one cigarette lighter
Word count limits are hard when you have a habit of using ten words where two will suffice, man. A depressing Lavi, Kanda, Allen and Lenalee fic /o/
It starts when she sees a moody-looking boy sat on the curb, cradling a swollen cheek and a split lip. He's skinny and small, eyes grey and glossy and distant.
He's also sitting down in half a foot of snow, and she's always been the one to worry about puppies abandoned in bad weather. If anyone's ever looked like a puppy, it would be this boy, right now.
She's not worried that he's some sort of hobo who'll come at her with a flick knife as soon as he notices a lone skirt; she's the over-18 Karate sparring champion, and that wasn't a girls' only competition. Neatly pleating her skirt, she kneels down to click her fingers in front of his face. "Hello."
He looks up with a face grimly set for a fight, does notice the skirt, and all of a sudden his features go slightly mad, trying to stop himself from making a face at a lady.
Lenalee Lee laughs. She's liking him already.
-
The boy's name is Allen, and he lives with a foster father who's not a particularly good parent but is excellent at fostering a healthy gambling debt. Allen gets into trouble a lot, and he'd first hesitated most! Strongly! About making friends with a right proper lady, but Lenalee's never been one to bow down and out when her heart's set on something.
It's a couple of years on from the curb-side meeting, and Allen is fairly sure he's in love. She is, pretty much, the best damned ('scuse my French) person in the entirety of existence. Surely she is.
Which is why he's not, y'know, holding out much in the way of hope. Especially not when she's seen him with half his face bloodied up by an extortion gone wrong, and seen him get so excited to have Chinese New Year dinner with her (to have an abundance of food in general) that he ate so much he damn near choked.
She, meanwhile, could knock the biggest of men unconscious with a kick to the face, ending up with barely a crumple in her skirts. What do you do to appeal to someone like that?
Allen sure doesn't know the answer, but he supposed a top-down transformation would be a good idea.
Right-o. Where's that hair dye?
-
He shows up on her doorstep, red-faced and slightly disturbed. To the day, it's officially been two years now since they met that snowy day, and the weather today's no different.
Lenalee opens the door, and for a second thinks he's forgotten to brush snow off again and his head's covered with the stuff.
"Er. Lenalee... Er."
Lee. Lee's her last name. She gapes.
"Your hair!"
"Yes. I'm afraid it's not sunshine blond. In fact, it's rather decidedly more-"
"White as snow!"
Allen flinches, trying to hide all of himself behind the hand he's hiding his hair behind. "Indeed. I just thought you should see this first, before you run into me and, quite understandably, pass out from shock. It's quite a mess, really."
Ever the gentlemanly language. Lenalee bodily hauls him in, slamming the door shut behind her, to brush snow off his shoulders and head authoritatively. Lemme have a good look at you now.
"We-ell," she says at long last, critical eye still on the straight, bleached-silly hair. "I mean. It's a new look, Allen, but I think..."
A smile warm enough to melt the snow, and Allen's almost worried his ears are so warm the snow melt will steam off.
"You could definitely pull it off. So, what made you decide to go for something so radical? And without telling me too!"
Oh, dear. He had been a little concerned, wondering about her reaction. And while he's a champion liar (by training), he doesn't like lying. Especially not to ladies.
Exceptionally especially so to her, because she had a habit of finding things out anyways. It's the eyes. You felt like you were single-handedly sullying the world when you try and disappoint the eyes.
So he blurts it out, brushing his destroyed hair (that's so different to the staid old brown, but he'd been wanting to make a statement) out of the way so that he's blurting it out bravely.
There's a looooong pause that could make the boldest of men cringe, but Allen barely moves at all, and just stares at her, polite and quiet.
Then she laughs, and hugs him like he's just told he's found a cure for the common cold and he'll now save all the babbies in all the world.
There is a decidedly large amount of affectionate squeezing. His ears threaten to steam again, because (despite his best efforts not to notice) she's got her boo-
Breasts! Lady chests! Aaargh!
Pressed against him. Slap on your pokerface, my matey Walker.
Lenalee slaps the back of his head with her open palm (probably not unlike Buddha), laughing.
"I think I'm more than interested, Allen."
Another smile, and poor polar bears, you must be drowning with all them ice caps melted.
She shyly presses a kiss to his cheek, and pulls back to smile with thinned lips. "Would've suggested red, maybe, since you're so pale. And big brother is gone for the next few days for work. Ah. Want to stay over?"
There is, Allen thinks quite hazily as she leads him away to what he has to assume is Nirvana, definitely a god for the downtrodden.
-
And where is he now?
Yes, he'd asked for Date Night, and yes, they weren't really rolling in so much cash that they could afford a babysitter every time they wanted alone time.
Yes, it's good that she's got friends so good they were willing to do this for her, even if they couldn't have expected having to babysit for a friend when said friend is twenty-two. And unwed.
It's not okay that her friends include a Japanese man who looks like in the entirety of his life he's never hated a life form more than he hates Allen, and....
A pale redhead who's exuberant, out-going, adorable and evidently more than willing to hump down anything within a fifty meter radius.
He's not sure he wants to give little, gurgling Anita to these, these...
"Fuck, Lenalee. What's he even got down there that could knock you up?"
These monsters, think Allen, expression horrified as he stares open-mouthed at the Asian one.
-
Anita's two now, and can toddle with surprising speed. She's a quiet baby, preferring to sit in a corner and stare with steely gray eyes at her parents, as well as The Red One and The Black One who come to replace her parents once in a... period of time. Allen worries that she'll fall behind, and it'll all be because dear little Anita was probably conceived while he was still letting off bleach fumes from his bleached hair (even now, the colour's almost silver. Probably permanent damage, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't have a soft spot for it. Lenalee did, and he's laughably weak in the presence of the ever so strong).
Lenalee worries that Allen will worry even more when she can hold off Komui no longer, and he breaks into their tiny flat to teach Anita the thousands and thousands and thousands of Chinese characters that make up Lenalee's mother tongue. There aren't cutesy charts to learn the Alphabet like a Brit's English. Komui's been threatening calligraphic wallpaper for the nursery ever since she told him she's pregnant, and with or without his consent this is a babby she'll keep and love.
It's getting harder to hold him off, and as the one-woman force of level-headedness in what sometimes feels like the entire country, Lenalee wakes up one morning and then wakes Allen up.
And she tells him we deserve a good time, dear. Let's go for a date, the whole weekend long.
We can book somewhere pretty by the sea, she tells him. We can ask Lavi, since he could find us a blacksmith if we asked him to. Anita will be fine. You said it yourself, didn't you? Lavi and Kanda haven't injured her yet!
Well, then. 'course Allen thinks this is a ridiculously good idea, but he also thinks Anita's gotten to that impressionable age where Lavi and Kanda could start, dear Lord, rubbing off on her.
He wants to come home to Anita with an enlarged vocabulary.
He doesn't want seventy per cent of the new vocabulary to be euphemisms for raucous gay sex.
But Lenalee looks like she needs a break, and Allen has long suspected that he's made her life a damn sight harder than it had any right to be, so he says yes.
(He'd almost prefer Komui to the terrible two.)
(Almost.)
-
Power. Every man wants it. The only difference is between the ambitious and the fearful.
Lavi can barely stop the maniacal laughter from welling up and out when Lenalee drops her house key in his hand. Keep a straight face, KEEP IT STRAIGHT (heh).
Grabby hands for little Anita, who's just staring at them as glassily as she ever did. Allen looked like he didn't want to let go, and Lavi would be lying if he said that he had nothing to worry about. But the father's holding on to the daughter a whole lot tighter than the toddler is to him, so Lavi extricates Anita with the ease of a trained skirt-chaser. "Yeah, yeah, 's going t'be amazing. You two just have a super relaxing weekend, me 'nd Yuu will love hard on wee Anita."
"It best not be too hard, Lavi. I'm fairly certain you being yourself to your maximum level is illegal in this country."
And sixteen others, but you don't need to know that. Lavi angles babby Anita closer to Allen's face (kid is still so pitiably small, even if he's grown up lots in the past few years Lavi's known him), and the babby calmly accepts the imploring kiss her father gives her.
"We'll be fine, yeah? Go and look after Lena m'lady, 'nd have an excellent weekend. Swear you'll come home t'a house that's still standing, and Anita'll be so much th'cuter for having been in our care. 'sides, you know if there's like, any sort 'f house break-in, yeah, we'll never be safer than with Yuu-chan around."
Kanda Yuu, scaring away criminals since that one time he punched a drunkard so hard the man woke up thinking he was a cactus (though that might've been the absinthe the gentleman had been chugging back).
Lenalee doesn't need to be particularly appealing; she just has to smile crisply at her two best friends, and unspoken they all understand that she'll have their guts for garters if anything happened to her little girl. She kisses Lavi on the cheek (and Allen considers buying red hair dye at the first drug store he can sneak into), she forces a hug on Kanda (who never stops glaring at Allen), and blows a raspberry on Anita's cheek (who solemnly giggles, pressing her chubby face into her mother's short, dark hair.)
Lavi and Kanda see the happy, slightly anxious couple off in the taxi, Lavi waving one of Anita's pudgy hands goodbye.
"Buh-eye. Buh-eye."
Both adults stare at the little bundle of someone else's happiness in Lavi's arms.
Anita stares after the disappearing yellow noise thing, saying goodbye as best she can.
-
Allen has his mobile phone confiscated, the fifth time he secretly tried to call Lavi to make sure nothing's been burnt down and Anita still has all her fingers and toes. Instead, they stop by a small bakery, and have tea and sugary confections.
Lenalee decides to settle this once and for all. "Put it this way," she says, voice soft, smile steely. "Do you think the boys would be so wild that they'd actually get Anita in trouble, and risk upsetting me?"
Good point is bloody excellent. He smiles, looking lightly relieved. "It's awfully good that at least one of us is level-headed."
And has Kanda and Lavi living in fear of a kick to the crown jewels. Upset Lenalee didn't stand to one side and cry. Upset Lenalee leaves the crying for after she's beaten the world back into the right shape.
Jolly good. She wipes chocolate cream off his cheek.
-
It's like the Hunger Games. Or it would be, if either male had read the story, or if the babby could read at all. As is, Lavi's jealous of the toddler, with her jars of baby food and tins of powdered milk formula. That's definite food, you know? Whereas his and Kanda's initial plan to raid the refrigerator is derailed by the fact that it is mostly empty. It would seem Lenalee and Allen had wisely (cruelly) decided to pack up food for the trip, leaving the babysitters extraordinaire with little more to eat between them than half an iceberg lettuce and a jar of suspiciously green mustard.
So they're hungry, and it's a game now, to see who'll crack first and go out to buy sustenance. Lavi's got money on Kanda, Kanda's pleased as punch that Lavi's neglected to realise that all that monk-like training he put in daily to be a better swordsman (and a sub-par part-time driving instructor from hell) meant he could survive on just tea for thirty-six hours.
(Lavi's waiting for when Kanda notices there's no tea either; just shite insta-faux-coffee.)
"Look." Lavi's trying to keep this civil, because he wants to keep playing footsy with Kanda under the table. So far they're calf-high, fuck, yes. "It only makes sense, yeah? 'm the one with the track record of not leaving the babby sitting in her high-chair and then forgetting 'bout it then wonder where she's got to once m'favourite episode of Who Wants T'be A Millionaire is halfway through."
It only happened once, you son of a dog. "Fuck off. I'm not running errands for you, or for the brat of a brat."
And because Kanda's still kindof really shit at being as horrible to women. "Who hasn't inherited that many of her father's bratty genes." He even nods at babby Anita, to show that there's no hard feelings here.
In the end, it's settled with a round of rock-paper-scissors, followed by rock-paper-scissors best of three, followed by if you ask for an extension one more time Lavi I will stab you in the eye with my scissors.
So Lavi's sent out to bumble good-naturedly through a supermarket, perilously toeing the line between edible and poison while he shops at the past-their-best-before-date aisle. Hey, in this economy, with a best friend's baby to save for, they can't afford luxuries. Like steak. Or any cow-products, really. Wilting spinach and soft tomatoes for everyone!
Kanda, meanwhile, sits at the dining table in wait, staring at Anita in her high seat.
He's not letting her out of his sight. Fuck but it was embarrassing to be accused of, one, misplacing the baby, and two, having a favourite Who Wants To Be A Millionaire episode (they're all so good, and he harbours the vague hope that one day Lavi will put his money where his mouth is and go on to win All Of The Cash. Hell, Kanda will even thrown in a BJ on the condition of winning, to sweeten the deal. At the end of the day, money may incite a man's lust for power, but inciting a man's lust of lust tends to guarantee results a hell of a lot quicker). She burps genteelly, and for one gloriously racist moment Kanda assumes that would be thanks to superior Asian meekness genes.
She throws up, which he puts down to Allen's shitty parenting.
It's a good thing, he thinks while he undresses her and tosses her clothes in the dishwasher, that as a driving instructor he had to learn basic first aid (in case some numbnut ran into a tree at, god almighty, thirty kilometers an hour). The girl must've sneaked a sugar cube, or something of the like, and it had gotten lodged in her throat. A couple of careful pats and holding her the right way down, and matters are resolved.
By the time Lavi returns swinging a bag of groceries that go squish squish, Kanda and Anita are back where they started. Only Kanda's shirtsleeves are rolled up, and Anita's dressed in diapers and a cotton apron wrapped around her four times.
"Yuu-chan, what in th'shit."
"Girls need to know their place."
Aaaaand scratch up sexist as fuck on the list too. It's okay, though, because Lavi's burning in hell with him for bursting out into laughter, swooping in to pick up the solemn toddler and blowing raspberries all over her apron until, quite primly, she giggles.
"Your feelings on y'decidedly homosexual partner are?"
Kanda snorts, reclaiming Anita and replacing Lavi's hold with the grocery bag. "Exactly the same."
-
There's greeny-reddish gloop for lunch, and Anita's back in actual clothes now while Kanda stares contemplatively at the bowl set in front of him. He prods it, and almost expects it to prod back. It looks alive, and worse than that it looks livid. The words puss and bile come to mind. He then shifts his gaze to observe Lavi emptying a jar of smooshed peaches into a bowl for babby Anita. It smells sickly sweet, and the texture resembles cough syrup. But at least the colour's pale and he finds himself drawn to it.
Goddamn, the baby's better off than we are. Once again his gaze shifts, now hardening into a glare that concentrates on Lavi. It's so intense that Lavi reckons he can hear the fine hairs near his ear sizzling. He looks up, holding a plastic spoon he's been pretending was a choo-choo train to trick Anita into eating this healthy crapola. "What?" he asks, genuinely curious. "You want me t'make sounds 'nd feed you? I could, but, yeah, th'babby sortof takes precedence."
OF COURSE THAT'S NOT IT (or it's only the littlest bit, honest).
Kanda scoffs, pushing his bowl away. "She gets actual food that you can actually tell is actually not diarrhea, and I get this show of your hate in a bowl. What in the fuck, Lavi. This isn't acceptable."
Aaaand Kanda gets the one-fingered salute, before Lavi resumes choo-chooing into Anita's mouth (that sounds exactly as wrong as it shouldn't be). "Yeah, well, if y'didn't tend t'scare off all of your students, we might actually have had cash to buy more 'n wilting vegetables and stuff that I pray t'Bastet are herbs, 'nd not mould."
Lavi sounds like he should be in Sesame Street, scathing reply presented in a lilting, sing-song voice that Kanda is almost tempted to clap his hands and bang his head to. It's a hell of a skill, and Kanda spends exactly two seconds feeling proud of being the idiot's spiritual owner before getting ready to fight.
It's not a musical, so he doens't respond in a similarly sing-song way, and he speaks softly but with oh-so-much-venom. "You're favouritism-ing on the baby. I'm not amused." It's not like he's jealous, whaaaat.
Oh, pfft. "And you accuse me of perpetuating happily flamin' stereotypes when I became a part-time hairdresser. She's two 'nd can't talk. You're older than her mum, though y'communication skills are arguably not that much better."
(Lavi's led an illustrious life, even though by most accounts he's still fairly young [Kanda's never actually seen any form of identification of his.... guy. Friend. Uh. Y'know, thing. Not a driver's license, not a legendary passport, nothing. It's a bit of a mystery, re: everything about Lavi.]. He'd hit on the idea to become a multi-lingual hairstylist when he realised that Kanda got very secretly very giddy when Lavi would help him wash and cut his hair while chatting blandly away in atrocious Japaneez. It's a booming business, perpetrator one, but, y'know. Neither of them are particularly good at the jobs that raked in the dough, and things tend to be tight.)
(To put it politely.)
"What did you just say to me?"
"Basically, yeah, I said you're inferior t'Allen's spawn."
See, Lavi had assumed this would end really rather sweetly. Kanda would be blown away after Lavi changes his target of favouritism away from the babby after a bit of rough banter, which may go some way to explain why he hadn't thought twice about being more mean than idiotic.
(Also he's fed Kanda Mystery Soup #4 dozens of times before, and it's a tiny bit inflammatory to be forced to assume it's all always been secretly loathed. Secrets like that you carry to the grave, lover boy.)
Fuck it, thinks Kanda. I'm going to watch Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, and if it's a man who wins I am going to fucking fucking fucking dump this guy and this house and this place and boink a fuckin'-A millionaire and then you'll all know what you're missing.
(Except Anita, of course. He's still her godfather after all, and he assumes that means he's got a legal requirement to murder people for her when she's a bit bigger and a lot chattier.)
So he gracefully gets to his feet, sends the chair screeching back to slam against the wall, and stormed off.
Still uncomfortably hungry, and feeling pricklingly upset, but he'll be damned if he lets it get him down (to a level that's visible, yes).
Anita's not too happy with the loud, furniture-slamming sounds. So she looks at the Red One, scrunches her face up grimly, and starts bawling.
Between a toddler crying and a loud man asking if he knew how many official languages there were in Belize, Lavi barely has enough presence of mind to feel bewildered, then slightly ashamed of himself.
It's a jolly ole mess, and all things considered he should feel glad he tends to be pathologically turned on by the Dewey Decimal system. Calmly he bitches to Anita in soothing-sounding, perfectly vicious Hokkien until she's so confused she calms down, helps her finish the rest of her meal, and then goes to deal with the bigger babby.
(With a double B, Kanda, never let it be said Lavi doesn't think you're a veritable bag of Special.)
-
Lenalee and Allen have left the home equipped with those nifty baby monitors that've been the stuff of low-budget horror movies for ages, which is grand. They haven't left the monitors equipped with live batteries, though, which is decidedly less grand. Lavi would be angrier at how cheap the two are, if he didn't know that they couldn't afford to be less cheap. With a thousand other little things to pay for, extra batts for when your besties are babysitting prob'ly didn't top the list.
Which is why he single-handedly hauls the crib down from the nursery upstairs, into the living room. Little Anita's strapped to his front in her special sling, and Kanda might be sulking but the moment he spots that mop of dark hair he's got the volume of the tele as low as it could go without going mute. He's mouthing death threats to Lavi, of course, but at least he's being quiet about it.
The crib's set up, not too close but not too far from the radiator, on the opposite side of the small room to the TV. A dozing Anita gets tucked in, and soon it's all quiet but for the tinny screaming from the show playing and the girl's contented deep breathing.
It's rare to get anything even similar to silence in a house that's got two or more of their strange five person crew; Lavi and Lenalee are naturally-inclined to be sociable, as is Allen for the most part. Kanda's naturally-inclined to murder or be angry that he can't murder, and Anita's a glorious child 'n all, but she does scream her lungs out at least once a day. Having three in a room, and for it to be this quiet, well. Lavi thinks Allen and Lenalee should feel obligated to erect a plaque of brass, of this time and date, to commemorate this miraculous occasion.
He commandeers the remote control like the pirate he often fashions himself after, and turns away from the silly gameshow type that's 100% guaranteed to get Kanda altogether too hyped up for his own health, and on to some innocent show about gardening. Lavi knows with utmost confidence that he could win any non-luck based gameshow, 'cos he's stupidly educated like that, but he can't guarantee the survival of potted tomato plants, nor can he be suuuuuuper proud at his human handling skills.
Mostly 'cos he's really got to stop shittily trying to handle other people like a little shit, Kanda would be inclined to add.
A man with a fluffy, soft-looking beard and the greenest green eyes ever to've been put on this Earth quietly whispers on about the ratio of compost to muck, as Lavi sits down next to Kanda on the battered leather sofa they'd picked up on the side of the road the year Anita was born. The leather groans and the wooden frames creak, but this is how it's always been. Anita would likely be more creeped out if the house was suddenly in perfect silence.
"Oi, Yuu-chan. You've got t'cut out with this whole being a stuffy jerkwad act, yeah?" With utmost confidence, Lavi seeks out Kanda's hand, and forcibly but lovingly twines their fingers together. "Because we figured out ages ago that intimidation only really works if I actually wanted t'save m'hide."
There's just a disinterested grunt, and a furrowing of brows as Kanda apparently attempts to figure out the answer to Literally Everything by reading the lines on the leathery palms of the gardening presenter.
Fingers still together like a loaf of ten-strand braided bread, though.
"Being inferior t'a baby isn't that bad, yeah? She's not done half the messed up shit we've had to do yet, and she's still way too itsy bitsy t'hurt people the way we've managed to over the years."
Not yet, is the point, so really, Kanda should only consider it an insult after Anita's forged her own path of accidental cruelty. The point, yeah, the point is that
"We're poor, 'nd Lena and Allen are poor, 'nd we're all either jobless or working crappy jobs with crappy shifts or we're responsible f'a kid whose head's still way too big f'her wee body. M'point is, we're not in a real good position t'be real happy people."
He can tell when Kanda's listening by how his eyes unfocus a little. The man couldn't really use too many senses at the same time. While working, even if the driving student was hitting the pedal and maxing out at 120 kilometers 'n hour, Kanda could manhandle the brake and stop the car from hitting what seemed like a wall of inevitability. But if Kanda was driving and he had to hold up a conversation, well. You could almost see the sweat beading on his frown o' concentration. It's a stupid trait, that Lavi's never quite found the desire to dispel. He could see the almost sweat now.
"M'point, is this. If I wanted t'favour a babby over you, y'big baby, I'd've found a lovely heiress t'settle down with 'nd spend all day rolling on th'floor with tiny red-headed devils. And that if we could afford t'eat more than almost rotten tomato 'n cabbage soup all day, we so would. But I didn't, 'nd we can't, and I'll take your crap f'about an hour because I love you rottener than th'most rotten tomato and I know I did m'fair part in making you sour, yeah, but any more 'n that, well."
Maybe this isn't the norm for most, but Lavi and Kanda perpetually dropped ultimatums on each other. Blurred lines happened to other people.
"Y'can slowly die of malnutrition on your own, instead of together. C'mon, now, babe." A grin that's more multi-faceted than the terrifying colourful musical mobile that's equipped over Anita's crib. "You're better than this, yeah? You 'n me, we both know it."
Kanda sighs the sigh of the resigned, but they both know it's much the same as the white flag of surrender. Their greatness, their shittiness, it's common knowledge after all.
"You make decent almost rotten soup," Kanda manages to force out after a short pause. "You never once gave me food poisoning."
Wasn't for a lack of trying, as Lavi experiments with how far gone past the due date he can take himself and his partner.
Kanda, he ain't done yet, though. After Lavi's hefty speech, and for the calloused thumb rubbing the back of his hand, well. Lavi gets a treat for putting up with the impossible. "... And I guess if you were in Mastermind, you wouldn't lose straight away. Probably. Idiot."
Coming from a man who records Countdown on their ancient VHS recorder so that he could sharpen his arithmetic skills (it's stress relief, stress relief!), Lavi finds himself unduly flattered. So flattered, in fact, that he immediately initiates a make-out session.
As long as we keep it down, eh.
-
They make it to the seaside a good hour and a half before sundown. The bed & breakfast is tucked away in the bay, away from the worst of the winds and the highest of tides. It's late autumn, and the cold and the dreary gray meant that most no one was there. It also meant, more importantly, that a beautiful room and inclusive breakfast is at a price they could bear.
The bags are left at the foot of their bed, and after cursory hellos to the proprietor, Lenalee's got Allen's hand in hers and they're hurtling for the seashore, losing their balance occasionally on the slippery pebble beach.
Wind's hooooowling, so loudly that even right next to each other they almost need to scream to be heard. But not a lot of talking goes on, 'cos mostly they're busy feeling young and aimless and light and stupid. Allen's boot skids on a particularly sneaky pebble, and he lands heavily on his back, meager raincoat striving to keep him dry.
Allen's giddy laughter's torn away by the wind almost as soon as it leaves his mouth. A storm is a-comin', they'd been warned, and this must be the opening volley. With her ever-present lady-like grace, Lenalee folds her legs under her and sits next to where he's sprawled out, both of them facing the grey ocean with its mad, frothing waves.
They're silent for a few minutes, after Allen's short spate of grunting and heaving to move himself so that he's sitting up next to his lovely lady. It feels like a wonderful moment, and he tries to think of a wonderful thing to say.
"I wonder how Anita is-"
Lenalee groans, and then pouts at Allen chidingly. "Stop, stop! We decided in the taxi, didn't we? This weekend, there is no older brother, foster father, no crazy friends, no backlog of rent, and not even any Anita. This weekend, it's just chocolate cakes and chicken pies and bad weather and a date. Just a date, so you can be Allen," the way her voice softens and her smile becomes fond at his name nearly ends him, "the very sweet and very sad, and I can be Lenalee, the..."
It takes her a moment to think of a description that meant she wasn't defined by other people, even if she really does love being Komui's little sister and Anita's mom and all sorts.
"Over-18 Karate Sparring Champion, 3 years running. We agreed," she carries on primly, "that this weekend it's a holiday. Where we can do this," kisses him without missing a beat, "and stay up late on the shore drinking fizzy wine."
She's got her arm around his shoulders, he's snuck his arm around her waist, and it's not winter and there's no snow but this feels like she's found him again.
Lenalee Lee with all her big heart and fierce determination looks at dear ol' Allen Walker, and smiles with all the love in the world.
"I'll sweep you off your feet before the night's out, promise!"
They burst out laughing, and don't stop even when they're barreling in through the front door of the inn with the storm at their heels.
-
DINNER TIME.
Kanda puts himself in charge of washing up, and this includes baby Anita, and he does so before dinner. In light of their reconciliation, Lavi got pumped up to go to the giant supermarket on the other end of town to hunt for cheap meat, so Kanda assumed he should be pulling his own weight too.
Which is why he's got his sleeves rolled back again, and a baby sitting in the sink looking at him with grave curiosity.
"Why do you even need a bath? It's not like you work out a lot, or anything." Tch. He turns on the tap, facing it away from Anita until it got suitably warm. She takes to the water well, splashing in it a little, even if her smile is really the tiniest thing he's ever seen, tinier even than her tiny wee toes.
Lenalee had given strict instructions; baby shampoo for the hair, baby shower gel for the rest of the body, and so help her God, Kanda, if you can't be fucked to use shampoo and use a bar of soap on Anita. So he goes through the effort, even if he thinks his hair's got no side-effect from a bar of soap, thanks.
"How old do babies get before they start showering themselves? Because this is a waste of both our times." He tells her matter-of-factly, mainly because she always looked like she was listening and judging and mostly agreeing.
Still, though, he makes sure she's clean and dried, and in her pyjama onesie, before feeding her dinner. Babies, you see, tended to sleep earlier than grown men like to eat dinner at, so they adjust their schedule.
It's a small house, but for now he's a single parent, and he's suddenly keenly, uncomfortably aware that this was a quite a sad feeling. He then wonders if the white-haired brat felt it, while Lenalee's working days as a gymnastics instructor, and if Lenalee feels it while the Monster works nights at the casino.
The kitchen light flickers, and he looks at the baby and he finds himself hoping that the four adults could sort themselves out before the kid can realise that right now Kanda's hungrily coveting her smooshed peaches meal, and that night-time can be remarkably grim, even (especially) for adults.
It's all a facade, raising kids. Make 'em believe that better is normal, and hope that as the cycle continues the sorry state of right now won't have anywhere to exist in.
He burps the little girl, plays with her (sits there as she uses his body as a jungle gym and his long hair as a swing), and puts her to bed.
Fake happiness so hard until it becomes real, huh.
Lavi comes home saying he got half-priced chicken, lover, so rejoice!!!
And Kanda does, a little.
-
Allen had proposed a candlelit dinner, and Lenalee had rejected it. Candlelit dinners you could do at home, she reasonably points out. So instead they go for a movie, some cool thing with robots and monsters and drama, and then they go to a fast-food joint so Allen can eat to his heart's content and Lenalee can get some french fries.
There's outdoor seating, though most of the patrons are huddled inside, away from the biting wind. Allen had wanted to sit outside, but Lenalee didn't want her fries to get soggy. They compromise by sitting near the door, so they could get the strong gust of air every time someone new comes in.
Once everything's been polished off, they hold hands under the table, just because they can.
"Once we've gotten better at providing for each other," Allen starts up suddenly. "Ah, I mean... Once we're proper, better, smarter adults, Lenalee, do you suppose you'd be okay with marrying me?"
It's not a great gift, not really. It's more like foisting himself onto her and then insisting she pay him for the joy of being a burden, but really, the only answer he's waiting for is a yes.
Which is what he gets. Lenalee smiles, and rubs his cheek. "You always look like you're apologetic for being born, you know." The tiniest bit scoldingly. "When you shouldn't be. You're a really really great man, really. And of course we'll get married!"
Her unshakable faith's as good as a contract.
She looks around the little restaurant, with her thin-lipped smile. Then leans forward to whisper, hand shielding them away from prying ears. "You're my favourite, after all."
It is, of course, a wholly mutual feeling.
-
It's 3 A.M., and baby Anita is shrieking her little head off. Kanda's sat bolt upright from the pile of blankets they've set up in the living room for their bed, looking like he's either ready to kill or ready to cry himself. He could go for days without sleep no problem, but being woken up, it drove him fantastically mad. Still, though. Kids might not be the most sensible creatures, but if it was Lenalee or Lavi or his foster father Tiedoll screaming like that, Kanda wouldn't rest until the cause for the wails was executed (by firing squad, if necessary), so he wasn't just going to sit back and let her cry herself asleep.
He's ready, about to get up, digging deep for any sort of gentle, soothing instinct, before Lavi overtakes him and gets to his feet first.
"Go back t'sleep, babe. 've got this."
He says it with such confidence, Kanda thinks. Lavi kisses his forehead, and Kanda does lie back.
"You better not fuck up."
Lavi's toothy smile is visible, even in the low light. "If I could put you t'bed, baby, th'sky's th'limit for me, isn't it?"
Kanda falls back to sleep quickly, and Lavi spends fourty minutes reading David Copperfield to Anita in his calming-a-wild-beast voice until she falls into a dead sleep to the calming lull of a Lavi who's surprisingly good at being a decent guardian, once in a while.
-
Lenalee gets served breakfast in bed, provided for by the innkeeper but brought up by one Allen Walker. There're even flowers on, and that's all Allen, sortof. He sets it carefully across her lap. "I bought some roses yesterday but I asked Mrs. Barker to keep them in the fridge to keep them fresh. Only I do believe she left them in the freezer instead, and now they've become unfortunately... crispy."
They also smell a bit like frost burn, frozen mincemeat and coolant, but it's the thought that counts and Lenalee gets a little bit teary-eyed at the treatment. She leaves them to thaw by the radiator, and she intends to press the petals in her journal, so everything could smell of frost burn and affection.
Allen eats three-quarters of what's on the tray with some shame, but only some, because two-thirds of that three quarters of food it's Lenalee feeding him with great amusement.
"It'll be freezing cold, but would you like to play in the sea with me after breakfast, Allen?" By now, breakfast's done and put to the side, and they're comfortably shacked up against each other, as the TV plays some sort of slow-paced morning talkshow. The storm blew in over the night, then blew out before morning broke, so it's a cloudless September sky with strong, clean sunlight streaming down.
It's also the signal that they've got about six hours left before they're back to their usual lives, which ISN'T. AT ALL. BAD, yes, but let's be honest, it can't be as glorious as this morning, could it.
So what if he loses a couple of toes to frostbite? It's all for the sake of memories!
Plus, it'll be a cold day in hell before he'll get good at turning down Lenalee. Especially when he doesn't want to.
He smiles until the little scar by his eye crinkles up in layers of permanently reddened skin, and nods.
They spend a good hour running into the water, screaming, then running out again.
-
It's Sunday, SUNDAY, it's Sunday and Lavi and Kanda have perfected Sunday morning lie-ins to an art. They don't stir even when the sun's up high, and no one wakes up until Anita wakes up and then wakes 'em up together. By then, it's ten, and everyone feels like they've just weathered a storm, even if it's just as dreary today as it's been this entire week.
They almost join hands to sing Kumbaya and talk about their feelings of solidarity, only Anita can't talk properly yet and Kanda didn't almost anything. In the end Lavi makes a fool of himself, and feels like it was worth it because Kanda almost cracked a smile.
"Go get the cereal out, creep. I'm going to change Anita."
For someone so fastidious, you'd think Kanda would be disgusted at changing diapers, but that only seems logical if you don't think that diaper changing in itself is a cleaning, cleansing ritual, and that means that to Kanda, putting talcum on a baby's bottom after wiping it clean is much the same as rinsing hands before going in to temple to pray. Plus, pre-driving instructor days, he'd been a paramedic. What the world really needs is more people willing to shovel blood and guts off the floor and less people who're willing to put them there.
(It's where he'd met Lavi, and he'd like to think after whatever it was that had ripped out the redhead's eye, Lavi's learned not to be as careless anymore. He's pretty sure he's right.)
Anita's clean and pure, Kanda's clean and impure, and Lavi is neither clean nor pure, so they're sortof a gradient of scum, sat there in front of the TV with the baby on her highchair facing them.
"A big storm there? Looks like Lenalee might've gotten even wetter 'n expected." Heh heh heh.
Kanda doesn't even look, smacking Lavi upside the head before doing the world's most disinterested impression of a fighter plane to convince Anita that she really wants her gloop, instead of the eye-gougingly bright, probably toxic colours of the breakfast cereal Lavi had bought for the two adults yesterday night on his odyssey. The milk's coloured like stained glass, and Kanda's equal parts attracted and repulsed.
"Lenalee isn't an idiot." Allen so totally most definitely is. "And it's not like they got the luxury to spare for getting sick, not on their weird-ass little date, and not when they're back to normal." It's hard to do the sound of a jet taking off, a sort of whistle and susurration all at once, but Kanda doesn't let it stop him from trying.
The weather section ends, and it moves on to interesting things going-on in the city for the day. There's a parade celebrating the victory of something or other 200 years ago, and if you pay up for a special plastic bracelet, it would be free-flow beer from 8 PM until midnight. You could almost hear the cogs turning in Lavi's head, but Kanda's already waaaaaay ahead of you.
"We aren't going, you fuckwit. For that amount of cash for the two of us, shit, we could go to that weird Egypt exhibition you masturbate over and still have enough left over for soba after. Why burn it on getting a hangover? Idiot."
Aww, Yuu-chan, you remember my masturbation fantasies!
But more 'n that, it appears that the dark-haired man has hit upon the brilliantest idea.
"So..." Lavi thinks it's a sexy drawl, and Kanda's inclined to agree, but he'd never admit it. "Why don't we do that instead? We could dump Anita on Allen 'n Lena t'babysit, yeah, and I can have m'night 'f culture, you can have y'night of soba, and we can have a night of really slow, real lazy sex after. Heaven, or heaven? 'cos m'matey, I'll tell you now, it sounds like option three."
A euphoric sigh.
"Heaven."
Ah, shit. Kanda finds himself inclined to agree and relent to this bemused seduction.
-
The taxi gets Allen and Lenalee home just before four, which left Lavi and Kanda and Anita plenty of time to clean up the lunch they'd had huddled up together on the thin strip of grass that counts as the backyard. By the time the front door is unlocked and two voices are calling out we're home!, the now closely-bonded trio are in a blanket fort erected in the living room, Anita dozing on Kanda's chest while Lavi picks up where he'd left off on David Copperfield. The sound of her parents' voice does wake her up toot sweet, though, and she's fussing to be taken to them.
Kanda even obliges. She's been easy to look after these past couple of days; a hell of a lot easier than regular Lavi, that's for damn sure, so she gets a treat. Somewhere in his mind, Kanda's probably got giving donkeys carrot and stick confused with duck duck goose.
stick stick stick stick stick stick stick stick CARROT stick stick stick stick stick etc.
Lenalee gathers her kid in her arms, checking her like a jockey checks his beloved horse for any sign of ill-treatment. Once she's reassured, she peppers the girl's chubby cheeks with a dozen kisses, before handing her over to Allen, who was almost vibrating with the desperate desire to hold the girl again.
Like good little boy scouts, Lavi and Kanda are working together in the living room to fold all the blankets and fitted sheets, to put away in the cupboards until the next time they come over. Both men look up when Lenalee comes in, looking the best she's been in years.
Unsurprisingly, Lavi wolf-whistles. "Must've been a miraculous retreat, Lena m'lovely. Y'look like a million bucks." He goes up to her, embraces her, kisses her. "Y'gotta do it more often, yeah? We can babysit whenever, can't we, Yuu-chan?"
Kanda just grunts, which means "This is me not actually saying no, take note." He too goes up to the petite girl to give her a stiff hug. "I guess the beansprout's still busy being the teary-eyed mother, huh." He means to be insulting, but in this house of five, Anita's legitimately the first one to be growing up with any sort of mother, pseudo or otherwise, and once again he finds himself almost bitterly jealous of the girl.
But then Lenalee's dumping a mound of souvenirs in his arms and Lavi's neatly tucked his hand into Kanda's back pocket, and Kanda remembers how to fake the grace of an adult.
Lenalee genuinely is, more or less, aglow. "It was a lot of fun, and I think me and Allen needed a vacation, even a short one, way more than we thought, and-"
You're preaching to the choir, lady.
"-I think we're set for another year, at least. Thank you so much, both of you." She squeezes them together into a three-person hug that's hilarious and ill-fitting and magnificent all at the same time. "I doubt I'll be able to pry Anita away from Allen for a few hours, now, so would you boys like some tea?"
Lavi and Kanda look at each other, then look at Lenalee.
They snort in perfect harmony.
"Ally's going t'feel all abandoned and lonely if y'court other men, Lena m'lady." Lavi links arms with Lenalee on one side, and Kanda's got her other arm, as they march back to the front door, where Allen is still there, telling Anita about how he beat a cardshark on the train, and how now she can finally get the tiger-striped onesie he's been eyeing on ebay for what feels like his entire life.
Simultaneously both men release Lenalee, and head for the door, bags already in hand.
"You brought this mess on yourself, you deal with it." Kanda's always been good at protecting others' privacy just by virtue of being so good at protecting his own. He slaps the back of Lavi's head, mostly for good measure. "The rabbit insisted and whined and begged for a date, so I'm taking him on one to shut him up."
Score one to the Yuu-chan. Kanda smirks at the look of total shock and wonder on Lavi's face, and Lenalee laughs behind one slender hand.
"Got it, Yuu." She salutes jauntily. "Good luck in being the only adult in the relationship."
And Lavi absolutely shitting loses it, laughing so hard he topples sideways into Kanda, who looks confused and angry (default), before he's snorting with the tiniest bit of amusement too.
Lena m'lady, we're just a houseful of stupid lovely children pretending to be adults, and Lord he hopes they never get better.
~0~0~
dumdumdum lovely
It starts when she sees a moody-looking boy sat on the curb, cradling a swollen cheek and a split lip. He's skinny and small, eyes grey and glossy and distant.
He's also sitting down in half a foot of snow, and she's always been the one to worry about puppies abandoned in bad weather. If anyone's ever looked like a puppy, it would be this boy, right now.
She's not worried that he's some sort of hobo who'll come at her with a flick knife as soon as he notices a lone skirt; she's the over-18 Karate sparring champion, and that wasn't a girls' only competition. Neatly pleating her skirt, she kneels down to click her fingers in front of his face. "Hello."
He looks up with a face grimly set for a fight, does notice the skirt, and all of a sudden his features go slightly mad, trying to stop himself from making a face at a lady.
Lenalee Lee laughs. She's liking him already.
-
The boy's name is Allen, and he lives with a foster father who's not a particularly good parent but is excellent at fostering a healthy gambling debt. Allen gets into trouble a lot, and he'd first hesitated most! Strongly! About making friends with a right proper lady, but Lenalee's never been one to bow down and out when her heart's set on something.
It's a couple of years on from the curb-side meeting, and Allen is fairly sure he's in love. She is, pretty much, the best damned ('scuse my French) person in the entirety of existence. Surely she is.
Which is why he's not, y'know, holding out much in the way of hope. Especially not when she's seen him with half his face bloodied up by an extortion gone wrong, and seen him get so excited to have Chinese New Year dinner with her (to have an abundance of food in general) that he ate so much he damn near choked.
She, meanwhile, could knock the biggest of men unconscious with a kick to the face, ending up with barely a crumple in her skirts. What do you do to appeal to someone like that?
Allen sure doesn't know the answer, but he supposed a top-down transformation would be a good idea.
Right-o. Where's that hair dye?
-
He shows up on her doorstep, red-faced and slightly disturbed. To the day, it's officially been two years now since they met that snowy day, and the weather today's no different.
Lenalee opens the door, and for a second thinks he's forgotten to brush snow off again and his head's covered with the stuff.
"Er. Lenalee... Er."
Lee. Lee's her last name. She gapes.
"Your hair!"
"Yes. I'm afraid it's not sunshine blond. In fact, it's rather decidedly more-"
"White as snow!"
Allen flinches, trying to hide all of himself behind the hand he's hiding his hair behind. "Indeed. I just thought you should see this first, before you run into me and, quite understandably, pass out from shock. It's quite a mess, really."
Ever the gentlemanly language. Lenalee bodily hauls him in, slamming the door shut behind her, to brush snow off his shoulders and head authoritatively. Lemme have a good look at you now.
"We-ell," she says at long last, critical eye still on the straight, bleached-silly hair. "I mean. It's a new look, Allen, but I think..."
A smile warm enough to melt the snow, and Allen's almost worried his ears are so warm the snow melt will steam off.
"You could definitely pull it off. So, what made you decide to go for something so radical? And without telling me too!"
Oh, dear. He had been a little concerned, wondering about her reaction. And while he's a champion liar (by training), he doesn't like lying. Especially not to ladies.
Exceptionally especially so to her, because she had a habit of finding things out anyways. It's the eyes. You felt like you were single-handedly sullying the world when you try and disappoint the eyes.
So he blurts it out, brushing his destroyed hair (that's so different to the staid old brown, but he'd been wanting to make a statement) out of the way so that he's blurting it out bravely.
There's a looooong pause that could make the boldest of men cringe, but Allen barely moves at all, and just stares at her, polite and quiet.
Then she laughs, and hugs him like he's just told he's found a cure for the common cold and he'll now save all the babbies in all the world.
There is a decidedly large amount of affectionate squeezing. His ears threaten to steam again, because (despite his best efforts not to notice) she's got her boo-
Breasts! Lady chests! Aaargh!
Pressed against him. Slap on your pokerface, my matey Walker.
Lenalee slaps the back of his head with her open palm (probably not unlike Buddha), laughing.
"I think I'm more than interested, Allen."
Another smile, and poor polar bears, you must be drowning with all them ice caps melted.
She shyly presses a kiss to his cheek, and pulls back to smile with thinned lips. "Would've suggested red, maybe, since you're so pale. And big brother is gone for the next few days for work. Ah. Want to stay over?"
There is, Allen thinks quite hazily as she leads him away to what he has to assume is Nirvana, definitely a god for the downtrodden.
-
And where is he now?
Yes, he'd asked for Date Night, and yes, they weren't really rolling in so much cash that they could afford a babysitter every time they wanted alone time.
Yes, it's good that she's got friends so good they were willing to do this for her, even if they couldn't have expected having to babysit for a friend when said friend is twenty-two. And unwed.
It's not okay that her friends include a Japanese man who looks like in the entirety of his life he's never hated a life form more than he hates Allen, and....
A pale redhead who's exuberant, out-going, adorable and evidently more than willing to hump down anything within a fifty meter radius.
He's not sure he wants to give little, gurgling Anita to these, these...
"Fuck, Lenalee. What's he even got down there that could knock you up?"
These monsters, think Allen, expression horrified as he stares open-mouthed at the Asian one.
-
Anita's two now, and can toddle with surprising speed. She's a quiet baby, preferring to sit in a corner and stare with steely gray eyes at her parents, as well as The Red One and The Black One who come to replace her parents once in a... period of time. Allen worries that she'll fall behind, and it'll all be because dear little Anita was probably conceived while he was still letting off bleach fumes from his bleached hair (even now, the colour's almost silver. Probably permanent damage, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't have a soft spot for it. Lenalee did, and he's laughably weak in the presence of the ever so strong).
Lenalee worries that Allen will worry even more when she can hold off Komui no longer, and he breaks into their tiny flat to teach Anita the thousands and thousands and thousands of Chinese characters that make up Lenalee's mother tongue. There aren't cutesy charts to learn the Alphabet like a Brit's English. Komui's been threatening calligraphic wallpaper for the nursery ever since she told him she's pregnant, and with or without his consent this is a babby she'll keep and love.
It's getting harder to hold him off, and as the one-woman force of level-headedness in what sometimes feels like the entire country, Lenalee wakes up one morning and then wakes Allen up.
And she tells him we deserve a good time, dear. Let's go for a date, the whole weekend long.
We can book somewhere pretty by the sea, she tells him. We can ask Lavi, since he could find us a blacksmith if we asked him to. Anita will be fine. You said it yourself, didn't you? Lavi and Kanda haven't injured her yet!
Well, then. 'course Allen thinks this is a ridiculously good idea, but he also thinks Anita's gotten to that impressionable age where Lavi and Kanda could start, dear Lord, rubbing off on her.
He wants to come home to Anita with an enlarged vocabulary.
He doesn't want seventy per cent of the new vocabulary to be euphemisms for raucous gay sex.
But Lenalee looks like she needs a break, and Allen has long suspected that he's made her life a damn sight harder than it had any right to be, so he says yes.
(He'd almost prefer Komui to the terrible two.)
(Almost.)
-
Power. Every man wants it. The only difference is between the ambitious and the fearful.
Lavi can barely stop the maniacal laughter from welling up and out when Lenalee drops her house key in his hand. Keep a straight face, KEEP IT STRAIGHT (heh).
Grabby hands for little Anita, who's just staring at them as glassily as she ever did. Allen looked like he didn't want to let go, and Lavi would be lying if he said that he had nothing to worry about. But the father's holding on to the daughter a whole lot tighter than the toddler is to him, so Lavi extricates Anita with the ease of a trained skirt-chaser. "Yeah, yeah, 's going t'be amazing. You two just have a super relaxing weekend, me 'nd Yuu will love hard on wee Anita."
"It best not be too hard, Lavi. I'm fairly certain you being yourself to your maximum level is illegal in this country."
And sixteen others, but you don't need to know that. Lavi angles babby Anita closer to Allen's face (kid is still so pitiably small, even if he's grown up lots in the past few years Lavi's known him), and the babby calmly accepts the imploring kiss her father gives her.
"We'll be fine, yeah? Go and look after Lena m'lady, 'nd have an excellent weekend. Swear you'll come home t'a house that's still standing, and Anita'll be so much th'cuter for having been in our care. 'sides, you know if there's like, any sort 'f house break-in, yeah, we'll never be safer than with Yuu-chan around."
Kanda Yuu, scaring away criminals since that one time he punched a drunkard so hard the man woke up thinking he was a cactus (though that might've been the absinthe the gentleman had been chugging back).
Lenalee doesn't need to be particularly appealing; she just has to smile crisply at her two best friends, and unspoken they all understand that she'll have their guts for garters if anything happened to her little girl. She kisses Lavi on the cheek (and Allen considers buying red hair dye at the first drug store he can sneak into), she forces a hug on Kanda (who never stops glaring at Allen), and blows a raspberry on Anita's cheek (who solemnly giggles, pressing her chubby face into her mother's short, dark hair.)
Lavi and Kanda see the happy, slightly anxious couple off in the taxi, Lavi waving one of Anita's pudgy hands goodbye.
"Buh-eye. Buh-eye."
Both adults stare at the little bundle of someone else's happiness in Lavi's arms.
Anita stares after the disappearing yellow noise thing, saying goodbye as best she can.
-
Allen has his mobile phone confiscated, the fifth time he secretly tried to call Lavi to make sure nothing's been burnt down and Anita still has all her fingers and toes. Instead, they stop by a small bakery, and have tea and sugary confections.
Lenalee decides to settle this once and for all. "Put it this way," she says, voice soft, smile steely. "Do you think the boys would be so wild that they'd actually get Anita in trouble, and risk upsetting me?"
Good point is bloody excellent. He smiles, looking lightly relieved. "It's awfully good that at least one of us is level-headed."
And has Kanda and Lavi living in fear of a kick to the crown jewels. Upset Lenalee didn't stand to one side and cry. Upset Lenalee leaves the crying for after she's beaten the world back into the right shape.
Jolly good. She wipes chocolate cream off his cheek.
-
It's like the Hunger Games. Or it would be, if either male had read the story, or if the babby could read at all. As is, Lavi's jealous of the toddler, with her jars of baby food and tins of powdered milk formula. That's definite food, you know? Whereas his and Kanda's initial plan to raid the refrigerator is derailed by the fact that it is mostly empty. It would seem Lenalee and Allen had wisely (cruelly) decided to pack up food for the trip, leaving the babysitters extraordinaire with little more to eat between them than half an iceberg lettuce and a jar of suspiciously green mustard.
So they're hungry, and it's a game now, to see who'll crack first and go out to buy sustenance. Lavi's got money on Kanda, Kanda's pleased as punch that Lavi's neglected to realise that all that monk-like training he put in daily to be a better swordsman (and a sub-par part-time driving instructor from hell) meant he could survive on just tea for thirty-six hours.
(Lavi's waiting for when Kanda notices there's no tea either; just shite insta-faux-coffee.)
"Look." Lavi's trying to keep this civil, because he wants to keep playing footsy with Kanda under the table. So far they're calf-high, fuck, yes. "It only makes sense, yeah? 'm the one with the track record of not leaving the babby sitting in her high-chair and then forgetting 'bout it then wonder where she's got to once m'favourite episode of Who Wants T'be A Millionaire is halfway through."
It only happened once, you son of a dog. "Fuck off. I'm not running errands for you, or for the brat of a brat."
And because Kanda's still kindof really shit at being as horrible to women. "Who hasn't inherited that many of her father's bratty genes." He even nods at babby Anita, to show that there's no hard feelings here.
In the end, it's settled with a round of rock-paper-scissors, followed by rock-paper-scissors best of three, followed by if you ask for an extension one more time Lavi I will stab you in the eye with my scissors.
So Lavi's sent out to bumble good-naturedly through a supermarket, perilously toeing the line between edible and poison while he shops at the past-their-best-before-date aisle. Hey, in this economy, with a best friend's baby to save for, they can't afford luxuries. Like steak. Or any cow-products, really. Wilting spinach and soft tomatoes for everyone!
Kanda, meanwhile, sits at the dining table in wait, staring at Anita in her high seat.
He's not letting her out of his sight. Fuck but it was embarrassing to be accused of, one, misplacing the baby, and two, having a favourite Who Wants To Be A Millionaire episode (they're all so good, and he harbours the vague hope that one day Lavi will put his money where his mouth is and go on to win All Of The Cash. Hell, Kanda will even thrown in a BJ on the condition of winning, to sweeten the deal. At the end of the day, money may incite a man's lust for power, but inciting a man's lust of lust tends to guarantee results a hell of a lot quicker). She burps genteelly, and for one gloriously racist moment Kanda assumes that would be thanks to superior Asian meekness genes.
She throws up, which he puts down to Allen's shitty parenting.
It's a good thing, he thinks while he undresses her and tosses her clothes in the dishwasher, that as a driving instructor he had to learn basic first aid (in case some numbnut ran into a tree at, god almighty, thirty kilometers an hour). The girl must've sneaked a sugar cube, or something of the like, and it had gotten lodged in her throat. A couple of careful pats and holding her the right way down, and matters are resolved.
By the time Lavi returns swinging a bag of groceries that go squish squish, Kanda and Anita are back where they started. Only Kanda's shirtsleeves are rolled up, and Anita's dressed in diapers and a cotton apron wrapped around her four times.
"Yuu-chan, what in th'shit."
"Girls need to know their place."
Aaaaand scratch up sexist as fuck on the list too. It's okay, though, because Lavi's burning in hell with him for bursting out into laughter, swooping in to pick up the solemn toddler and blowing raspberries all over her apron until, quite primly, she giggles.
"Your feelings on y'decidedly homosexual partner are?"
Kanda snorts, reclaiming Anita and replacing Lavi's hold with the grocery bag. "Exactly the same."
-
There's greeny-reddish gloop for lunch, and Anita's back in actual clothes now while Kanda stares contemplatively at the bowl set in front of him. He prods it, and almost expects it to prod back. It looks alive, and worse than that it looks livid. The words puss and bile come to mind. He then shifts his gaze to observe Lavi emptying a jar of smooshed peaches into a bowl for babby Anita. It smells sickly sweet, and the texture resembles cough syrup. But at least the colour's pale and he finds himself drawn to it.
Goddamn, the baby's better off than we are. Once again his gaze shifts, now hardening into a glare that concentrates on Lavi. It's so intense that Lavi reckons he can hear the fine hairs near his ear sizzling. He looks up, holding a plastic spoon he's been pretending was a choo-choo train to trick Anita into eating this healthy crapola. "What?" he asks, genuinely curious. "You want me t'make sounds 'nd feed you? I could, but, yeah, th'babby sortof takes precedence."
OF COURSE THAT'S NOT IT (or it's only the littlest bit, honest).
Kanda scoffs, pushing his bowl away. "She gets actual food that you can actually tell is actually not diarrhea, and I get this show of your hate in a bowl. What in the fuck, Lavi. This isn't acceptable."
Aaaand Kanda gets the one-fingered salute, before Lavi resumes choo-chooing into Anita's mouth (that sounds exactly as wrong as it shouldn't be). "Yeah, well, if y'didn't tend t'scare off all of your students, we might actually have had cash to buy more 'n wilting vegetables and stuff that I pray t'Bastet are herbs, 'nd not mould."
Lavi sounds like he should be in Sesame Street, scathing reply presented in a lilting, sing-song voice that Kanda is almost tempted to clap his hands and bang his head to. It's a hell of a skill, and Kanda spends exactly two seconds feeling proud of being the idiot's spiritual owner before getting ready to fight.
It's not a musical, so he doens't respond in a similarly sing-song way, and he speaks softly but with oh-so-much-venom. "You're favouritism-ing on the baby. I'm not amused." It's not like he's jealous, whaaaat.
Oh, pfft. "And you accuse me of perpetuating happily flamin' stereotypes when I became a part-time hairdresser. She's two 'nd can't talk. You're older than her mum, though y'communication skills are arguably not that much better."
(Lavi's led an illustrious life, even though by most accounts he's still fairly young [Kanda's never actually seen any form of identification of his.... guy. Friend. Uh. Y'know, thing. Not a driver's license, not a legendary passport, nothing. It's a bit of a mystery, re: everything about Lavi.]. He'd hit on the idea to become a multi-lingual hairstylist when he realised that Kanda got very secretly very giddy when Lavi would help him wash and cut his hair while chatting blandly away in atrocious Japaneez. It's a booming business, perpetrator one, but, y'know. Neither of them are particularly good at the jobs that raked in the dough, and things tend to be tight.)
(To put it politely.)
"What did you just say to me?"
"Basically, yeah, I said you're inferior t'Allen's spawn."
See, Lavi had assumed this would end really rather sweetly. Kanda would be blown away after Lavi changes his target of favouritism away from the babby after a bit of rough banter, which may go some way to explain why he hadn't thought twice about being more mean than idiotic.
(Also he's fed Kanda Mystery Soup #4 dozens of times before, and it's a tiny bit inflammatory to be forced to assume it's all always been secretly loathed. Secrets like that you carry to the grave, lover boy.)
Fuck it, thinks Kanda. I'm going to watch Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, and if it's a man who wins I am going to fucking fucking fucking dump this guy and this house and this place and boink a fuckin'-A millionaire and then you'll all know what you're missing.
(Except Anita, of course. He's still her godfather after all, and he assumes that means he's got a legal requirement to murder people for her when she's a bit bigger and a lot chattier.)
So he gracefully gets to his feet, sends the chair screeching back to slam against the wall, and stormed off.
Still uncomfortably hungry, and feeling pricklingly upset, but he'll be damned if he lets it get him down (to a level that's visible, yes).
Anita's not too happy with the loud, furniture-slamming sounds. So she looks at the Red One, scrunches her face up grimly, and starts bawling.
Between a toddler crying and a loud man asking if he knew how many official languages there were in Belize, Lavi barely has enough presence of mind to feel bewildered, then slightly ashamed of himself.
It's a jolly ole mess, and all things considered he should feel glad he tends to be pathologically turned on by the Dewey Decimal system. Calmly he bitches to Anita in soothing-sounding, perfectly vicious Hokkien until she's so confused she calms down, helps her finish the rest of her meal, and then goes to deal with the bigger babby.
(With a double B, Kanda, never let it be said Lavi doesn't think you're a veritable bag of Special.)
-
Lenalee and Allen have left the home equipped with those nifty baby monitors that've been the stuff of low-budget horror movies for ages, which is grand. They haven't left the monitors equipped with live batteries, though, which is decidedly less grand. Lavi would be angrier at how cheap the two are, if he didn't know that they couldn't afford to be less cheap. With a thousand other little things to pay for, extra batts for when your besties are babysitting prob'ly didn't top the list.
Which is why he single-handedly hauls the crib down from the nursery upstairs, into the living room. Little Anita's strapped to his front in her special sling, and Kanda might be sulking but the moment he spots that mop of dark hair he's got the volume of the tele as low as it could go without going mute. He's mouthing death threats to Lavi, of course, but at least he's being quiet about it.
The crib's set up, not too close but not too far from the radiator, on the opposite side of the small room to the TV. A dozing Anita gets tucked in, and soon it's all quiet but for the tinny screaming from the show playing and the girl's contented deep breathing.
It's rare to get anything even similar to silence in a house that's got two or more of their strange five person crew; Lavi and Lenalee are naturally-inclined to be sociable, as is Allen for the most part. Kanda's naturally-inclined to murder or be angry that he can't murder, and Anita's a glorious child 'n all, but she does scream her lungs out at least once a day. Having three in a room, and for it to be this quiet, well. Lavi thinks Allen and Lenalee should feel obligated to erect a plaque of brass, of this time and date, to commemorate this miraculous occasion.
He commandeers the remote control like the pirate he often fashions himself after, and turns away from the silly gameshow type that's 100% guaranteed to get Kanda altogether too hyped up for his own health, and on to some innocent show about gardening. Lavi knows with utmost confidence that he could win any non-luck based gameshow, 'cos he's stupidly educated like that, but he can't guarantee the survival of potted tomato plants, nor can he be suuuuuuper proud at his human handling skills.
Mostly 'cos he's really got to stop shittily trying to handle other people like a little shit, Kanda would be inclined to add.
A man with a fluffy, soft-looking beard and the greenest green eyes ever to've been put on this Earth quietly whispers on about the ratio of compost to muck, as Lavi sits down next to Kanda on the battered leather sofa they'd picked up on the side of the road the year Anita was born. The leather groans and the wooden frames creak, but this is how it's always been. Anita would likely be more creeped out if the house was suddenly in perfect silence.
"Oi, Yuu-chan. You've got t'cut out with this whole being a stuffy jerkwad act, yeah?" With utmost confidence, Lavi seeks out Kanda's hand, and forcibly but lovingly twines their fingers together. "Because we figured out ages ago that intimidation only really works if I actually wanted t'save m'hide."
There's just a disinterested grunt, and a furrowing of brows as Kanda apparently attempts to figure out the answer to Literally Everything by reading the lines on the leathery palms of the gardening presenter.
Fingers still together like a loaf of ten-strand braided bread, though.
"Being inferior t'a baby isn't that bad, yeah? She's not done half the messed up shit we've had to do yet, and she's still way too itsy bitsy t'hurt people the way we've managed to over the years."
Not yet, is the point, so really, Kanda should only consider it an insult after Anita's forged her own path of accidental cruelty. The point, yeah, the point is that
"We're poor, 'nd Lena and Allen are poor, 'nd we're all either jobless or working crappy jobs with crappy shifts or we're responsible f'a kid whose head's still way too big f'her wee body. M'point is, we're not in a real good position t'be real happy people."
He can tell when Kanda's listening by how his eyes unfocus a little. The man couldn't really use too many senses at the same time. While working, even if the driving student was hitting the pedal and maxing out at 120 kilometers 'n hour, Kanda could manhandle the brake and stop the car from hitting what seemed like a wall of inevitability. But if Kanda was driving and he had to hold up a conversation, well. You could almost see the sweat beading on his frown o' concentration. It's a stupid trait, that Lavi's never quite found the desire to dispel. He could see the almost sweat now.
"M'point, is this. If I wanted t'favour a babby over you, y'big baby, I'd've found a lovely heiress t'settle down with 'nd spend all day rolling on th'floor with tiny red-headed devils. And that if we could afford t'eat more than almost rotten tomato 'n cabbage soup all day, we so would. But I didn't, 'nd we can't, and I'll take your crap f'about an hour because I love you rottener than th'most rotten tomato and I know I did m'fair part in making you sour, yeah, but any more 'n that, well."
Maybe this isn't the norm for most, but Lavi and Kanda perpetually dropped ultimatums on each other. Blurred lines happened to other people.
"Y'can slowly die of malnutrition on your own, instead of together. C'mon, now, babe." A grin that's more multi-faceted than the terrifying colourful musical mobile that's equipped over Anita's crib. "You're better than this, yeah? You 'n me, we both know it."
Kanda sighs the sigh of the resigned, but they both know it's much the same as the white flag of surrender. Their greatness, their shittiness, it's common knowledge after all.
"You make decent almost rotten soup," Kanda manages to force out after a short pause. "You never once gave me food poisoning."
Wasn't for a lack of trying, as Lavi experiments with how far gone past the due date he can take himself and his partner.
Kanda, he ain't done yet, though. After Lavi's hefty speech, and for the calloused thumb rubbing the back of his hand, well. Lavi gets a treat for putting up with the impossible. "... And I guess if you were in Mastermind, you wouldn't lose straight away. Probably. Idiot."
Coming from a man who records Countdown on their ancient VHS recorder so that he could sharpen his arithmetic skills (it's stress relief, stress relief!), Lavi finds himself unduly flattered. So flattered, in fact, that he immediately initiates a make-out session.
As long as we keep it down, eh.
-
They make it to the seaside a good hour and a half before sundown. The bed & breakfast is tucked away in the bay, away from the worst of the winds and the highest of tides. It's late autumn, and the cold and the dreary gray meant that most no one was there. It also meant, more importantly, that a beautiful room and inclusive breakfast is at a price they could bear.
The bags are left at the foot of their bed, and after cursory hellos to the proprietor, Lenalee's got Allen's hand in hers and they're hurtling for the seashore, losing their balance occasionally on the slippery pebble beach.
Wind's hooooowling, so loudly that even right next to each other they almost need to scream to be heard. But not a lot of talking goes on, 'cos mostly they're busy feeling young and aimless and light and stupid. Allen's boot skids on a particularly sneaky pebble, and he lands heavily on his back, meager raincoat striving to keep him dry.
Allen's giddy laughter's torn away by the wind almost as soon as it leaves his mouth. A storm is a-comin', they'd been warned, and this must be the opening volley. With her ever-present lady-like grace, Lenalee folds her legs under her and sits next to where he's sprawled out, both of them facing the grey ocean with its mad, frothing waves.
They're silent for a few minutes, after Allen's short spate of grunting and heaving to move himself so that he's sitting up next to his lovely lady. It feels like a wonderful moment, and he tries to think of a wonderful thing to say.
"I wonder how Anita is-"
Lenalee groans, and then pouts at Allen chidingly. "Stop, stop! We decided in the taxi, didn't we? This weekend, there is no older brother, foster father, no crazy friends, no backlog of rent, and not even any Anita. This weekend, it's just chocolate cakes and chicken pies and bad weather and a date. Just a date, so you can be Allen," the way her voice softens and her smile becomes fond at his name nearly ends him, "the very sweet and very sad, and I can be Lenalee, the..."
It takes her a moment to think of a description that meant she wasn't defined by other people, even if she really does love being Komui's little sister and Anita's mom and all sorts.
"Over-18 Karate Sparring Champion, 3 years running. We agreed," she carries on primly, "that this weekend it's a holiday. Where we can do this," kisses him without missing a beat, "and stay up late on the shore drinking fizzy wine."
She's got her arm around his shoulders, he's snuck his arm around her waist, and it's not winter and there's no snow but this feels like she's found him again.
Lenalee Lee with all her big heart and fierce determination looks at dear ol' Allen Walker, and smiles with all the love in the world.
"I'll sweep you off your feet before the night's out, promise!"
They burst out laughing, and don't stop even when they're barreling in through the front door of the inn with the storm at their heels.
-
DINNER TIME.
Kanda puts himself in charge of washing up, and this includes baby Anita, and he does so before dinner. In light of their reconciliation, Lavi got pumped up to go to the giant supermarket on the other end of town to hunt for cheap meat, so Kanda assumed he should be pulling his own weight too.
Which is why he's got his sleeves rolled back again, and a baby sitting in the sink looking at him with grave curiosity.
"Why do you even need a bath? It's not like you work out a lot, or anything." Tch. He turns on the tap, facing it away from Anita until it got suitably warm. She takes to the water well, splashing in it a little, even if her smile is really the tiniest thing he's ever seen, tinier even than her tiny wee toes.
Lenalee had given strict instructions; baby shampoo for the hair, baby shower gel for the rest of the body, and so help her God, Kanda, if you can't be fucked to use shampoo and use a bar of soap on Anita. So he goes through the effort, even if he thinks his hair's got no side-effect from a bar of soap, thanks.
"How old do babies get before they start showering themselves? Because this is a waste of both our times." He tells her matter-of-factly, mainly because she always looked like she was listening and judging and mostly agreeing.
Still, though, he makes sure she's clean and dried, and in her pyjama onesie, before feeding her dinner. Babies, you see, tended to sleep earlier than grown men like to eat dinner at, so they adjust their schedule.
It's a small house, but for now he's a single parent, and he's suddenly keenly, uncomfortably aware that this was a quite a sad feeling. He then wonders if the white-haired brat felt it, while Lenalee's working days as a gymnastics instructor, and if Lenalee feels it while the Monster works nights at the casino.
The kitchen light flickers, and he looks at the baby and he finds himself hoping that the four adults could sort themselves out before the kid can realise that right now Kanda's hungrily coveting her smooshed peaches meal, and that night-time can be remarkably grim, even (especially) for adults.
It's all a facade, raising kids. Make 'em believe that better is normal, and hope that as the cycle continues the sorry state of right now won't have anywhere to exist in.
He burps the little girl, plays with her (sits there as she uses his body as a jungle gym and his long hair as a swing), and puts her to bed.
Fake happiness so hard until it becomes real, huh.
Lavi comes home saying he got half-priced chicken, lover, so rejoice!!!
And Kanda does, a little.
-
Allen had proposed a candlelit dinner, and Lenalee had rejected it. Candlelit dinners you could do at home, she reasonably points out. So instead they go for a movie, some cool thing with robots and monsters and drama, and then they go to a fast-food joint so Allen can eat to his heart's content and Lenalee can get some french fries.
There's outdoor seating, though most of the patrons are huddled inside, away from the biting wind. Allen had wanted to sit outside, but Lenalee didn't want her fries to get soggy. They compromise by sitting near the door, so they could get the strong gust of air every time someone new comes in.
Once everything's been polished off, they hold hands under the table, just because they can.
"Once we've gotten better at providing for each other," Allen starts up suddenly. "Ah, I mean... Once we're proper, better, smarter adults, Lenalee, do you suppose you'd be okay with marrying me?"
It's not a great gift, not really. It's more like foisting himself onto her and then insisting she pay him for the joy of being a burden, but really, the only answer he's waiting for is a yes.
Which is what he gets. Lenalee smiles, and rubs his cheek. "You always look like you're apologetic for being born, you know." The tiniest bit scoldingly. "When you shouldn't be. You're a really really great man, really. And of course we'll get married!"
Her unshakable faith's as good as a contract.
She looks around the little restaurant, with her thin-lipped smile. Then leans forward to whisper, hand shielding them away from prying ears. "You're my favourite, after all."
It is, of course, a wholly mutual feeling.
-
It's 3 A.M., and baby Anita is shrieking her little head off. Kanda's sat bolt upright from the pile of blankets they've set up in the living room for their bed, looking like he's either ready to kill or ready to cry himself. He could go for days without sleep no problem, but being woken up, it drove him fantastically mad. Still, though. Kids might not be the most sensible creatures, but if it was Lenalee or Lavi or his foster father Tiedoll screaming like that, Kanda wouldn't rest until the cause for the wails was executed (by firing squad, if necessary), so he wasn't just going to sit back and let her cry herself asleep.
He's ready, about to get up, digging deep for any sort of gentle, soothing instinct, before Lavi overtakes him and gets to his feet first.
"Go back t'sleep, babe. 've got this."
He says it with such confidence, Kanda thinks. Lavi kisses his forehead, and Kanda does lie back.
"You better not fuck up."
Lavi's toothy smile is visible, even in the low light. "If I could put you t'bed, baby, th'sky's th'limit for me, isn't it?"
Kanda falls back to sleep quickly, and Lavi spends fourty minutes reading David Copperfield to Anita in his calming-a-wild-beast voice until she falls into a dead sleep to the calming lull of a Lavi who's surprisingly good at being a decent guardian, once in a while.
-
Lenalee gets served breakfast in bed, provided for by the innkeeper but brought up by one Allen Walker. There're even flowers on, and that's all Allen, sortof. He sets it carefully across her lap. "I bought some roses yesterday but I asked Mrs. Barker to keep them in the fridge to keep them fresh. Only I do believe she left them in the freezer instead, and now they've become unfortunately... crispy."
They also smell a bit like frost burn, frozen mincemeat and coolant, but it's the thought that counts and Lenalee gets a little bit teary-eyed at the treatment. She leaves them to thaw by the radiator, and she intends to press the petals in her journal, so everything could smell of frost burn and affection.
Allen eats three-quarters of what's on the tray with some shame, but only some, because two-thirds of that three quarters of food it's Lenalee feeding him with great amusement.
"It'll be freezing cold, but would you like to play in the sea with me after breakfast, Allen?" By now, breakfast's done and put to the side, and they're comfortably shacked up against each other, as the TV plays some sort of slow-paced morning talkshow. The storm blew in over the night, then blew out before morning broke, so it's a cloudless September sky with strong, clean sunlight streaming down.
It's also the signal that they've got about six hours left before they're back to their usual lives, which ISN'T. AT ALL. BAD, yes, but let's be honest, it can't be as glorious as this morning, could it.
So what if he loses a couple of toes to frostbite? It's all for the sake of memories!
Plus, it'll be a cold day in hell before he'll get good at turning down Lenalee. Especially when he doesn't want to.
He smiles until the little scar by his eye crinkles up in layers of permanently reddened skin, and nods.
They spend a good hour running into the water, screaming, then running out again.
-
It's Sunday, SUNDAY, it's Sunday and Lavi and Kanda have perfected Sunday morning lie-ins to an art. They don't stir even when the sun's up high, and no one wakes up until Anita wakes up and then wakes 'em up together. By then, it's ten, and everyone feels like they've just weathered a storm, even if it's just as dreary today as it's been this entire week.
They almost join hands to sing Kumbaya and talk about their feelings of solidarity, only Anita can't talk properly yet and Kanda didn't almost anything. In the end Lavi makes a fool of himself, and feels like it was worth it because Kanda almost cracked a smile.
"Go get the cereal out, creep. I'm going to change Anita."
For someone so fastidious, you'd think Kanda would be disgusted at changing diapers, but that only seems logical if you don't think that diaper changing in itself is a cleaning, cleansing ritual, and that means that to Kanda, putting talcum on a baby's bottom after wiping it clean is much the same as rinsing hands before going in to temple to pray. Plus, pre-driving instructor days, he'd been a paramedic. What the world really needs is more people willing to shovel blood and guts off the floor and less people who're willing to put them there.
(It's where he'd met Lavi, and he'd like to think after whatever it was that had ripped out the redhead's eye, Lavi's learned not to be as careless anymore. He's pretty sure he's right.)
Anita's clean and pure, Kanda's clean and impure, and Lavi is neither clean nor pure, so they're sortof a gradient of scum, sat there in front of the TV with the baby on her highchair facing them.
"A big storm there? Looks like Lenalee might've gotten even wetter 'n expected." Heh heh heh.
Kanda doesn't even look, smacking Lavi upside the head before doing the world's most disinterested impression of a fighter plane to convince Anita that she really wants her gloop, instead of the eye-gougingly bright, probably toxic colours of the breakfast cereal Lavi had bought for the two adults yesterday night on his odyssey. The milk's coloured like stained glass, and Kanda's equal parts attracted and repulsed.
"Lenalee isn't an idiot." Allen so totally most definitely is. "And it's not like they got the luxury to spare for getting sick, not on their weird-ass little date, and not when they're back to normal." It's hard to do the sound of a jet taking off, a sort of whistle and susurration all at once, but Kanda doesn't let it stop him from trying.
The weather section ends, and it moves on to interesting things going-on in the city for the day. There's a parade celebrating the victory of something or other 200 years ago, and if you pay up for a special plastic bracelet, it would be free-flow beer from 8 PM until midnight. You could almost hear the cogs turning in Lavi's head, but Kanda's already waaaaaay ahead of you.
"We aren't going, you fuckwit. For that amount of cash for the two of us, shit, we could go to that weird Egypt exhibition you masturbate over and still have enough left over for soba after. Why burn it on getting a hangover? Idiot."
Aww, Yuu-chan, you remember my masturbation fantasies!
But more 'n that, it appears that the dark-haired man has hit upon the brilliantest idea.
"So..." Lavi thinks it's a sexy drawl, and Kanda's inclined to agree, but he'd never admit it. "Why don't we do that instead? We could dump Anita on Allen 'n Lena t'babysit, yeah, and I can have m'night 'f culture, you can have y'night of soba, and we can have a night of really slow, real lazy sex after. Heaven, or heaven? 'cos m'matey, I'll tell you now, it sounds like option three."
A euphoric sigh.
"Heaven."
Ah, shit. Kanda finds himself inclined to agree and relent to this bemused seduction.
-
The taxi gets Allen and Lenalee home just before four, which left Lavi and Kanda and Anita plenty of time to clean up the lunch they'd had huddled up together on the thin strip of grass that counts as the backyard. By the time the front door is unlocked and two voices are calling out we're home!, the now closely-bonded trio are in a blanket fort erected in the living room, Anita dozing on Kanda's chest while Lavi picks up where he'd left off on David Copperfield. The sound of her parents' voice does wake her up toot sweet, though, and she's fussing to be taken to them.
Kanda even obliges. She's been easy to look after these past couple of days; a hell of a lot easier than regular Lavi, that's for damn sure, so she gets a treat. Somewhere in his mind, Kanda's probably got giving donkeys carrot and stick confused with duck duck goose.
stick stick stick stick stick stick stick stick CARROT stick stick stick stick stick etc.
Lenalee gathers her kid in her arms, checking her like a jockey checks his beloved horse for any sign of ill-treatment. Once she's reassured, she peppers the girl's chubby cheeks with a dozen kisses, before handing her over to Allen, who was almost vibrating with the desperate desire to hold the girl again.
Like good little boy scouts, Lavi and Kanda are working together in the living room to fold all the blankets and fitted sheets, to put away in the cupboards until the next time they come over. Both men look up when Lenalee comes in, looking the best she's been in years.
Unsurprisingly, Lavi wolf-whistles. "Must've been a miraculous retreat, Lena m'lovely. Y'look like a million bucks." He goes up to her, embraces her, kisses her. "Y'gotta do it more often, yeah? We can babysit whenever, can't we, Yuu-chan?"
Kanda just grunts, which means "This is me not actually saying no, take note." He too goes up to the petite girl to give her a stiff hug. "I guess the beansprout's still busy being the teary-eyed mother, huh." He means to be insulting, but in this house of five, Anita's legitimately the first one to be growing up with any sort of mother, pseudo or otherwise, and once again he finds himself almost bitterly jealous of the girl.
But then Lenalee's dumping a mound of souvenirs in his arms and Lavi's neatly tucked his hand into Kanda's back pocket, and Kanda remembers how to fake the grace of an adult.
Lenalee genuinely is, more or less, aglow. "It was a lot of fun, and I think me and Allen needed a vacation, even a short one, way more than we thought, and-"
You're preaching to the choir, lady.
"-I think we're set for another year, at least. Thank you so much, both of you." She squeezes them together into a three-person hug that's hilarious and ill-fitting and magnificent all at the same time. "I doubt I'll be able to pry Anita away from Allen for a few hours, now, so would you boys like some tea?"
Lavi and Kanda look at each other, then look at Lenalee.
They snort in perfect harmony.
"Ally's going t'feel all abandoned and lonely if y'court other men, Lena m'lady." Lavi links arms with Lenalee on one side, and Kanda's got her other arm, as they march back to the front door, where Allen is still there, telling Anita about how he beat a cardshark on the train, and how now she can finally get the tiger-striped onesie he's been eyeing on ebay for what feels like his entire life.
Simultaneously both men release Lenalee, and head for the door, bags already in hand.
"You brought this mess on yourself, you deal with it." Kanda's always been good at protecting others' privacy just by virtue of being so good at protecting his own. He slaps the back of Lavi's head, mostly for good measure. "The rabbit insisted and whined and begged for a date, so I'm taking him on one to shut him up."
Score one to the Yuu-chan. Kanda smirks at the look of total shock and wonder on Lavi's face, and Lenalee laughs behind one slender hand.
"Got it, Yuu." She salutes jauntily. "Good luck in being the only adult in the relationship."
And Lavi absolutely shitting loses it, laughing so hard he topples sideways into Kanda, who looks confused and angry (default), before he's snorting with the tiniest bit of amusement too.
Lena m'lady, we're just a houseful of stupid lovely children pretending to be adults, and Lord he hopes they never get better.
~0~0~
dumdumdum lovely