[fic] coddled creatures (kanda/lavi)
Title: Coddled Creatures
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi, Lenalee/Allen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al
A/N: High School AU Flashback!; of the crack and emo persuasion, literally.
&
[In addendum, Lenalee didn't fully get into the swing of things (aka Big Time Activism) until Walker had decided to up and kill himself.]
These are the facts according to the rather uninvolved fundamentally impartial Kanda Yuu.
*
That late morning, waking up to Theodore's gentle knocking on his door and then the same man coming in to turn off his humidifier, Kanda feels not too well, rest assured. He mumbles a string of nondescript French vocabulary at Theodore and twists and turns.
"You have a friend calling for you," Theodore says. "And I'm not a computer's keyboard, Yuu-kun."
Kanda opens his eyes and melts into (unwell) puddles when his father opens his drapes. Hiss. "You're right. I threw my old one out the window."
Theodore runs a finger over his moustache, probably (deceptively) sorting out the best ways on throwing out your own child. Or how to coerce them into becoming a Morning Person Without Human DNA. "It's that redheaded fellow - " is all he has to say before Kanda is zipping out of bed and down the stairs, bottoms slipping down his ass somewhat.
He trips over some art projects stationed against a wall ("Yuu! Those are still wet!"), skids into his slippers, and can hear erratic talking outside the main door. Already unlocked, he cracks it open to reveal Lavi's back turned, a mobile to Lavi's ear. Lavi's ear twitches and he turns toward Kanda, SPAZ practically spelled out across his forehead.
Lavi's getting easier and easier.
"Oh heeey this is your house!"
Well, this sure throws him for a loop. "Uh. No. I just happen to live here," Kanda says flatly.
Lavi gives off a nervous chuckle-swallow. "I gotta get. Goiiing. Yeah. Hnn."
Now, Kanda would have been grateful by any other circumstance or reasoning. However, this is Very Weird and it deserves some looking into.
True too, it's none of his damn business.
So he follows Lavi's racing figure through Lesser London, acutely aware of the paint streaks drying like scales down his pajama bottoms. (He had to grab fare from the toad jar on the counter first, just to be safe.)
*
Following Lavi is harder than it seems, honestly. That is one quick-footed rabbit.
Kanda kind of also resolves to start teasing him about that from now on.
But then he thinks, shit, I'm a stalker. Just. Like. Him.
*
It's their school. Kilometers later. Ffff - wait. What the hell?
Lavi is jumping over the gate, putting the mobile back to his ear again. Kanda's already sweating in his undershirt. Fuck, he's been running around in his undershirt this entire time. Oh boy what London must have seen. He'll be on the front page by tomorrow.
Lavi is making his way through the overgrowth toward the trees.
This is Very Very Weird. Weird is a Bad Sign.
In a moment of revelatory panic, Kanda loses his footing in a gopher hole or whatsit, cursing his - wait thefuck where the hell are his shoes?
Crap, never mind the papers; he'll be all over the BBC by tonight.
He gathers himself, slippers and all, standing erect to see the tops of Lavi's torso and head, black leather jacket fading into the foliage.
He calls out for him, but Lavi misses it.
So he is forced to get dirty, the pain in his soles becoming very evident now that he knows he's still in house wear.
*
By the time he catches up, he thinks he might have lost a banknote back there. He'll owe his father -
"Lenalee, you need to stop crying like that," Lavi is saying.
"He will never forgive me!"
Kanda snaps a twig (on purpose) and they, meaning only Lenalee and Lavi, look over their shoulders at him. He crosses his arms. "What is this."
"Allen took something," Lavi spits out, face flushed. He blows the hair out of his eyes.
"What are you doing here?" Lenalee cries. "You told me you wouldn't tell him," she directs at Lavi. She grips Walker's head tighter, bowing her head as if to say you cannot help me.
The hell with that. "Call an ambulance." He puts his hand out for Lavi's mobile.
"We can't," Lavi says deeply, looking straight at Lenalee. She leans down to whisper into Walker's ear. Needless to say, the latter's looking a bit peaky.
Sure, this is Very Alarming.
"Did you fucking give him something?" Kanda says. He really should have known. That Lee.
"Yuu, relax, she's been going nuts." They glare at each other, Lavi looking like he's about to cover his face with his hands in surrender. A mock-surrender. And Kanda can't take a mockery. He grabs Lavi's mobile anyway, cuffing himself on one of those costume rings of his. "It's done, Yuu." Kanda cancels the emergency number. How's that? "Gramps is coming with supplies." And that's supposed to make everything all better. Right. "Unhand the mobile, Yuu! Just - say - no - !"
*
As Bookman arrives on the scene, their party can congratulate each other on not getting too bored with all that waiting and apprehension. Really, it must take a man of steel to wait out someone else's death. (Killing each other in the process is probably (maybe) not going to make things any better.)
Especially if you're feeling particularly vindicated in the matter.
Lavi pulls Kanda to the side, Bookman rushing in without preliminary, gruffly interrogating them on what idiocy they've been up to, how incredibly airheaded they are for interrupting his meeting, them etcetera etcetera brats. Kanda can feel the sweaty grip from Lavi's hand. He snorts through his nose and Lavi's face softens back into that merry-happy veneer. Hemmm.
"Tell me what that was about - " He sneezes.
"She told me not to tell you," Lavi whispers, peeling off his jacket. Kanda fumes as he slips it over Kanda's naked shoulders.
"Tell me what that was about, Bookman," Kanda growls now.
If Bookman overheard it, he shows no signs of doing so. He gets right to sticking Walker with pins and needles, adding a beanbag here and there. Whatever. So long as it works.
Lavi pulls Kanda farther away, behind a willow, where they share a few looks on the subject of Walker's predispositions and Lenalee's comely charms. "They were fucking lighting up - somethin' like that before she rang me."
"I don't want to hear it."
"You just said - "
"I know what I just said. Fuck."
"Silence!" Bookman yells back at them. They become one with the bark for safety purposes.
They don't say much apart from this sucks balls after that. It gets harder to talk out loud, so they shut up completely, both looking at each others' chests. Kanda finally shrugs his arms into Lavi's jacket, growing colder and colder at the sudden thought of Walker's imminent death. Lenalee would never get over it (sobbing over there like she is). She would end up in more therapy, and then an institution, and then her brother would go insane with the knowledge of his sister going insane at the same time. It would be as if it runs in the family. They would room side by side in the same institution, never knowing they were side by side. Once the funding for their room and board ran out, they would be kicked out onto the streets to fend for themselves. Inevitably, they would find Kanda.
"Yuu, your hair's all. . . "
Kanda draws a long breath. "Yeah," he says lamely.
Lavi gets productive with his hair, unscrewing the tangles for him. A strand audibly breaks, and Bookman says blahblahblahblah? and Lavi says blahblahblahblah back in Russian.
Then Lavi tells Kanda to stay here while he goes to wave a cab down.
*
Kanda ends up with the arduous task of carrying Walker across the grounds and into traffic. Lenalee will not stop fucking touching Walker.
Which makes Kanda give her a mouthful that he had really not intended. Bookman, not very well acquainted with Kanda, remains quiet.
*
Whatever treatment Bookman had gambled on, it had worked. Walker had awoken hours ago, albeit in a state of extreme lethargy and paranoia, and had suddenly started vomiting all over himself like he'd been fucking possessed by one of those Old World demons Kanda's read about in mythology. Old World or not, Kanda does not give it a chance, either way, opting to wait it out a little longer in Lavi's bed.
(Walker is currently in the bath, supervised by Lenalee who had refused to leave him alone.)
Being in Lavi's bed is considered to be a Gargantuan Leap, anyway.
"Scootch yourself, Yuu."
"I'm resting. Don't think I'm doing you any favors by being here. I'm just resting."
Lavi grins in the faint afternoon light. "You said that already. Bedhead."
"I prefer the term waking zombie, if you don't mind."
"Oh I don't," he says, sounding extremely fulfilled.
"A near-dead teenager is in your bathtub, by the way."
Lavi gives a ragged sigh. He falls against Kanda's backside and Kanda turns over to face him. Lavi puts his fingers over Kanda's face, as if reading it, detecting any fallacies that he might have overlooked once upon a time. Silence. Stupor. Sleeeeep -
"Kanda."
Kanda opens his eyes. "I'm awake." Ack. He's awake.
Lavi frowns. "Lenalee has a history, doesn't she? She's told me about some shit she's gotten into. I sorta guessed the rest today - when she outright objected to me tellin' you. I dunno. Life's a bitch, huh?"
"No, that's her. That's all her."
"Allen oh-deed," Lavi says bluntly, making a humorless grumble. It almost gives Kanda whiplash, though he had already known. No shit.
But Lavi had finally said it, out in the open, (in bed for that matter), and perhaps that actually makes a difference at this point in time. It gives Kanda enough fuel to hate Walker and to, in a very disassociated-corrupt way, blame Lenalee for it.
*
The mystery of what Walker had overdosed on was never solved. They just went back to their daily lives as if nothing had ever happened. Nothing had ever made Kanda into a stalker; nothing had ever made Lavi into a secret wreck. Nothing Happened That Day is their collective motto. Just Go With It is what they all think in private. Except for Lenalee who had, as was said, made a few changes.
No one else will ever know what happened. Life is beautiful in this way. Midget people who swoop in to fix your mistakes like ninjas in the night - that's got to be the most humane thing (Lavi has said).
Nowadays, they don't even bring up the fact Kanda had wanted to help Walker, had actually wanted to help him while in slippers and jammies and no underwear to boot under said jammies.
Now that's called surviving (and getting very, very lucky).
*
Omake:
"I'm all over the goddamn columns!" Kanda had spat into the phone the next day.
"I like it," Lavi proclaimed quite loudly. "It's the perfect blend of butt and intrigue. ThankyouJesus I read the paper."
Kanda mourned. "They'd blacked out my face."
"Are you sayin' you wanted Greater London to know whose arse that is?"
"What do you take me for? Of course!"
Okay, so. He only got very very lucky minus one very. Tch. No breaks, sad day. After all that hard work, too.
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi, Lenalee/Allen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al
A/N: High School AU Flashback!; of the crack and emo persuasion, literally.
&
[In addendum, Lenalee didn't fully get into the swing of things (aka Big Time Activism) until Walker had decided to up and kill himself.]
These are the facts according to the rather uninvolved fundamentally impartial Kanda Yuu.
*
That late morning, waking up to Theodore's gentle knocking on his door and then the same man coming in to turn off his humidifier, Kanda feels not too well, rest assured. He mumbles a string of nondescript French vocabulary at Theodore and twists and turns.
"You have a friend calling for you," Theodore says. "And I'm not a computer's keyboard, Yuu-kun."
Kanda opens his eyes and melts into (unwell) puddles when his father opens his drapes. Hiss. "You're right. I threw my old one out the window."
Theodore runs a finger over his moustache, probably (deceptively) sorting out the best ways on throwing out your own child. Or how to coerce them into becoming a Morning Person Without Human DNA. "It's that redheaded fellow - " is all he has to say before Kanda is zipping out of bed and down the stairs, bottoms slipping down his ass somewhat.
He trips over some art projects stationed against a wall ("Yuu! Those are still wet!"), skids into his slippers, and can hear erratic talking outside the main door. Already unlocked, he cracks it open to reveal Lavi's back turned, a mobile to Lavi's ear. Lavi's ear twitches and he turns toward Kanda, SPAZ practically spelled out across his forehead.
Lavi's getting easier and easier.
"Oh heeey this is your house!"
Well, this sure throws him for a loop. "Uh. No. I just happen to live here," Kanda says flatly.
Lavi gives off a nervous chuckle-swallow. "I gotta get. Goiiing. Yeah. Hnn."
Now, Kanda would have been grateful by any other circumstance or reasoning. However, this is Very Weird and it deserves some looking into.
True too, it's none of his damn business.
So he follows Lavi's racing figure through Lesser London, acutely aware of the paint streaks drying like scales down his pajama bottoms. (He had to grab fare from the toad jar on the counter first, just to be safe.)
*
Following Lavi is harder than it seems, honestly. That is one quick-footed rabbit.
Kanda kind of also resolves to start teasing him about that from now on.
But then he thinks, shit, I'm a stalker. Just. Like. Him.
*
It's their school. Kilometers later. Ffff - wait. What the hell?
Lavi is jumping over the gate, putting the mobile back to his ear again. Kanda's already sweating in his undershirt. Fuck, he's been running around in his undershirt this entire time. Oh boy what London must have seen. He'll be on the front page by tomorrow.
Lavi is making his way through the overgrowth toward the trees.
This is Very Very Weird. Weird is a Bad Sign.
In a moment of revelatory panic, Kanda loses his footing in a gopher hole or whatsit, cursing his - wait thefuck where the hell are his shoes?
Crap, never mind the papers; he'll be all over the BBC by tonight.
He gathers himself, slippers and all, standing erect to see the tops of Lavi's torso and head, black leather jacket fading into the foliage.
He calls out for him, but Lavi misses it.
So he is forced to get dirty, the pain in his soles becoming very evident now that he knows he's still in house wear.
*
By the time he catches up, he thinks he might have lost a banknote back there. He'll owe his father -
"Lenalee, you need to stop crying like that," Lavi is saying.
"He will never forgive me!"
Kanda snaps a twig (on purpose) and they, meaning only Lenalee and Lavi, look over their shoulders at him. He crosses his arms. "What is this."
"Allen took something," Lavi spits out, face flushed. He blows the hair out of his eyes.
"What are you doing here?" Lenalee cries. "You told me you wouldn't tell him," she directs at Lavi. She grips Walker's head tighter, bowing her head as if to say you cannot help me.
The hell with that. "Call an ambulance." He puts his hand out for Lavi's mobile.
"We can't," Lavi says deeply, looking straight at Lenalee. She leans down to whisper into Walker's ear. Needless to say, the latter's looking a bit peaky.
Sure, this is Very Alarming.
"Did you fucking give him something?" Kanda says. He really should have known. That Lee.
"Yuu, relax, she's been going nuts." They glare at each other, Lavi looking like he's about to cover his face with his hands in surrender. A mock-surrender. And Kanda can't take a mockery. He grabs Lavi's mobile anyway, cuffing himself on one of those costume rings of his. "It's done, Yuu." Kanda cancels the emergency number. How's that? "Gramps is coming with supplies." And that's supposed to make everything all better. Right. "Unhand the mobile, Yuu! Just - say - no - !"
*
As Bookman arrives on the scene, their party can congratulate each other on not getting too bored with all that waiting and apprehension. Really, it must take a man of steel to wait out someone else's death. (Killing each other in the process is probably (maybe) not going to make things any better.)
Especially if you're feeling particularly vindicated in the matter.
Lavi pulls Kanda to the side, Bookman rushing in without preliminary, gruffly interrogating them on what idiocy they've been up to, how incredibly airheaded they are for interrupting his meeting, them etcetera etcetera brats. Kanda can feel the sweaty grip from Lavi's hand. He snorts through his nose and Lavi's face softens back into that merry-happy veneer. Hemmm.
"Tell me what that was about - " He sneezes.
"She told me not to tell you," Lavi whispers, peeling off his jacket. Kanda fumes as he slips it over Kanda's naked shoulders.
"Tell me what that was about, Bookman," Kanda growls now.
If Bookman overheard it, he shows no signs of doing so. He gets right to sticking Walker with pins and needles, adding a beanbag here and there. Whatever. So long as it works.
Lavi pulls Kanda farther away, behind a willow, where they share a few looks on the subject of Walker's predispositions and Lenalee's comely charms. "They were fucking lighting up - somethin' like that before she rang me."
"I don't want to hear it."
"You just said - "
"I know what I just said. Fuck."
"Silence!" Bookman yells back at them. They become one with the bark for safety purposes.
They don't say much apart from this sucks balls after that. It gets harder to talk out loud, so they shut up completely, both looking at each others' chests. Kanda finally shrugs his arms into Lavi's jacket, growing colder and colder at the sudden thought of Walker's imminent death. Lenalee would never get over it (sobbing over there like she is). She would end up in more therapy, and then an institution, and then her brother would go insane with the knowledge of his sister going insane at the same time. It would be as if it runs in the family. They would room side by side in the same institution, never knowing they were side by side. Once the funding for their room and board ran out, they would be kicked out onto the streets to fend for themselves. Inevitably, they would find Kanda.
"Yuu, your hair's all. . . "
Kanda draws a long breath. "Yeah," he says lamely.
Lavi gets productive with his hair, unscrewing the tangles for him. A strand audibly breaks, and Bookman says blahblahblahblah? and Lavi says blahblahblahblah back in Russian.
Then Lavi tells Kanda to stay here while he goes to wave a cab down.
*
Kanda ends up with the arduous task of carrying Walker across the grounds and into traffic. Lenalee will not stop fucking touching Walker.
Which makes Kanda give her a mouthful that he had really not intended. Bookman, not very well acquainted with Kanda, remains quiet.
*
Whatever treatment Bookman had gambled on, it had worked. Walker had awoken hours ago, albeit in a state of extreme lethargy and paranoia, and had suddenly started vomiting all over himself like he'd been fucking possessed by one of those Old World demons Kanda's read about in mythology. Old World or not, Kanda does not give it a chance, either way, opting to wait it out a little longer in Lavi's bed.
(Walker is currently in the bath, supervised by Lenalee who had refused to leave him alone.)
Being in Lavi's bed is considered to be a Gargantuan Leap, anyway.
"Scootch yourself, Yuu."
"I'm resting. Don't think I'm doing you any favors by being here. I'm just resting."
Lavi grins in the faint afternoon light. "You said that already. Bedhead."
"I prefer the term waking zombie, if you don't mind."
"Oh I don't," he says, sounding extremely fulfilled.
"A near-dead teenager is in your bathtub, by the way."
Lavi gives a ragged sigh. He falls against Kanda's backside and Kanda turns over to face him. Lavi puts his fingers over Kanda's face, as if reading it, detecting any fallacies that he might have overlooked once upon a time. Silence. Stupor. Sleeeeep -
"Kanda."
Kanda opens his eyes. "I'm awake." Ack. He's awake.
Lavi frowns. "Lenalee has a history, doesn't she? She's told me about some shit she's gotten into. I sorta guessed the rest today - when she outright objected to me tellin' you. I dunno. Life's a bitch, huh?"
"No, that's her. That's all her."
"Allen oh-deed," Lavi says bluntly, making a humorless grumble. It almost gives Kanda whiplash, though he had already known. No shit.
But Lavi had finally said it, out in the open, (in bed for that matter), and perhaps that actually makes a difference at this point in time. It gives Kanda enough fuel to hate Walker and to, in a very disassociated-corrupt way, blame Lenalee for it.
*
The mystery of what Walker had overdosed on was never solved. They just went back to their daily lives as if nothing had ever happened. Nothing had ever made Kanda into a stalker; nothing had ever made Lavi into a secret wreck. Nothing Happened That Day is their collective motto. Just Go With It is what they all think in private. Except for Lenalee who had, as was said, made a few changes.
No one else will ever know what happened. Life is beautiful in this way. Midget people who swoop in to fix your mistakes like ninjas in the night - that's got to be the most humane thing (Lavi has said).
Nowadays, they don't even bring up the fact Kanda had wanted to help Walker, had actually wanted to help him while in slippers and jammies and no underwear to boot under said jammies.
Now that's called surviving (and getting very, very lucky).
*
Omake:
"I'm all over the goddamn columns!" Kanda had spat into the phone the next day.
"I like it," Lavi proclaimed quite loudly. "It's the perfect blend of butt and intrigue. ThankyouJesus I read the paper."
Kanda mourned. "They'd blacked out my face."
"Are you sayin' you wanted Greater London to know whose arse that is?"
"What do you take me for? Of course!"
Okay, so. He only got very very lucky minus one very. Tch. No breaks, sad day. After all that hard work, too.