Dreaming in the darkness
Who: Cross Marian, Komui Lee
Where: Komui's room, 3A
When: Early in blackout week
Summary: Komui and Cross try to find a way to block dreams to help Lavi, but the experiment takes an unexpected turn.
Rating: R for disturbing imagery.
Warnings: Direct inspiration from this cover-dead baby autopsies. But no porn. Seriously. I don't know what's wrong.
Komui drummed his fingers against his legs as he sought to steady himself before Cross came over. This was no time to be showing fear. There was something important on the line.
What Lavi had said troubled Komui deeply. Nothing the boy described sounded healthy. Komui couldn't just sit back and watch one of his exorcists be targeted by a demon, to have his vulnerability and youth manipulated.
However, the first solution that had sprung to Komui's mind wasn't ideal. Cross was a brilliant sorcerer, undoubtedly, but he was a man whose morals were loose at best, the pet corpse of his former lover being a prime example. Who knew what solutions Cross might come up with to cure Lavi?
Which was why Komui was planning to volunteer himself as a guinea pig for any magic, just to check it wouldn't damage Lavi. And why he was twitching nervously as he waited for Cross to enter.
Cross' pace down the hallway was rather leisurely compared to the other times he'd been moving around the place. He pondered what exactly the problem would be for Komui if the demon found out what he was thinking. Of course, this depended entirely on the content of the other man's dreams in the first place, which Cross suspected were not so innocent as he thought they would be.
He suppressed a chuckle at the thought.
He walked straight into Komui's room, prepared to say something to the effect of "so what's wrong with a clearly gay demon finding out that you, also, have dreams along those same lines?" only he was interrupted by the lights abruptly shutting off.
Loud crashes ensued as Cross stumbled over a loose wire and into a pile of electronics and plastic left from building Komurin, followed by vivid curses in multiple languages.
Komui jumped at the sudden blackness and subsequent noise from Cross, destroying all his delicate organisation of his useful spare parts across the convenient floorspace.
"My components!" He yelped. "Don't break any more! There's a path on the floor, stick to the path!" He flapped his hands, despite the pitch blackness, in the direction where the cursing was coming from, retaining enough sense to know crawling over to Cross and trying to pull him out of the electronics pile was a good way to get pistol-whipped.
With continued cursing, Cross stumbled out of the pile and onto some flatter ground. "For the love of Mary couldn't you keep this place clean?!" he yelled in the man's supposed direction, judging from where the voice came from. Several more insults flew and he got to his feet. "Right. Path. Whatever-" as soon as he took a step forward, he found that he had wire wrapped around one of his feet, the end under his other boot. With a rather un-manly yelp which he would viciously deny uttering later, he landed face-first on the ground again. If the clattering sound his arms made when he tried to stop his beautiful features being marred once more by the unforgiving concrete was any indication, he was lucky not to have a piece of Komurin LCD 2 in his eye. "Fuck!"
Komui winced and flinched at the sounds of Cross' continuing destruction of his precious room.
"It's clean! I know where everything is! There's just no surface large enough to organise on as the floor." The swearing and crashing gave Komui the horrible feeling that he was going to be dealing with physically violent Cross rather than useful sorcerer Cross very soon.
"Stay still." he ordered, lowering himself off of the bed onto his knees. "I'll come and find you and lead you to the bed." His hands fluttered in front of him as he felt around his belongings, crawling across to the muttered cursing until he encountered a firm side. He gave Cross a hearty pat.
"There you are! Just follow me, the bed is right nearby"
Cross growled slightly at being petted like a goddamn puppy, grabbing the back of the supervisor's coat and glaring at him heatedly through the pitch darkness. "Well, lead the way then." he grumbled, feeling more and more stupid as time went on.
The crawl to the bed was slow, and Cross still occasionally put his hand on something sharp or oddly shaped, which earned more cursing. Finally, they got to the bed, and without hesitation he climbed onto it and quietly sighed. Finally, an island of safety in this jumble of chaos. "Right, here we go." he said, shifting so he was comfortable. "I shouldn't have to tell you the obvious."
"'Get to sleep so I can experiment on you'?" Komui asked, settling onto the bed in turn. Falling asleep had never been a problem for Komui. No matter how uncomfortable the surface or awkward the position, if the need overcame him he'd drift straight off.
He'd made sure to stay up as late as he could the night before to make sure he was tired enough for this experiment.
"I'm not actually seeking this spell for myself." He said to Cross. "It's for Lavi. The boy's having his youth and loneliness taken advantage of and unless we block the demon it could be very dangerous."
Cross paused in his mental preparation for the spell with this new revelation. "Wait, what?" he stared at him. Then he let out a frustrated sigh, putting a hand to his temple to ease a growing headache. "You could have said earlier you know. Every mind works different, so spells to do with it tend to be rather..." he searched for the word. "Tempermental. Could or couldn't work." He thought for a moment, then grinned, even though the dark revealed nothing. "Though, I do need to test how far I can go with it with this stupid limiter on." he tugged at the neckband, irritated at it.
Komui pursed his lips together, face tilted towards Cross' voice.
"Oh dear, I didn't think of that. Would it be better for us to stick to theory, so you don't get exhausted?" He clapped his hand over his mouth immediately, wincing at his words. Implying Cross was weak was usually the best way to get him to do something ridiculous.
Cross twitched. He poked Komui where he roughly estimated his shoulder to be (and hit it, thank god) pushing the man back onto the bed. "You fall asleep right now or I'll knock you out myself." he snarled. "This is pittance, easy as shit, and we are testing it on you, you little beret wearing guinea pig." He sat up straight and leant against the wall. Time to concentrate. He had to clear his mind for this to work properly. His mouth moved silently and invisibly in the dark, shaping letters and sounds in ancient languages.
Komui hit the bed with a thump and small squeak, wriggling as he pulled the wiring he'd been playing with earlier out from under his neck.
"Fine, fine, just give me a few moments." He said, flinging his legs onto the bed, narrowly avoiding kicking Cross as he tucked his long limbs onto the mattress, draping over all the available space, including a convenient lap.
The room was pitch black. The muffled, arrhythmic banging and Cross' breathing were all Komui could hear over his own body. His eyes blinked slowly, a slight yawn escaping. One of the arms of his glasses was pushing into the bed, pressing the frames against his nose uncomfortably. He took them off, folding them beside his head as his mind quickly drifted off into sleep.
Cross relaxed into his position, pulling the magic out with difficulty and distantly cursing the inhibitors they were forced into. Had either of the two had their eyes open, they would have seen a few bright blue runes cutting starlight paths through the pitch black. Several floated around Cross, and a total of 15 completed orbits around Komui's head, looking like a fragmented halo. There was an odd lurch in the pit of Cross' stomach, something he felt he might never get used to, as he accessed Komui's mind.
For a second he thought it had gone right, as he was greeted with an empty silence and darkness, interrupted only by occasional sparks of colour and flashes of memory that darted in and out of his perception like fish. Then the lurch was back, only stronger, and he felt vaguely like three glasses of vodka had just hit his system all at once. A world rushed past him, and he knew this was bad, he had to get out. His usual, preferred method of escaping was overloading the link a little bit, causing it to snap, but his first attempt only made things worse, as colours rushed by faster and brighter and more sickening.
The scene stopped with a shuddering halt, and Cross suddenly found himself in the midst of the Black Order Headquarters.
The scene was hazy at the edges, the people walking through undefined, talking, but nothing that could be heard clearly. In the centre, Komui was walking rapidly in the direction of the laboratories.
But this wasn't the Komui lying on the bed. This was a long haired youth, not yet short-sighted enough to need glasses, the set of his face only hinting at where the wrinkles would be in a few years time.
And a flicker, and it was laboratories, deep in the rooms far from the main corridors. And the white coated-backs were gathered around a table, muttering, snatches of conversation about 'failure to adapt' and 'retrieving the innocence'.
And the eyes that looked over the shoulders were deadened, the hand that beckoned over perfunctory. Komui stepped forward.
They parted and left.
Looking at the baby on the steel table, an observer wouldn't have been able to pretend it was just asleep. It was not just the greying pallor that gave that impression, but the strained stiffness of the limbs, the mouth gaping from the last, choking screams it must have made.
A relative of an Exorcist, implanted with Innocence in an attempt to make another adaptor, another warrior against the Earl. A failed experiment. Komui, snapping on his gloves, laying out the scalpels and saws and forceps, was there to find out why, and to retrieve the Innocence from wherever it had coagulated inside the child.
Despite the haziness of the room, every detail of the autopsy was clear. The examination. The noises, cracking and meaty slicing. The peeling of the membranes, the glisten of each organ, extracted and examined. The glow of the Innocence as it was removed. The tender, tender way in which Komui sewed the body back up, wrapped it in the sheet it was laying on, and cradled it, as if it was alive.
It was a girl child. Her tufts of hair were black. He began to hum a lullaby, standing there in the laboratory, a strained, tuneless noise, the careful blankness of his face breaking down as he stared at the body in his arms, at the dry, sightless eyeballs, the stitches he'd tried to be so careful with, but still made too big.
His tune became higher, more ragged, as his knees began to buckle and the first tears drip down his face, staring, staring, and look, he'd made the baby wet, better wipe the tears away before it cries...
The link snapped like a thin wire, sending Cross reeling back. His head hit the wall with a painful thud, but that was the least of his concerns right now. He raised a hand to his mouth as bile threatened to rise. He was by no means a man who had not seen his share of the dead, even children. But that. The emotions and the thoughts, he could still feel them all, they echoed in his head.
His stomach churned. He swallowed.
It was only then he realised that the lights were on again. The mess he had made of the room was made apparent, but unimportant as his eyes flickered to Komui's face. It was mostly obstructed the the arm he had moved over his eyes, but his mouth was turned down in a frown, slightly open with quick breaths. With no further delay, Cross lifted the man's hand off, and slapped him awake.
Komui's eyes snapped open as he instinctively flung his hands up at the attack. Awake, his breathing was louder and faster, verging on the edge of hyperventilation. The whites visible all round as he gasped, hand on his pained cheek, his watery, myopic eyes meeting Cross' gaze.
Stiff and trembling, he stared at the man above him. Cross didn't need to say a word for Komui to know that he knew, he saw the terrible things Komui had taken part in when he'd first joined. The dreams hadn't been that vivid for years, not since he learnt to try and accept his guilt and do everything in his power to change the Order for the better. But the pinch of Cross' mouth, the narrowing of his eyes and the sheen of sweat was enough to keep Komui paralysed.
Komui wondered briefly if he looked anything like that when he first heard about what Cross had done with Maria's corpse.
Cross drew in a shuddering breath. "We. Are never. Doing that again." he ground out, his voice irritatingly weak. "We will not mention it. We will not think of it. Things like that are best left forgotten." he ground his teeth. There were memories, so many memories being stirred by the many disturbing links his mind made with that scene. A cold body, cradled in arms that trembled and eyes that denied it was beyond repair.
He swallowed again, taking a deep breath through his nose. A long, tense silence followed.
"I'm sorry." Cross said suddenly. It almost seemed an alien phrase to him, sounded wrong out of his mouth.
Komui seemed to think so too, the way his eyes widened further before blinking rapidly, stray moisture escaping to run down his temples. He wiped his eyes heavily with his hand, dragging it over his face before speaking.
"It's okay. You didn't know that would happen, did you?" His voice was rough. His eyes, when they opened again, were visibly redder. He bit his lip. "Where are my glasses?" He blurted out, looking to the side, patting the bed for them, unable to take the intensity of that gaze any more.
The question was so random and inane that it shocked Cross into laughter. A short bark of it, followed by suppressed sniggers. It wasn't exactly a nice laugh, it sounded vaguely bitter, maybe a little hysterical. He leant his head against the wall and tried to control himself, and was sharply and painfully reminded he had hit his head earlier. He cursed softly. "They're probably on the floor, you knocked them there with your flailing." he snorted with laughter again. "Geez... we're messed up." He rubbed the back of his head to check the damage. It wasn't too bad, no blood. Though maybe he had hit it a little harder than he intended, since he still had the urge to laugh at the whole situation.
Komui flopped himself over, scrabbling his fingers over the floor and the various objects strewing it until he located the familiar frames. It was a few moments after putting them back on that he turned himself to face Cross, slowly sitting up on the bed beside him.
"That will never happen again." He was not talking about what happened in the room. "As long as I can hold a place in the Black Order, I won't let that happen again." He pinched his nose briefly. "If it wasn't for my brains being recognised as useful, that could have been me implanted with Innocence. Enough relatives of the Exorcists were forced into it." His voice was low. "If they'd told me when I first joined that was what I had to do to be with Lenalee, I'd have demanded a place as a subject."
He sighed unsteadily into the silence between them. Usually, after such dreams, he'd go bother Jerry for a midnight snack, or the Science Department until the researchers chucked him out, or just held onto Lenalee, his sweet Lenalee who would offer comfort unquestioningly.
"That's not one you want to risk with Lavi, given the circumstances." Komui said, a ghost of his Supervisor's smile on his face. But it was hard, keeping it together, especially when the biggest cracks were so close. He tilted over, leaning his forehead against Cross' shoulder with a small groan, that small patch of firm warmth enough of a support for him to hold it together.
At this, Cross finally broke out of his thoughts, most of which were heading down some rather morbid paths. He grunted, then grinned. "I dunno, messing with his brain might be fun." Anticipating the answer, he added. "Kidding, kidding. He's a bookman, and they're about as messed up as they come." The weight of Komui's head on his shoulder was heavy, but in a good way, grounding him to the present to keep his mind from drifting into the past again. Maybe they were doing that for each other. All he knew was his thought train was now getting progressively more sappy, which could be worse than the morbidity. Maybe. "Okay, so. We're technically back to square one. All we've learned from this is that using mind magic in here is not a smart thing. And the Order was fucked up until you fixed it somewhat." He added grudgingly.
Komui gave a small chuckle, sounding almost like his old self. "And that you can't be trusted in the dark."
Where: Komui's room, 3A
When: Early in blackout week
Summary: Komui and Cross try to find a way to block dreams to help Lavi, but the experiment takes an unexpected turn.
Rating: R for disturbing imagery.
Warnings: Direct inspiration from this cover-dead baby autopsies. But no porn. Seriously. I don't know what's wrong.
Komui drummed his fingers against his legs as he sought to steady himself before Cross came over. This was no time to be showing fear. There was something important on the line.
What Lavi had said troubled Komui deeply. Nothing the boy described sounded healthy. Komui couldn't just sit back and watch one of his exorcists be targeted by a demon, to have his vulnerability and youth manipulated.
However, the first solution that had sprung to Komui's mind wasn't ideal. Cross was a brilliant sorcerer, undoubtedly, but he was a man whose morals were loose at best, the pet corpse of his former lover being a prime example. Who knew what solutions Cross might come up with to cure Lavi?
Which was why Komui was planning to volunteer himself as a guinea pig for any magic, just to check it wouldn't damage Lavi. And why he was twitching nervously as he waited for Cross to enter.
Cross' pace down the hallway was rather leisurely compared to the other times he'd been moving around the place. He pondered what exactly the problem would be for Komui if the demon found out what he was thinking. Of course, this depended entirely on the content of the other man's dreams in the first place, which Cross suspected were not so innocent as he thought they would be.
He suppressed a chuckle at the thought.
He walked straight into Komui's room, prepared to say something to the effect of "so what's wrong with a clearly gay demon finding out that you, also, have dreams along those same lines?" only he was interrupted by the lights abruptly shutting off.
Loud crashes ensued as Cross stumbled over a loose wire and into a pile of electronics and plastic left from building Komurin, followed by vivid curses in multiple languages.
Komui jumped at the sudden blackness and subsequent noise from Cross, destroying all his delicate organisation of his useful spare parts across the convenient floorspace.
"My components!" He yelped. "Don't break any more! There's a path on the floor, stick to the path!" He flapped his hands, despite the pitch blackness, in the direction where the cursing was coming from, retaining enough sense to know crawling over to Cross and trying to pull him out of the electronics pile was a good way to get pistol-whipped.
With continued cursing, Cross stumbled out of the pile and onto some flatter ground. "For the love of Mary couldn't you keep this place clean?!" he yelled in the man's supposed direction, judging from where the voice came from. Several more insults flew and he got to his feet. "Right. Path. Whatever-" as soon as he took a step forward, he found that he had wire wrapped around one of his feet, the end under his other boot. With a rather un-manly yelp which he would viciously deny uttering later, he landed face-first on the ground again. If the clattering sound his arms made when he tried to stop his beautiful features being marred once more by the unforgiving concrete was any indication, he was lucky not to have a piece of Komurin LCD 2 in his eye. "Fuck!"
Komui winced and flinched at the sounds of Cross' continuing destruction of his precious room.
"It's clean! I know where everything is! There's just no surface large enough to organise on as the floor." The swearing and crashing gave Komui the horrible feeling that he was going to be dealing with physically violent Cross rather than useful sorcerer Cross very soon.
"Stay still." he ordered, lowering himself off of the bed onto his knees. "I'll come and find you and lead you to the bed." His hands fluttered in front of him as he felt around his belongings, crawling across to the muttered cursing until he encountered a firm side. He gave Cross a hearty pat.
"There you are! Just follow me, the bed is right nearby"
Cross growled slightly at being petted like a goddamn puppy, grabbing the back of the supervisor's coat and glaring at him heatedly through the pitch darkness. "Well, lead the way then." he grumbled, feeling more and more stupid as time went on.
The crawl to the bed was slow, and Cross still occasionally put his hand on something sharp or oddly shaped, which earned more cursing. Finally, they got to the bed, and without hesitation he climbed onto it and quietly sighed. Finally, an island of safety in this jumble of chaos. "Right, here we go." he said, shifting so he was comfortable. "I shouldn't have to tell you the obvious."
"'Get to sleep so I can experiment on you'?" Komui asked, settling onto the bed in turn. Falling asleep had never been a problem for Komui. No matter how uncomfortable the surface or awkward the position, if the need overcame him he'd drift straight off.
He'd made sure to stay up as late as he could the night before to make sure he was tired enough for this experiment.
"I'm not actually seeking this spell for myself." He said to Cross. "It's for Lavi. The boy's having his youth and loneliness taken advantage of and unless we block the demon it could be very dangerous."
Cross paused in his mental preparation for the spell with this new revelation. "Wait, what?" he stared at him. Then he let out a frustrated sigh, putting a hand to his temple to ease a growing headache. "You could have said earlier you know. Every mind works different, so spells to do with it tend to be rather..." he searched for the word. "Tempermental. Could or couldn't work." He thought for a moment, then grinned, even though the dark revealed nothing. "Though, I do need to test how far I can go with it with this stupid limiter on." he tugged at the neckband, irritated at it.
Komui pursed his lips together, face tilted towards Cross' voice.
"Oh dear, I didn't think of that. Would it be better for us to stick to theory, so you don't get exhausted?" He clapped his hand over his mouth immediately, wincing at his words. Implying Cross was weak was usually the best way to get him to do something ridiculous.
Cross twitched. He poked Komui where he roughly estimated his shoulder to be (and hit it, thank god) pushing the man back onto the bed. "You fall asleep right now or I'll knock you out myself." he snarled. "This is pittance, easy as shit, and we are testing it on you, you little beret wearing guinea pig." He sat up straight and leant against the wall. Time to concentrate. He had to clear his mind for this to work properly. His mouth moved silently and invisibly in the dark, shaping letters and sounds in ancient languages.
Komui hit the bed with a thump and small squeak, wriggling as he pulled the wiring he'd been playing with earlier out from under his neck.
"Fine, fine, just give me a few moments." He said, flinging his legs onto the bed, narrowly avoiding kicking Cross as he tucked his long limbs onto the mattress, draping over all the available space, including a convenient lap.
The room was pitch black. The muffled, arrhythmic banging and Cross' breathing were all Komui could hear over his own body. His eyes blinked slowly, a slight yawn escaping. One of the arms of his glasses was pushing into the bed, pressing the frames against his nose uncomfortably. He took them off, folding them beside his head as his mind quickly drifted off into sleep.
Cross relaxed into his position, pulling the magic out with difficulty and distantly cursing the inhibitors they were forced into. Had either of the two had their eyes open, they would have seen a few bright blue runes cutting starlight paths through the pitch black. Several floated around Cross, and a total of 15 completed orbits around Komui's head, looking like a fragmented halo. There was an odd lurch in the pit of Cross' stomach, something he felt he might never get used to, as he accessed Komui's mind.
For a second he thought it had gone right, as he was greeted with an empty silence and darkness, interrupted only by occasional sparks of colour and flashes of memory that darted in and out of his perception like fish. Then the lurch was back, only stronger, and he felt vaguely like three glasses of vodka had just hit his system all at once. A world rushed past him, and he knew this was bad, he had to get out. His usual, preferred method of escaping was overloading the link a little bit, causing it to snap, but his first attempt only made things worse, as colours rushed by faster and brighter and more sickening.
The scene stopped with a shuddering halt, and Cross suddenly found himself in the midst of the Black Order Headquarters.
The scene was hazy at the edges, the people walking through undefined, talking, but nothing that could be heard clearly. In the centre, Komui was walking rapidly in the direction of the laboratories.
But this wasn't the Komui lying on the bed. This was a long haired youth, not yet short-sighted enough to need glasses, the set of his face only hinting at where the wrinkles would be in a few years time.
And a flicker, and it was laboratories, deep in the rooms far from the main corridors. And the white coated-backs were gathered around a table, muttering, snatches of conversation about 'failure to adapt' and 'retrieving the innocence'.
And the eyes that looked over the shoulders were deadened, the hand that beckoned over perfunctory. Komui stepped forward.
They parted and left.
Looking at the baby on the steel table, an observer wouldn't have been able to pretend it was just asleep. It was not just the greying pallor that gave that impression, but the strained stiffness of the limbs, the mouth gaping from the last, choking screams it must have made.
A relative of an Exorcist, implanted with Innocence in an attempt to make another adaptor, another warrior against the Earl. A failed experiment. Komui, snapping on his gloves, laying out the scalpels and saws and forceps, was there to find out why, and to retrieve the Innocence from wherever it had coagulated inside the child.
Despite the haziness of the room, every detail of the autopsy was clear. The examination. The noises, cracking and meaty slicing. The peeling of the membranes, the glisten of each organ, extracted and examined. The glow of the Innocence as it was removed. The tender, tender way in which Komui sewed the body back up, wrapped it in the sheet it was laying on, and cradled it, as if it was alive.
It was a girl child. Her tufts of hair were black. He began to hum a lullaby, standing there in the laboratory, a strained, tuneless noise, the careful blankness of his face breaking down as he stared at the body in his arms, at the dry, sightless eyeballs, the stitches he'd tried to be so careful with, but still made too big.
His tune became higher, more ragged, as his knees began to buckle and the first tears drip down his face, staring, staring, and look, he'd made the baby wet, better wipe the tears away before it cries...
The link snapped like a thin wire, sending Cross reeling back. His head hit the wall with a painful thud, but that was the least of his concerns right now. He raised a hand to his mouth as bile threatened to rise. He was by no means a man who had not seen his share of the dead, even children. But that. The emotions and the thoughts, he could still feel them all, they echoed in his head.
His stomach churned. He swallowed.
It was only then he realised that the lights were on again. The mess he had made of the room was made apparent, but unimportant as his eyes flickered to Komui's face. It was mostly obstructed the the arm he had moved over his eyes, but his mouth was turned down in a frown, slightly open with quick breaths. With no further delay, Cross lifted the man's hand off, and slapped him awake.
Komui's eyes snapped open as he instinctively flung his hands up at the attack. Awake, his breathing was louder and faster, verging on the edge of hyperventilation. The whites visible all round as he gasped, hand on his pained cheek, his watery, myopic eyes meeting Cross' gaze.
Stiff and trembling, he stared at the man above him. Cross didn't need to say a word for Komui to know that he knew, he saw the terrible things Komui had taken part in when he'd first joined. The dreams hadn't been that vivid for years, not since he learnt to try and accept his guilt and do everything in his power to change the Order for the better. But the pinch of Cross' mouth, the narrowing of his eyes and the sheen of sweat was enough to keep Komui paralysed.
Komui wondered briefly if he looked anything like that when he first heard about what Cross had done with Maria's corpse.
Cross drew in a shuddering breath. "We. Are never. Doing that again." he ground out, his voice irritatingly weak. "We will not mention it. We will not think of it. Things like that are best left forgotten." he ground his teeth. There were memories, so many memories being stirred by the many disturbing links his mind made with that scene. A cold body, cradled in arms that trembled and eyes that denied it was beyond repair.
He swallowed again, taking a deep breath through his nose. A long, tense silence followed.
"I'm sorry." Cross said suddenly. It almost seemed an alien phrase to him, sounded wrong out of his mouth.
Komui seemed to think so too, the way his eyes widened further before blinking rapidly, stray moisture escaping to run down his temples. He wiped his eyes heavily with his hand, dragging it over his face before speaking.
"It's okay. You didn't know that would happen, did you?" His voice was rough. His eyes, when they opened again, were visibly redder. He bit his lip. "Where are my glasses?" He blurted out, looking to the side, patting the bed for them, unable to take the intensity of that gaze any more.
The question was so random and inane that it shocked Cross into laughter. A short bark of it, followed by suppressed sniggers. It wasn't exactly a nice laugh, it sounded vaguely bitter, maybe a little hysterical. He leant his head against the wall and tried to control himself, and was sharply and painfully reminded he had hit his head earlier. He cursed softly. "They're probably on the floor, you knocked them there with your flailing." he snorted with laughter again. "Geez... we're messed up." He rubbed the back of his head to check the damage. It wasn't too bad, no blood. Though maybe he had hit it a little harder than he intended, since he still had the urge to laugh at the whole situation.
Komui flopped himself over, scrabbling his fingers over the floor and the various objects strewing it until he located the familiar frames. It was a few moments after putting them back on that he turned himself to face Cross, slowly sitting up on the bed beside him.
"That will never happen again." He was not talking about what happened in the room. "As long as I can hold a place in the Black Order, I won't let that happen again." He pinched his nose briefly. "If it wasn't for my brains being recognised as useful, that could have been me implanted with Innocence. Enough relatives of the Exorcists were forced into it." His voice was low. "If they'd told me when I first joined that was what I had to do to be with Lenalee, I'd have demanded a place as a subject."
He sighed unsteadily into the silence between them. Usually, after such dreams, he'd go bother Jerry for a midnight snack, or the Science Department until the researchers chucked him out, or just held onto Lenalee, his sweet Lenalee who would offer comfort unquestioningly.
"That's not one you want to risk with Lavi, given the circumstances." Komui said, a ghost of his Supervisor's smile on his face. But it was hard, keeping it together, especially when the biggest cracks were so close. He tilted over, leaning his forehead against Cross' shoulder with a small groan, that small patch of firm warmth enough of a support for him to hold it together.
At this, Cross finally broke out of his thoughts, most of which were heading down some rather morbid paths. He grunted, then grinned. "I dunno, messing with his brain might be fun." Anticipating the answer, he added. "Kidding, kidding. He's a bookman, and they're about as messed up as they come." The weight of Komui's head on his shoulder was heavy, but in a good way, grounding him to the present to keep his mind from drifting into the past again. Maybe they were doing that for each other. All he knew was his thought train was now getting progressively more sappy, which could be worse than the morbidity. Maybe. "Okay, so. We're technically back to square one. All we've learned from this is that using mind magic in here is not a smart thing. And the Order was fucked up until you fixed it somewhat." He added grudgingly.
Komui gave a small chuckle, sounding almost like his old self. "And that you can't be trusted in the dark."