tell me it's all relative.
Title: The Shapes of Your Body Parts
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi, Lenalee/Allen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al.
A/N: High school AU; the one where Lavi knows pain and Kanda deals with it in a respectable way.
&
“More.”
Silence.
“More.”
More silence.
“More,” Lavi says, one more time, and Kanda slaps him across the back.
Lavi winces and laughs. But he is hot in the flesh. Kanda shakes his head in annoyance. “Does this hurt?” he asks seriously, rubbing down his spine. Lavi nods and leans forward, but then seems to rethink it, rocking back into Kanda’s palms. Kanda stands behind him, considering his options. He thins his lips, wondering what would happen if he just didn’t say anything.
“Oy,” he says anyway. Lavi hardly perks up this time, groaning about some painkillers or other. “Oy, you need to go to the hospital.”
“I didn’t eat that much for lunch,” Lavi grumbles. That Damned Cat jumps into his lap. “Yuu-chaaan.” Purr insufferable purr.
“If it hurts, go to hospital.” Kanda is considerate sometimes. Sometimes, he actually wants Lavi to live. “Go to hospital,” he repeats, nodding at the back of Lavi’s nested hair. The nest of hair shakes. “Go.”
“I - uh - hafta check my - ungh - billing . . .”
“Fuck that. I say go. I’ll drive you.” Kanda begins to grab his keys from Lavi’s bed. Lavi makes that screamo-band trilling from behind his teeth, and Kanda looks at him. They kind of just stare at each other, daring each other to move. “Well?” Kanda says. He can feel his skin crawling, all the way down to his ass; he himself might love being in pain on occasion, but he doesn’t know how to handle seeing Lavi in it. Exactly.
In a way, it makes him bite his lip too much.
Kanda grabs Lavi by the arm and Lavi stands up, shrieking again, and ends up stubbing his whole foot into the desk chair wheel, the cat hissing and clawing at Kanda’s ankle.
“Ffff - ”
*
As planned, Kanda drives Lavi to the hospital. The latter rocks back and forth in the passenger seat, shivering, which warns Kanda to warn Lavi to watch the interior.
Which may or may not have been a good thing, since Lavi is now rolling down the manual window. It’s a very shitty thing, by the way.
“Watch the exterior!” Kanda shouts, speeding up into another lane. Lavi heaves and throws up.
Kanda wonders if he can kill with the look on his own face. They drive past a lady who is taking too long to cross the street. She waves her cane at him, and he tries the look out on her. Her eyes bulge, cane clattering into the gutter.
Lavi dares to complain about the way Kanda turns a corner. “Bloody hell, Yuu! You’re making me hurl.”
“At least I passed my driving test on the first try, you sick - ” He opts to leave the insult unfinished. Who knows what Lavi might have.
Though Kanda can make a definitive guess.
Lavi begins to reach for Kanda’s phone sitting in the cup holder. Kanda automatically turns to slap his hand away from it and then grabs it for himself. “Mind to vomit out the window. I’ll call your grandfather.”
He nearly runs over a London street gang but doesn’t care to step on the brake. He inches by them while they threaten to cut his hair and stick it somewhere, and he spits curses about their own dumbass haircuts a mile down the road.
Ah thank God for traffic.
“Let’s get j-juice afterward,” Lavi says, somewhat cracking.
Now this is getting fucking ridiculous.
“Y-Yuu.”
“Out the window, Lavi. What’s his mobile?”
“Blargh.”
“Right. The little beanpole as well?” He leaves a message on Mr. Bookman’s mobile. Something like it’s Kanda, Lavi’s dying. Later.
“Aaaahhmmm.” Lavi says something in what sounds like a Slavic tongue.
“Yes, yes, I know, shut the fuck up. It’s not that bad. Unless you’re dying from appendicitis. Then that might be bad.” Kanda jabs a few buttons when they stop at a light.
“Yuuuuu,” Lavi wails, sitting forward and pinching his nose.
“Yes, Lavi,” Kanda says, smiling at the stop light. “Oy, albino.”
“Very funny. Hullo, Kanda, may I ask why you are calling?”
Kanda glances at Lavi out of the corner of his eye as he drives forward again despite the horns honking. Lavi leans back, fidgeting and putting his bare feet on the dashboard.
Thank you for that.
“We have a situation. Lavi’s in pain and blubbering about it.”
“Is he all right? He’s not dying, is he? I mean, of course not. But?”
“I’m bringing him to hospital. He probably wants you there.”
Lavi is nodding voraciously, annoyingly pinching at Kanda’s sleeve.
“I’ll hire a taxi. Be there in, um.”
“Try thirty minutes. Traffic from hell.”
“All right! Be there in thirty.” Click.
Kanda stops at another light and then pushes Lavi’s pushy-pushy fingers away.
*
The doors to the emergency room are jammed with technicians who have just delivered a wounded Londoner.
Kanda looks around closely, narrowing his eyes with Lavi attached to his elbow.
Make that a whole family of Londoners who might have had too much tea and crumpets.
Kanda dives into the fray with Lavi now attached to his hand. Kanda doesn’t try to shake him off like he usually would do. Now is not the time to be that mean.
“I’ll get you something from the desk.”
“Or I can just use that rubbish . . .” Lavi begins to say, running to it and heaving. The lady at the desk blinks, sighs, and hands Kanda a clipboard. Kanda nods and she nods in turn. They speak a silent language. Then she tilts her head at Lavi in an overly generous way.
Then he sits uncomfortably in a chair and Lavi continues to hang all over the rubbish bin. When Lavi decides to sit next to him, Kanda scoots away and hands him the plastic bag the lady has available for everyone in dire need. Lavi breathes out and says, “This is so not the night I had planned.”
“Oh really.” Though Kanda is not at all amused by the turn of events. He’s already chewed a hole through the inside of his cheek.
His mobile rings in his sweater pocket.
“Kanda here.”
“Ummm, Kanda?”
“Do not tell me you don’t know which hospital.”
Silence. “Well, I was kinda wondering because I rang Lenalee and she’s coming, too.”
“Great.”
Lavi puts his thumb up in approval, doubling over to rest against Kanda’s thighs. Kanda looks down on Lavi’s earrings. He inhales.
*
Kanda watches as they let Lavi climb into a wheelchair and they wheel him through the doors. Lavi does a backhand-wave-thing for Kanda to, maybe, follow, but Kanda is holding back.
He thinks he’s just figured out something very important. He’s falling behind.
Something that might just change his life.
Or make it stay the same.
But that last part is a lie.
He looks at his watch and compares it to the clock on the wall. The waiting room smells too clean. He gets up and follows Lavi’s entourage.
*
They leave Lavi in a room while everyone goes off to do their highly pretentious hospital things. One male nurse is a snob just by the crook of his nose. There are two others within close proximity. Kanda checks them out surreptitiously like he’s prone to do, making sure to cover Lavi’s bare feet with the robe left for him.
“Where’s the, uh,” Lavi says, closing his eyes.
“I left the information with the desk.”
“That lady was vicious with the needle.”
“Don’t complain.”
Lavi opens his eyes and smiles. “Fun, huh?”
“They’ll figure out what the hell is wrong with you in a second.”
“One.”
Kanda smiles back at him. Lavi makes a face. “Reckon I’ll miss school tomorrow?”
Yeah, with a face like that, all blotchy and burning up.
“That’s all you need,” Kanda says sharply, knowing all about Lavi’s equally juxtaposed genius and laziness. If Lavi took as much time as he does with getting Kanda’s attention, he would have the highest grade point average in school.
What an idiot who doesn’t even say it when he’s sick.
Lavi unlatches his hand from the plastic bag in his lap and holds his hand out for Kanda to take. Over his . . . lap.
And Kanda doesn’t take it; instead, he plumps Lavi’s pillow for him.
“I gotta have a piss,” Lavi says.
Kanda gets right to stepping out of the way.
*
“C’mon, Yuu,” Lavi whines, shivering and standing there barely dressed.
Kanda sighs. “You can use the lavatory by yourself. You invalid.”
“So meeean. Ag. Where’s Allen?”
Kanda looks at the doorway. “Apparently not here.”
The others in the room do their best to remain in their own private bubbles. Their stares play a larger part, however.
Lavi has to sit back down, though, when a nurse comes trotting in, holding a bag of fluid. He covers his underwear with his shaking hands.
“Heeere we aaare,” she sings, too, too heinously, putting in the intravenous bag next to the instruments on the medical tray.
Lavi gives out a little shriek and she hums a bit, switching out the bag with the other.
“What is that?” Kanda asks, crossing his arms. He’s starting to get a bit defensive in Lavi’s case.
“Oh thiiis? Mustn’t fret, midears, we’ll have him right in a jiffy.”
“I gotta pee,” Lavi announces to the room again.
The lady squawks, humor darkening considerably for such a small lady. She shakes her head and says, “Up you go, dear. We’ll need a urine sample, so please use the cups available, as well as the napkins. They will burn, but they do work.” She smiles. “Would you like assistance?”
*
In the lavatory of the room, Lavi lets out a squeak that sounds uncannily like the nurse. He refuses to use the napkin wipes.
Kanda insists. “For your own good. Now do it.”
Lavi finishes wiping his penis, and then he gives the look of the century.
Of total fuck-me horror.
“Oh. Fuck. Thaaat.”
This is all very funny. “Hurts, yes. Now go into the cup. I am not holding it for you.”
“I wasn’t gonna ask!”
“Stop complaining.”
“I am not.” Lavi is holding himself, face all scrunched up.
“Just go into the cup.”
“I’m tryin’ aahhhh!” He nearly knocks over his IV rack.
“Then why are you clinging to me. Pull your pants up - ”
Knock.
Knock knock.
Kanda stops pushing Lavi off of him. Uh.
“How long have you two been in there? The nurse is waiting.”
“Shit,” they breathe.
*
Lenalee is standing by the sink outside the door when Kanda opens it slowly. He peeks out at her and she narrows her eyes. “Is everything all right in there?”
“You have such a way with words,” Lavi says airily from behind him, and Kanda elbows him away, stepping out the door and snapping it shut behind him.
“You got here rather quickly.”
She presses her stained lips together. Her lip stuff looks like it’s moved off her lips. “I was just, in the area. You know. It didn’t take too long. So.” She looks at her hands and then back at Kanda. “Allen should be here soon.”
Kanda frowns.
Lenalee smiles like a little girl, resting against the sink now. Her hair is down and in disarray. Kanda’s seen that kind of disarray before.
On himself, when he gets too friendly with . . .
He exhales. “Really.”
“Mhm.”
They stare at each other like they used to do when they first met as kids.
She suddenly points at his wrist and says brightly, “You’re wearing the watch I gave you.”
“Yes.”
They are awkward once again.
“How is he?”
Oh yeah, the wimp in the lavatory.
“He’s fine.”
“By how much, because I could have sworn I heard him clinging to your leg?”
“By that much, then. He’s in pain.”
“I fathomed. That,” she says, making what she really wants to say obvious, tapping her sandal into the tiled floor. “Do you - are you hungry?”
Then Kanda realizes that he is not. He is more worried than hungry.
They decide to grab some snacks from the hospital café and settle into the uncomfortable seats of the waiting room.
*
They are not sitting there for long before the brat shows up.
“Hey brat,” Kanda says, standing up.
“Hey prat,” Allen says. He coughs primly.
“Now, now, play nice.” Lenalee looks between them. “For Lavi’s sake?”
Allen fidgets with his fingers. It looks like he might have caught them in something. In haste. Maybe someone’s finally broken them for him. For Kanda.
“Hey,” Kanda begins, but he’s being nice this time. Allen looks him in the eye, his nose flaring in a threat. Kanda just decides to let him be, starting to walk toward Lavi’s room.
He’ll just let it be.
His fingers twitch and he crosses his arms, feeling what it’s like to want something like a cigarette but not knowing what to do with that feeling. Compulsive-repulsive.
His fingers are still twitching when he enters the room. Lavi is in bed, resting.
The other patients are gone.
Kanda stares at the fluid bubbling in the tube to Lavi’s arm for a while. Until Lavi notices; wakes; whichever.
“Allen and Lenalee are here,” he says by way of assurance, tongue curling on itself.
Lavi doesn’t smile. “D’ya think we can fit it in?”
“Uh, pardon?” Kanda stops measuring the contents of the bag in the stand.
“Ya know,” Lavi winks painfully.
Kanda scowls. “Idiot. As if you could get it up when you’re so heavily medicated. It looks like they gave you morphine.”
Lavi whines in his throat. He smacks his lips and flicks his tongue at the back of his teeth. “Dry.”
Kanda fills a paper cup at the sink and brings it to him. He wonders if he should be doing this.
Lavi sips it like a rabbit. If a rabbit could sip from a cup. Like a human. “So.”
Kanda places a blanket across Lavi’s feet. Lavi is still shivering as if his limbs are about to fall off. “So. Lenalee’s fucking that brat.”
Lavi spits the water back into the cup, sleepy eyes widening behind his damp fringe. “W-what.”
“You can quit your shit now, Lavi. I know.”
“I just. I thought you.”
“What.”
“I thought you didn’t wanna know. Like - ooowuuhhh.” He recoils into his pillow, hand on his stomach.
“You’ve been teasing me about it since the seasons learned to change. Don’t bother bullshitting.”
Lavi smacks his lips. Kanda thins his lips. Lavi shivers and Kanda takes the cup away from him.
“I got me a wonderful case of kidney infection,” he says.
Kanda does not smile.
Then maybe Lavi was born an idiot, not saying anything before.
*
He goes to sit with the unfortunate couple in the waiting room. Lenalee’s leg is touching that brat. Kanda just stands there in the corridor as he watches them for a moment; he can imagine the imprint that brat’s hand must make on Lenalee’s leg, when they’re alone, in that brat’s bedroom.
They probably have gotten as far as the edge of the brat’s bed. Fingers in Lenalee’s hair. Like a molestation. Like a pervasion.
His stomach drops out; could it be that he is jealous?
No. Don’t be inappropriate.
He is just ill from all the strange people and hospital smells. It is still early spring. It’s the chills from the emergency room entrance.
He gets a bad feeling, the kind that comes with the chill of early spring, the deceit inside, and he turns on his heel, walking quickly back to the person who would understand that feeling. He trusts, simply.
He enters the room to find Lavi throwing up into the bag, and his finger hitting the button for the nurse. Kanda walks quickly up to him and presses the button for him, putting his hand on Lavi’s head.
Lavi is heaving up acid now because Kanda can hear it burning his throat.
*
The doctor calls the shots and after Lavi’s grandfather arrives, they make arrangements to hospitalize him. It looks like someone will have a free day from school.
As is procedure, they wheel him away on a gurney so he doesn’t have to cry and complain about it any longer. Mr. Bookman follows shortly, but almost preoccupied, waiting for Kanda to make up his mind. Kanda does, following him.
“You should quit smoking, sir,” Kanda says to his hair. He can smell it.
Mr. Bookman nods apathetically.
“I can stay the night with him,” Kanda offers, questioning himself inside.
Mr. Bookman looks at him as they wait for the next elevator. He can hear the machine whirring.
“I’m never there anymore. Thank you for picking up after me,” Mr. Bookman finally says.
Kanda’s heart does a flip into his throat; his whole body tingles. He shivers.
Mr. Bookman raises a practiced eyebrow. Kanda knows that eyebrow.
And Kanda must force a scowl, stepping into the pinging elevator with him.
Wonderful. In a metal box with the iron mask.
He finds this sort of humorless; the brat calls Mr. Bookman this. Which is understandable.
*
In a single room upstairs, Kanda finds Lavi getting heavily medicated once more. Lavi giggles at this new nurse who turns out to be an intern. Is she touching him where he likes it? She wears a false smile and Kanda can tell she’s trying to hold in her medical expertise. He feels like he should throw her out the room by her blonde curls.
She leaves Kanda and Mr. Bookman alone with Lavi, who blinks stupidly, absently, fingering the tube to his arm.
They share some this-is-not-a-pity-look looks and Mr. Bookman brings the secret pack of needles from out of nowhere. Old Bookman treats young Bookman with a quick acupuncture routine. Lavi kicks out when the needles are poked into the tender tissue of his belly.
Kanda smiles.
His heart is back in the right place.
When Bookman is done, he leaves Kanda alone with Lavi, who blinks him in, eyes glazed over.
“Kidney failure, reckon,” Lavi mumbles, starting to slur. He is just a big baby.
Kanda has to give him credit; Lavi has kept lucid this long. It’s almost as if Lavi is still trying to come onto him.
Which is what Kanda should give him credit for.
“Right,” Kanda says. He arranges the stuff next to Lavi’s bed. The bucket is right beside the socks. He laughs and pulls the socks out of the plastic.
He laughs again, pulling out the iPod from his pocket. While tucking the socks onto Lavi’s feet, completing Lavi’s fetching hospital gown fashion, he moves through the songs. Click click click.
“Mm?” Lavi hums, lifting his hand up for it.
“It’s Allen’s. I got it before coming up here,” Kanda whispers, on the verge of laughing again.
It’s irrevocable. It’s bad. But good.
Kanda loses his patience and just hits play, someone sounding, after a string of beats, like Lily Allen. Of course.
Allen’s current obsession that Kanda has heard too much about, thanks to Lavi’s many instant messages. He should start to fear the very sound of her voice.
Lavi smiles and sinks into his pillows, knees curling up. He hiccups. Looking pitiful, haggard. His lips are chapped, eyes already bloodshot. Kanda can see his feet moving beneath the pink blanket. Lobbying for a clean bill of health.
Cuz everybody’s changin’ and I don’t feel right.
Well. That’s not it.
Cuz everybody’s changin’ and I don’t feel the same.
Ah.
Kanda smiles with him, putting his arm around Lavi’s neck, thinking up clever ways to individualize this feeling.
It’s good. Right.
Kanda puts his hand on Lavi’s covered belly, rubbing, and he is kissing his hair, touching that hot, hot forehead with his lips, lobbying for a clean cure for something close to love, ffff.
“Dun be thinkin’ ‘bout me penis now . . .” Lavi trails off.
Oh? What a coincidence; Kanda’s hand is in a place that Lavi should be watching out for.