you had been?

“There were two of us.”

It’s the first time in nine years that he speaks of Alma’s existence. People have tried to make him talk about it. There were interviews. There was Tiedoll, and there was Komui, there was Marie, who had been there too, and Lenalee, who’d gone through something similar all on her own. Kanda fully intended to take what had happened between him and Alma to the grave. 

Now there’s Lavi, who’s curious, asks too many questions, and has a room full of notebooks that no one but Bookman is allowed to look inside. 

“Where?” 

What do you mean, where, Kanda wants to ask as he’s reminded that Lavi is not, in fact, omniscient, and can’t actually see inside his head. 

“At the Asia branch,” he says and realizes that it doesn't explain anything. He's not sure how to get through this without sounding like an idiot - surely there always have been more than two people at the branch - or worse, a traumatized victim. “In the second exorcist… thing.”

He refuses to call it a project. That’s what all the scientists thought they were doing. He and Alma weren’t a goddamn weapon prototype. 

“Sync experiments?”

Calling it that, just like the word “project”, seems grossly inadequate, but it needs to be called something. He's not ready for Lavi to find out that the guy he sleeps with crawled out of a hole instead of being born. Most days, he's still not ready to even think about it; he hates being reminded that everyone he’s ever met has been a form of human that he completely skipped. There are people who remember learning how to speak. Alma was right: he evolved in his pond like an akuma. 

Sync experiments, sure. That's all it was. As far as Lavi is concerned, he’s just like Lenalee, the normal human woman. 

“Yeah.” 

“You and who else?” 

Were you alone, Yuu? 

Kanda opens his mouth an inch, to see if it will form the shape of his name. It doesn't. If he ever meets his person, he will tell her - them about Alma. Maybe they will know whose brain had been lent to him. Whose memories drove him to kill. 

“There was another boy.”

“Same age as you?”

“A little older.”

“Did you get along?”

Lavi would be sad if he knew that before they met, there was a time when Kanda could laugh. If Alma knew that sometimes he wants to learn again, that around Lavi he almost feels like he can do it, would he be happy, or jealous? Or disappointed, that he can almost turn his brain off like that, forget what place he found himself in? Sometimes Kanda can’t stop himself from smiling around Lavi. He’s pretty sure they’re not too far from a day when the dam breaks and laughter is shaken out of him like pollen from a flower. 

“We were friends.”

“You're not as bad at making friends as most people think.”

He is. He's just surrounded by people who make a sport of dragging him out of his sulking kicking and screaming. If he was any good, he'd know how to talk about this. He'd have known what to say when Lavi started opening up. The way he is now, he can just chew on his lip and wait for Lavi to keep asking questions or go away. 

He doesn’t want him to go away. He will never, not in a million years, ask him to stay. He has a feeling that Lavi knows anyway. 

“What did you do together?” 

Suffered.

“He liked to talk. I listened.”

“That's just like us, then!”

“That’s not true. You always want me to talk.” 

“I can’t help it that I like your voice! What else did you do?”

“Sometimes he read books to me.”

He read to their unborn friends in the ponds, before they found out that what they really were was undead. But the words reached Kanda’s ears, too, so it’s not a complete lie. 

“Let me guess, you hated it.”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“And what else?”

“We fought a lot.”

“Of course.”

“He always followed me around.”

“Got to hand it to him, he must have been a brave young man.”

“Don't worry, it wasn't like us,” Kanda can't help a smirk. “He was just as strong as me.”

“What happened to him?”

Oh, that’s the easiest question he could have possibly asked. There's no nuance around Alma’s end. Nothing to hide. 

“I killed him.”

A person with a good head on their shoulders might take it as their cue to leave and stay away, but here, there’s just Lavi. Lavi needs to know. 

“Why?”

Kanda is used to the sight of blood and gore now, after almost nine years on the battlefield. Back then, the only blood he used to be around was his own, as his body rejected the Innocence over and over. Tiedoll says it’s not good for children to be exposed to violence, and Kanda never thought of himself as a child, but the general may be onto something, because walking into that room did something to him. 

He’s dreamed of it a thousand times; a thousand different rooms. Sometimes it’s that very same one in the Asian branch, sometimes, it’s the inn in the small town he was in five years ago, or an art supply store where he ran errands for Tiedoll even earlier. In his least favorite iteration of that dream, the room is the European Branch cafeteria, and hanging off Alma’s blade is the gutted matron, or Johnny from the Science Department, or Lavi. He wakes up from these with a wet face and a metallic tinge in his throat. 

“I had to.”

“In self defense?”

“Kind of.”

“What do you mean, kind of?”

No one ever looked at him with as much love as Alma did when he said he had to kill him. 

“He didn't want to hurt me,” he chokes out and regrets the words immediately when his throat constricts and his eyes burn. He breathes in through his nose, slowly, but it doesn’t do anything, it’s too late now, and the exhale escapes him as a sob. 

In some frenzied attempt to hide, he raises both hands to his face, covering his mouth with one and his eyes with the other. His frame shakes with the effort to make it stop, but it doesn’t, the spasms that clutch his throat and constrict his chest, that force his breath out of him in short, pathetic sobs. He’s crying in front of Lavi and there’s nothing he can do about it. 

He wants to run away. He wants to fight someone. He wants the memories that make him cry harder to stop appearing in his head. He wants for someone to exist who could help him right now. 

He wants… who, Alma? Even if Alma was alive right now, what could he possibly do? His person? The one whose face he can't recall, the one he knows from one conversation he had as a different man? What would they do, exactly? There's no one, absolutely no one, who could make it better, and there never was, because normal human people have mothers and fathers for things like that. Even Alma had For. Kanda only has teeth that grit and chatter together when he tries to hold back from crying harder. 

Lavi wraps a hand around his shoulders and kisses the base of his neck, where his hair parts and reveals the skin. His lips are gentle and soft; his breath tickles. He wraps an arm around Kanda’s chest, pulls him closer and starts moving. 

At first, Kanda doesn't understand what's going on; if it's a game, or some kind of sex thing, and the shock of this possibility almost makes him stop crying. But the movements are slow and soothing. Lavi holds him tight and rocks their bodies together, back and forth, like their bed - his bed - is a giant hammock. Lavi is trying to calm him down. It doesn’t help. It only draws more tears from his eyes. 

Because Kanda doesn’t want to run or destroy anything, now. What he really, really wants is to hide his face in Lavi’s chest and cry into it. He wants to say that it hurt, it hurt so bad, he couldn't breathe and everything was so bad that he wanted to die. And he wants Lavi to say that he understands, that he also wanted to die back when he was a child living in the streets. That they are exactly the same, Kanda is a person just like him, and at least it’s not so bad when they are together.

He can’t do it. Of all the things in the world that he can’t do, he can’t do that the most. This is exactly why he doesn’t talk about himself. He needs to collect himself and send Lavi back to his room. 

 “He just-” Kanda tries, hoping that maybe if he starts talking, he’ll get back some control over his voice, but it breaks as soon as he opens his mouth and all that comes out is more crying. He digs his nails into his face and drags them down. The distraction of pain doesn’t come. He can’t even hurt himself in any way that matters. Lavi stops moving and reaches for his hands, but Kanda slaps them away. 

“He didn't know what he was doing?” Lavi suggests when Kanda doesn’t say anything for a while.

Of course they didn't wake up. Why would they even want to? 

They’ll keep using us as tools to win their holy war. 

Let's die together. 

What the fuck does Lavi know? Does he think Alma was some kind of a madman, a broken child gone insane from trauma? He thought that maybe Lavi knew more than he let on, but obviously, he has no clue what they’ve been through. Alma’s eyes have never been clearer than the moment he chose to burn it all to the ground and take Kanda with him. 

He shakes his head so hard his hair goes everywhere, and pushes Lavi off, shakes away his embrace. 

“He thought we'd be better off dead,” he chokes out, not caring about his breaking voice anymore, and jumps out of bed, grabbing at his coat. He needs to run. It doesn’t matter that this is his bed, his room, Lavi can have it. Nothing in this cursed world is really his. “And he was fucking right.”

“Yuu.”

I’m happy to see you, Yuu, but-

“Don’t call me that!” 

“Yuu, hey, hey, shh-” 

Hands on him. Hands on him. Hands on him!

“I told you not to fucking call me that!” 

When he pushes Lavi, it’s with full force. Old springs creak when his lover’s back hits the mattress. 

“Well, I'll be damned.” 

His head missed the wall by millimeters. Kanda’s threatened to kill him before, but Lavi always expected it to be by sword and not blunt force trauma. Stupid way to kill someone. He’d be embarrassed. 

Lavi briefly ponders the optics of running out of Kanda’s room after its crying owner. The order is mostly empty - usually is these days, with how busy they’ve been - but with this many people sharing a roof, the walls have eyes. Poor Kanda. He doesn’t like it when someone looks at him for a little too long on a good day. If someone sees him now, there’s no telling what he’ll do. 

Maybe Bookman was right with his lecture. The stupid little fantasy of Kanda being driven to tears by heartbreak has been much better than the mortifying reality of his pain. There’s simply too much of it, and the part that Lavi got to partake in, too freely given. 

It’s what he gets for lying, this piece of unbearable truth. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Kanda carries something terrifying inside of him; a thing unspeakable enough to drive him to tears - what will it do to the rest of them? 

Nothing. It’s just knowledge. If seeing what he did hasn’t broken Lavi yet, the Asia Branch can’t possibly be that special. 

Lavi gathers his clothes and runs out in the other direction. After all, the notes won’t take themselves. 

It’s nearing three A.M. when Kanda shows up at the library door, cross-armed, puffy-eyed and looking like guilt personified. Kanda never admits that he fucked up, but sometimes he flies off the handle so hard that even he knows it was wrong. Still, Lavi’s never seen him this apologetic. Knowing him, Lavi wouldn’t be surprised if it’s less about the pushing than it is about the crying. Lavi saw something forbidden tonight. Bookman should be proud. 

He slams the notebook shut before Kanda can see the page with ‘Alma Karma’ in capital letters on top of it. 

“You’re not asleep?”

Kanda’s deep voice is still a little nasal and wet with tears. It sounds wrong. Lavi waits for a scoff or a click of the tongue that never comes. 

He doesn’t need to fake the exhaustion in his smile. What’s concerning is that he doesn’t need to fake the smile, either. Perhaps he shouldn’t want to be around Kanda right now as bad as he does. 

“How could I sleep?” 

Kanda looks away, unable to take the admission of Lavi giving a damn about him. 

“Come here,” Lavi reaches out a hand and Kanda comes, as if pulled by a string. His hand is really cold - he was just outside. Lavi rubs his fingers with his thumb. Why did you come?, he wants to ask. It’s a little unnerving, being seeked out by Kanda. 

As long as he’s not searching for you a year from now. 

Lavi pokes at the tender thought of Yuu Kanda in love, a little jab at the wound, and imagining being that person, the one Kanda looks for everywhere he goes - God, it feels good. Now that he officially knows about his past, surely, he won’t be let go of so easily? Did Kanda ever tell that to anyone else? General Tiedoll, Komui? Or is he the first? 

“What were you writing?” 

Kanda stares at the pile of notebooks, piercing the cover with his gaze. It's Lavi’s brain-dumping journal, for rough drafts and loose notes. Even if Kanda opened it on a random page, he probably wouldn't see anything. Unless, of course, it was one of the pages covered in variations of “ Karma rampage - causes??? ”, “ Yuu Kanda [神田? - spelling] - fake name? ”,  and so on, and so forth. 

A person who cares about Kanda wouldn't have notebooks filled with speculation about his past that they pretend to know nothing about. Unless it was a person who cares a little too much. What’s just ink on paper, and what’s a fixation? What’s love? 

“Not much,” he takes both of Kanda’s cold, slender hands into his, so they can’t get any closer to the notebooks. “Just… my thoughts.” 

“You're not mad,” Kanda says, looking him in the eye. 

“No, I'm not.”

“It’s fine.”

There have been times when he should have probably been mad at Kanda, but he’s never been. Lavi doesn’t get mad at his friends. He doesn't care enough for that.

It doesn't seem the right moment to start when Kanda looks like he just stopped crying and is ready to start again. When Lavi was touching his back back there, at first he thought he was sneezing, then that he was having a seizure. It just seemed more likely than him crying in front of someone else. 

Curse his memory. If he could wipe away the image of Kanda clawing at his own face, he would. Lavi just wanted him to be a little heartbroken over him. He never wanted to see him like that. 

“I can't be mad at you.”

He pulls Kanda closer and presses his face against his bare stomach, cold and damp. His bare skin smells of rain under the leather coat. It's barely drizzling outside, but Kanda’s been there for a while. It must be practical to never worry about catching a cold. 

What the hell did they do to him, exactly, at the Asian branch, to make him like this? The curiosity eats away at Lavi, but for once, he’s fine without knowing more, for now. Just for tonight. Maybe when he’s back from the mission and Kanda’s out of his system.

“You can be,” Kanda repeats, through gritted teeth. It's his way of saying he's sorry. 

“Nah. I didn't listen to you.”

His working theory for the first name conundrum is that Alma called Kanda by it during the final altercation. Taunted him? Begged for his life, maybe? But if it brought back the memory, Kanda wouldn’t be at peace with it, the way he is most of the time these days. Lavi is sure that if stopped calling him by his first name all of a sudden now, that Kanda would be disappointed. 

“Come here,” Lavi says, pulling the other into his lap. Kanda’s coat is a little wet, covered in tiny raindrops. Lavi doesn’t mind. He marvels at how easy it is to touch Kanda now, to have him where he wants him. When he first started flirting with him it was pushing, shoving, twitching away. The way he sits in Lavi’s lap now is a little awkward, a little stiff, but he wants to be there. They’re in a public space, and usually he refuses to even sit too close to Lavi in those, but it’s not a usual night. 

Is Yuu Kanda in love with you? 

“Yuu,” Lavi whispers into the other’s neck and feels goosebumps rise under his lips. Kanda is a lovely weight in his lap. He’s going to miss it every day, every night when they’re separated by who knows how many borders. “We’re still friends, alright? We’re fine.” 

And what happens when eventually, he doesn’t come back? What happens when the war ends? Is he going to just miss him forever? What happens when the Count separates them for good - what then, do they just… search for each other? 

Arms wrap around his neck. Kanda sits in his lap and holds him like he's already dead.

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